Understanding your self to reduce stress
One of the consistent findings in organizational research is good leaders need to be self-aware. Getting to understand yourself can be a stressful experience. Many people think that psychologists constantly psychoanalyse those around them. This can be painful at parties when people become suspicious of you.
In therapeutic setting, helping patients become self-aware can create stress for them. How many of us really understand our own values, motivations, and drives? When I coach chief executive officers, one of the first things I do to increase their effectiveness in the organization is to help them become self-aware. I work on the assumption that self-awareness increases the capacity to confront, manage and relieve stress. This is particularly important in relationships where one or both parties have limited self-awareness and are unable to negotiate a meaningful communication space.
The concept is referred to in the literature is emotional intelligence and credit goes largely to Daniel Goleman for his work in this area. I believe that your work life and your personal relationships are made more effective through a high degree of emotional intelligence. Leaders with high self intelligence earn more money, have high producing and profitable departments and organizations, and are more successful overall. So my simple argument is become more self-aware and you increase your effectiveness and, probably, your capacity to manage and relieve stress.
A simple definition of emotional intelligence is one’s capacity to understand oneself and others and to be able to adapt to the emotional demands and interactions of the day.
Oddly enough, the feelings of the people around you affect your own emotional state. The brain’s limbic system is the area where we can examine moods and emotions. People react to each other’s emotions and in meetings, for example, it takes two hours for everyone to share the common mood of the meeting. There is constant interchange of emotionality in the workplace.
A fascinating piece of research suggests the following. Put two people together in a room and monitor their heart rate and blood pressure and you will find within 5 to 10 minutes they are almost identical. And they don’t even need to talk to each other. Just sitting together creates a shared physiological reaction.
If we do share common emotionality, it is obvious that we are constantly affecting the ones around us. If we are stressed, our partners at work colleagues are stressed as well. You need to know how you are feeling and how this impacts others. How others feel, especially if they are angry or discontented, affects us too. None of these bad feelings are healthy or productive. They add to the tension and stress we feel in the workplace.
What is the alternative? If you are happy, self-aware, stress free, and have a positive self-esteem you are likely to be happy in your relationships and happy in the workplace. You will probably be very effective in developing and enjoying healthy relationships. You’ll know how to manage and relieve stress and your life will be blessed.
I hope this brief introduction to emotional intelligence gives you some understanding of how important the concept is in your daily life. There are five parts of emotional intelligence and we measure: understanding ourselves, understanding others, being adaptable, general mood, and stress management. There are often great variations in an individual’s profile on these five dimensions. Some people can be high on interpersonal understanding and have very limited self-awareness. Of course it makes life much more interesting for the purpose of this article, the most important issue is how well people manage stress through self-awareness.
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