The key to surviving a stressful situation is as much emotional wellness as it is emotional awareness.

To go back to the immune system analogy, you are able to combat a sickness more quickly and efficiently – or even get sick less often – if you regularly check in with your body and know how you feel when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick. Emotional awareness is this ability to check in with your feelings and recognize when something isn’t right – whether you are mad or sad, happy, or scared, and why.

This allows you to better address these issues in the moment, as opposed to most people’s method of pushing their feelings to the back of their minds until the stressful situation has passed, and then dealing with them once it is already too late.

Emotional awareness is not only being aware of your own emotions, however, but is also being able to recognize and understand the emotions of those around you. Just like addressing your own feelings in the moment can keep you from over-reacting, addressing the feelings of others can help to keep them calm as well.

If you want to use the tools of emotional awareness to keep other people calm for their own sake, that’s wonderful. For the rest of us, however, it is worth pointing out that if we are able to keep other people calm, it is more likely that we will be able to stay calm.

Sometimes it can be tempting to annoy or upset people that we don’t like but, in the end, this usually only makes things harder for us. Again, like our physical wellness, we are more likely to have good emotional health if those around us are emotionally healthy.

QUESTIONS TO REFLECT ON:

Thinking

Are you actively thinking about understanding yourself and your feelings?
Are you thinking about all the the things that help you be more aware of your emotions?
Are you thinking about how you can further develop how to own up to your feelings?

Talk – New Language

Are you actively expressing the how you feel?
Do you speak of all the good and positive things that make you feel good and name the things that you like?
Are you continuously telling yourself and reminding yourself to own up to your feelings and emotions?

Behaviour

Do you understand your feelings and own up to them fully?
Do you try and focus on positive behaviours that help you be more aware of your emotions?
Do you continuously learn more about how owning up to your feelings and emotions can help you?

Relationships & Contribution