Emotional Awareness and Emotional Intelligence - What's the difference?
What is Emotional Awareness?
What is different between EQ, EI, and Emotional Intelligence and personal development? So many questions... here are some answers to help you.
There are many terms used including
emotional quotient
emotional literacy
emotional intelligence
self awareness
Personal Development and
good old fashioned wisdom.
They are all ways to understand emotions and to learn ways of regulating them.
Emotional Awareness is the least used term, yet it is the foundation of becoming aware of your own emotions, what they feel like, how your own actions and reactions affect your own life and that of others around you. Emotional Awareness begins with learning to become self-aware and grows continually with experience.
Emotional awareness helps build basic social skills like empathy and understanding. It is crucial to strong relationships at school, work and at home. Children usually learn this through story books, nursery rhyme, and from family but for children with additional challenges such as ASD, ADHD, or Abuse, this can be harder to learn naturally.
Higher levels of emotional management are referred to as Emotional intelligence. The word intelligence suggests it being a 'learned' topic. It means that the person has studied, implemented, and achieved in areas such as friendships, work relationships, and can moderate their own emotions as needed, while also being able to help guide and moderate the emotions of others through support and conversation, often referred to as leadership skills. A few people are natural at this level, but for many it is learned through courses like leadership training and years of reading personal development books.
What are the benefits of learning Emotional Awareness?
Let's look at some setbacks of not learning, then compare. Poor Emotional Awareness when dealing with relationship or work challenges, can lead to abuse, corruption, crime, or self-destruction through addictive behaviours. An individual may regularly feel stressed, angry, aggressive, withdrawn, anxious, depressed, or even suicidal.
Therefore the benefits of learning Emotional Awareness after helping someone to understand their emotional cycle and how it affects 'them' - will be understand why they have these overwhelming emotions, how to manage them, then extend that awareness to others in the form of empathy. They begin to remain calmer, feel less agitated or angry, find more hope and motivation to keep going when life is tough, and discover more confidence in themselves.
This improved awareness in themselves, and therefore others, will reduce abuse, neglect, corruption, and improve their career, relationships and social life, as they continue to grow these new found skills.
Eventually they can potentially develop leadership skills. Even if they don't take a leadership position in work, it will still vastly improve their social life, and their family life. Parenting with emotional awareness starts to pay-it-forward, and benefit the next generation too.
Even the most intelligent of people with a high IQ Intelligence Quotient, can lack EQ emotional intelligence and can become bullish in leadership positions. These people tend to be referred to as bosses, or managers rather than leaders. They may be great in high profile jobs then go home to abuse their families. Some people are amazing around other people, then get in their car and become and emotional bulldozer on the road.
Emotional awareness is relevant to all walks of life. If you find your life is different according to your surroundings, you have probably learned to 'fit in' or 'mimic' the emotional status rather than learning to understand your own emotions properly. You probably find yourself calmer when surrounded by emotionally aware people, but unable to carry that to other areas of life.
My own son at 19 years old, was only just learning emotional awareness basics in a way he could overcome the overwhelm of emotional dysregulation. Every other strategy used to teach him had been unsuccessful. SMART goals were too much for him, he was a high risk to himself and chronically depressed.
At 28 years old, he is a customer experience leader (team leader), has his own family, and is one of the most resilient people I know. He's still hade many challenges to face up to, but he has become so much stronger. I just needed the right strategy to help him start to understand all the emotional turmoil he was feeling, so after years of seeking help without success, I created that strategy myself.
Now there is a way for you do start yours or your teenager's journey with Emotional Awareness using my self-help book. It teaches that same strategy that takes you through the emotional cycle, step by step, and using the three steps of the Mood Mentor Model, builds a clear understanding of emotions, how to break down emotional challenges, and find solutions. ultimately how to manage their own emotions.
learn about Emotional Awareness using the Emotional Cycle Diagram and the Mood Mentor Model.