Emotional Intelligence & Self-Awareness

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Self-Awareness is the beginning of Emotional Intelligence. A lot of people are not aware of how they come across to other people. Being self-aware means being able to detect how you are coming across to other people - not just in a general sense but in real time, at the moment you are interacting with them. It involves tone-of-voice, facial expressions, body language and the words you choose. Accurate self awareness also involves asking a lot of questions when you are communicating, and getting confirmation, whenever possible, on your assumptions.

Most importantly, though, Self Awareness means knowing when you are having an emotional reaction. Many people have a hard time recognizing that they are in the midst of a reaction, and as a result, they identify with and operate from the reaction. Most of the time, when you have a reaction, it results in some form of self-sabotage. Self Awareness is a critical skill to develop in order to combat this tendency.