When it comes to communicating, whether at work or at home, emotions play a huge roll. Communication, effective or otherwise, is driven by how you think and what you are feeling in the moment. How you interpret others nonverbal communications and react to it can drive your understanding of their message, and the same works in reverse.
When you do not have a clear understanding of your feelings it can be very hard to get your point across when trying to communicate with others. Effective connecting includes being able to let others know what you need or what you feel. Many hard feelings, aggravation, stress, and more comes from an inability to communication ones true emotions. By not talking about what is truly at issue you will soon find that silly arguments over inane subjects can become the norm.
By enhancing your emotional awareness you will be in a much better position to understand those around you as well. The messages they are sending will become much clearer. While many people try to suppress their stronger emotions, it can be quite counterproductive. You must be able to reach down deep and understand the root of these feelings. Resorting to rationalization or insisting on burying your feelings will only result in an inability to truly connect with those whom you are communicating. This can make true effective communication nearly impossible.
Improving Effective Connecting Through Emotional Awareness
Emotional awareness can best be defined as a deep connection with and understanding of your emotions at all times. Emotional awareness also may offer the skill to keep your feelings appropriately managed. This is what allows one to initiate and maintain effective communication.
Being emotionally aware will help in many ways. It will help to:
- Deliver negative messages in a clear manner
- Allow you understand your own feelings including any issues that may be bothering you
- Maintain a high level of motivation geared toward knowing where your audience is coming from and how they are feeling even when you don’t agree with their point of view
- Build a level of empathy with others based on the understanding of what is truly at issue
- Create an atmosphere of creativity, trust, strength, and more
Thought and Feelings are Key
True empathy, knowing what others are feeling and how it affects their judgment, will come from emotional awareness. Once you have achieved empathy, you will also be in deeper touch with your own feelings and emotions. This will allow you to begin communicating on a truly effective level. The end result of becoming emotionally aware is the achievement of a balance between what you think and what you feel.
Can Emotional Awareness be Learned?
No matter what stage you are at in your life you will find that emotional awareness can indeed be achieved. By reaching out to your stronger feelings – joy, anger, fear, etc – you can not only learn to know where they are coming from but how to harness them as well. Once you have achieved a degree of emotional awareness you will much more prepared when you seek to effectively connect with those around you.