Emotional Intelligence, Musing

#EmotionalIntelligence…on self-awareness.

During my most recent #coaching session, I discussed some challenges I was having on a personal level with my coach. She helped me, through inquiry, connect some dots, making it visible what was hidden behind self-sabotaging stories, and even values and habits, all perfectly placed to keep the painful truth buried deep. I have been in #personaldevelopment, one form or another, since my teens. Yet, decades later the onion is still being peeled. Growth never ends, if one chooses to continue to learn, that is.

When we speak of self-awareness, I have come to experience three vastly different levels of it, each level more intricate and nuanced than the one before. Each harder to get to, harder to recognize and ever more uncomfortable to feel. But to strengthen our interpersonal relationships, whether at home or work, navigating these layers allow for deeper and deeper connections. So, what are these three levels of self-awareness?

Level 1 - the easiest to work on, yet still so elusive for so many is our ability to notice our internal experiences (emotions, feelings, sensations) and eventually develop enough of a vocabulary to name the experiences we are noticing. On average Americans can name 10 emotions, at most, and yet to be considered emotionally literate one must be able to name 30, at a minimum. Naming our emotional experience? is a way for us to pause and assess, and also just feel. The alternative is to bypass the experience and react. Without the pause, our emotional experience may go unnoticed, and what we are left with is just the action, the doing piece. That doing, may become a coping mechanism we default to, rather than the being with, or simply experiencing our emotions. Have you notice yourself reaching for the cake in the fridge against your strongest will? Or having the same thoughts on repeat, with the same ‘drama’ being told and untold in a million different ways? That’s still the doing, not being with. This level of self-awareness is the first and a necessary condition for effective leadership, and for consciously relating to others. At this level we begin to feel and name, and we are able to pause before reacting.

Level 2 - once we have developed an awareness of our emotional state and can name it, we begin to experience a deeper knowing of ourselves. I spend a lot of time here when running leadership classes. Here we get to investigate what triggers our self-sabotaging behaviors - how a certain emotion may keep us from enjoying abundance, love, success. We connect our thoughts to the emotions they bring, and the opposite, we learn how certain emotions may evoke certain thoughts. In this level we get to start reprogramming patterns of behaviors, and we use the pause of level one, to make a conscious choice. We learn to feel uncomfortable with what is, so that we can move beyond self-limiting beliefs. There is so much magic that can happen at this level, and yet, we must be willing to experience the deep discomfort of not just our emotional state, but of recognizing the choices we made, unconsciously, over the years. This is where most people's self-development growth happens. Honestly, if the majority of leaders got to this level, we would be seeing very different leaders at the helm - bright and intelligent, yes,? but conscious, restrained and, well, self-aware!

Level 3 - so what’s left, you may ask? Level 3 is not for the faint of heart. This is the depth and shadows of our being, the crevices and intricate hidden paths. Most people get to level three through ritualized practices, such as breathwork and meditation. It’s impossible to just land at level 3. One must choose it over and over again. The only way I can describe 3 is a seeing of patterns and an inability to stop seeing them. It’s beyond just knowing what is happening inside of us, or even developing a process to make better choices. It is truly seeing the connection of all things, and all beings. When my coach led me through inquiry, I could have stayed at level 1 - noticing what was coming up for me, and naming it, or level 2, making a better more conscious choice. And these two levels happened, almost instantly. But my coaching led me to level three, an almost instant understanding of all the intricate connection of choice, emotion, sensations, feelings, and these with others, and that of my being and everything around me. It is glorious to get to level 3, it is painful to be at level 3. I think when people say that it is lonely at the top of a mountain, they have not gotten there through self-awareness. Because the deeper we dive into knowing who we are, the stronger our connection to all beings become.