Techniques to increase Self-awareness(continued).

1. Feel your emotions physically:- Whenever you feel strong emotions such as anger, sadness or any of such, electrical signals course through your brain and trigger physical sensations in your body. Again, it requires practice to be mindful of these sensations. The more you practice, more you will be able to notice the sensations and take action. Sensations could be breathing quickening, pounding heart, mouth going dry and other physical pains or symptoms. The practice of mindfulness meditation can help you greatly in this regard. Also, being ‘mindful’ throughout productive hours requires a lot of practice and commitment. Let’s take a practical demo of this- Close your eyes and imagine one of the most exciting moments in your life. As soon as you start feeling the emotions, notice those sensations physically. Same can be done with emotionally arousing moments.

2. Take mindful breaths:- We can take mindful breaths after noticing the physical sensations.

* As we breathe, let's close our eyes and focus on the sensations happening because of inhalation and exhalation of air through our nostrils, by being non-judgemental, unbiased, unprejudiced with our thoughts and staying in the ‘Now’ moment.

* Don’t control them, let them take their course and they vanish by themselves. This technique is also effective for individuals suffering from depression and anxiety disorders. Ruminosity(over-reactivity) can be attributed for these ailments.

This helps us to be mindful of the emotional triggers and tackle them skillfully.

3. Know who and what pushes your buttons:- In our everyday lives, we’ve seen persons who will irritate us and we become a prey to their behaviors.

Ex.- your colleague acts like a drama queen in meetings, or you feel irritated when there’s a lot of noise, heat and in other unfavorable conditions.

Knowing who & what pushes our buttons & how they do it is critical to develop the ability to take control of these situations, maintain our balance & calm down ourselves. It’s better to take a note of these by maintaining a journal, identify them and take action to calm ourselves in these scenarios.

This we need for greater emotional intelligence.

4. Watch yourself like a hawk:- Again it’s the first step of a ‘mindful’ behavior. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we should be aware of what we’re doing and what we’re up to. It’s important to stay in the ‘Now’ moment with an objective mindset, take a note of our emotions and behave accordingly as per the necessities of the situation.

As per the Stoic philosophy, World is objective and humans make subjective perceptions on each situation, person, event, and so on. It’s really important to be objective, non-judgemental in life.

5. Don’t be fooled by a bad mood.:- This highlights the importance of ‘law of averages’, it states that; “In life, all things average out” or “This too shall pass”. Every trauma, excitement or an issue will average out. When we’re in a bad mood, we view the world in a distorted view and make decisions. But, deep inside you know that things aren’t that bad and your brains won’t hear it. We need to take a note of this and remind ourselves, bad mood is hanging a cloud over everything we see. Our emotions are like a weather that changes every second, minute so on. When we’re stuck in such a situation it’s not a good time to make decisions or continuing our work(in a workplace). Our mind will be unable to concentrate because of the cloud created by the bad mood. So, get up from desk, go away refresh yourselves and observe your breath by being non-judgemental with the emotions and let them pass through. This avoids making errors in your work and ensures quality.

"Sometimes, what we feel takes over what we know."

We won't be able to think rationally in this situation. Our emotions need to pass through limbic system, to reach prefrontal cortex, it's a place where rational thinking and decision making takes place in the brain. Various techniques of meta-cognition have been discovered to trick our brains. It will be covered in the coming posts. Meta-cognition, in simple terms- 'awareness of awareness', or 'knowing about the tricks played by our brains on us to avoid discomfort and pain. It basically prevents us from being productive and makes us lazy.

In the coming posts, we’ll be learning about other techniques of self-awareness, self-management, meta-cognition, and so on.

Thank you all for the support !!!