What makes emotional self-awareness so

important?
You can only change things that are happening in your mind if you’re aware of them.
Emotional self-awareness provides insights into your world so you can benefit from
the changes you make.

For example, you can benefit from learning who you are and how your buttons are
pushed by different things.

Furthermore, emotional self-awareness allows you to recognize situations when

emotions like fear, frustration, and anger start to control you. These emotions are
obviously negative for your happiness.
Therefore, it’s critical to understand how your emotions will react to negative events.
Then you will know what exactly triggers your emotional reactions.
Free 7-day Happiness Course
Get in control of your happiness! Enroll in the free 7-day course that will make you think differently
about your happiness.
Receive 7 emails, one per day. You can unsubscribe anytime. For more details, review our Privacy Policy.
Get started right away!

4 Examples of emotional self-awareness

If the concept of emotional self-awareness is still a little vague for you, then let me
help you. These are some rather common examples of emotional self-awareness, and I
bet you’ll be able to recognize a few of them!

1. A manager that lacks emotional self-

awareness
Let’s say there’s a manager working at a tech company who’s a bully but isn’t aware
of it. He’s very competent at his job but lacks social skills. The manager doesn’t listen
to his team members and gives special treatment to only people he likes.

Then, one day, some people confront this person about these issues. In a first reaction,
the manager blames another person and gets angry at the accuser. He even blames the
accuser for being part of the problem.
This is an example of a lack of emotional self-awareness. The bully manager is not
aware of how his emotions are affecting his behavior and performance. That, in turn,
is having a negative impact on his interactions with coworkers. He thinks he’s
a victim of circumstance, which stops him from looking at the situation rationally.
This not only negatively affects the happiness of the manager himself, but also his
coworkers. Just because someone pointed out a minor point of improvement.

2. Losing out on a job promotion

You and your colleague friend have been competing to receive a job promotion. Your
friend ended up getting the promotion. You worked hard, but management made the
decision that your friend should get the promotion.

At first, you’re disappointed you didn’t get the job. However, you then realize that
your friend is happy about the promotion. So you decide that you’re also happy for
him. You realize that it’s only good that your friend got the job instead of someone
else.

You could have decided to be bitter and angry, but instead, you decided to find a
positive angle. That requires a lot of emotional self-awareness, but will ultimately
have a positive influence on your happiness.
3. An emotionally unaware and angry passenger
This is a fun example that happened to me some time ago when I flew back to the
Netherlands from a weekend trip.

There was an angry passenger trying to get his ticket sorted at the counter. He became
very angry because he thought the process was inefficient and was afraid he was
going to miss his flight. This man wasn’t even aware of how upset he was. The entire
line of people was just watching him go bananas at the poor lady behind the counter.

But more importantly, he was completely unaware of his tantrum and how it impacted
the person he was yelling at.

And do you think his anger helped him get his anger sorted any faster? Nope. The
lady tried her best to help him, but the man had crushed any sympathy she could have
had for him by throwing a fit.
If he had been calmer and more diplomatic about the situation, he’d probably have his
stuff sorted out much quicker.

4. Pointless road rage

The last example I want to show you is becoming more and more common nowadays:
road rage.

It’s actually a perfect example of a lack of emotional self-awareness.

It happens more and more, as the traffic and stress of daily life seems to only increase.
As a result, people become agitated in traffic, which results in a lot of mindless
negativity.

Just search YouTube for the term “road rage” and you can watch hours of footage of
people lacking emotional self-awareness.

I want to show you one of the most memorable examples I’ve ever seen. It’s quite
long, but worth the watch! It might even make you laugh…

It’s sad to think about how this situation could’ve been easily avoided if one of these 2
gentlemen had a little more sense of emotional self-awareness.

I’m not saying who’s right or wrong here, I’m just saying that this situation could
have easily been avoided by one of them.

Instead, you now have a situation where nobody wins.

That brings me to the next section of this article. What are the benefits of training
your emotional self-awareness?

4 benefits of emotional self-awareness

So we’ve discussed some examples of emotional self-awareness. You should have a
pretty clear idea of what this concept is about.

1. Better react to factors outside your control

This involves various situations like difficult coworkers, traffic jams, bad customer
service, etc. In your life, you’re eventually going to be in a bad situation because of
uncontrollable factors.

These situations are simply a part of life, but they can be quite stressful.

We like to think we have the power to choose when to get emotional during those
situations.

It’s debatable whether or not we should be logical or emotional in these situations.

However, the most important issue is being aware of our emotions and how they
affect others.

For example, you might find yourself yelling at a rude or annoying coworker for
whatever reason. Your feelings and emotions might, in fact, be “natural” in these
situations. However, they can also have negative results, like the co-worker getting
upset or you getting in trouble for throwing a fit.

You should know by now that a better approach is to get in touch with your emotions.

Why is this coworker making you upset? What’s the most logical way to deal with
this annoying or rude coworker? Is there a way you can be less emotional in
responding to the situation?

It may take a little more effort, but it will undeniably result in a better – long-term –
result for yourself. You have to look at the bigger picture here.

Sure, getting angry at this coworker might satisfy your short-term needs (you’re
angry!). But by getting in touch with your emotions and remaining calm, you can
reach a far better result in the long term.

2. Facing and dealing with disappointments

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always turn out the way we want.
It’s perfectly natural to feel upset when this happens. The key here is to take a mental
inventory of how you feel. Think about how you’re feeling, the source of those
feelings, and how those feelings are affecting you both physically and mentally.

Then it’s time to listen to your feelings. And I mean really listen.

This is critical since it will help you to gain insights into how to deal with feelings of
disappointment. It doesn’t mean you have to be happy about your disappointments,
but it will certainly help you to deal with the situation in a more effective way.

Because more often then not, disapointments are a result of high expectations.

 Could you have lowered your expectations before being disapointed?

 Were you a bit naive in hindsight?
 Can you learn something from your disapointment?
These are questions that all result in more emotional self-awareness. And the benefit
here is that it allows you to deal with high expectations in the future.

We’ve written an entire article about how to deal with high expectations here.
3. Predicting the response of others
A large part of emotional self-awareness is being aware of our own emotions.

That includes recognizing, acknowledging, identifying, accepting, and reflecting on

the feeling that we experience. As we know now, this is a complex and difficult
process, but critical for getting in touch with our emotions.

However, this process also improves our ability to forecast feelings. And it just so
happens that that skill can be used on our own emotions but also on that of others! As
we become better at forecasting our own feelings, we also get better at figuring out
how other people will feel as well.

More specifically, we realize that others will likely have the same feelings as we do in
certain situations. If we experience sadness in certain situations, then it’s likely others
will experience this feeling as well.

By being aware of this, you can better position yourself in relation to others.
Here’s an easy example:

You and your friend are late for a concert. You start feeling a bit angry and impatient.
It makes sense, right?

Chances are your friend is feeling the exact same emotions. And he wants to vent
about it. “Stupid traffic this!” and “Stupid red lights!” Having the ability to change your
own perception of the outside world can make a significant difference

Instead of jumping on the negativity bandwagon, you can now position yourself better
in order to reach a more positive mindset together. Instead of allowing yourself to get
angry as well, you can choose to think about positive things instead.
And you can now try to turn your – still angry – friend on that same positivity
bandwagon. You can probably see how this creates a better and happier situation for
the both of you, right?

4. Higher emotional intelligence

The key is to do an accurate self-assessment to get the biggest emotional intelligence
(EI) boosts.

To put it another way, it’s important for a person to have a very precise understanding
of how their feelings affect their behavior, performance, and mood. They should also
be aware of how these things affect others’ moods.

It’s also important for people to think about their strengths and weaknesses in terms of
their emotional intelligence What am I good at? In what situations do my emotions get
out of hand more easily? There are various measurement tools you can use to
determine the answer to these questions.

We’ll talk more about these tools later!

Anyway, another great benefit of a higher emotional intelligence is that it helps to

create an environment in which you can receive honest feedback better.

Instead of getting angry about constructive feedback, you can decide to accept it for
what it is: good feedback. Even though your emotions are pushing you into an angry
mindset, you can recognize this and then stop it from happening.
That’s a win-win!

That’s because people are concerned about your personal and professional
development and instead of blocking their potentially painful words, you can accept
them as lessons and use them to grow as a person. This way, you and your peers can
grow as a whole, without any negative emotions.