My definition of Emotional Fitness is practicing your emotional experiences intelligently to continue a healthy balance in your personal and work relationships. Living your life as an emotionally intelligent person allows you feel a higher satisfaction in life.
Emotion has been the subject of study for centuries. However, a growing number of contemporary professionals only began to acknowledge the importance and relevance of emotions to life satisfaction during the 1980s and 1990s. It was with the publication of Daniel Goleman’s (1995) bestseller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ that the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ became widely popularized and came to the forefront of mental health issues. Since then, articles and books on the concept of Emotional Intelligence began to appear with increasing frequency across a wide range of academic and popular literature.
Emotions are one of our avenues to self knowledge. Only a few aspects of self-knowledge could matter more than knowing one’s own range of emotional experiences and response. There have been many attempts to define Emotional intelligence. To me, self awareness is the key to Emotional Intelligence, the ability to monitor one’s own feelings and emotions, to recognize their effects on the body and mind, and to discriminate among them so as to mindfully use the information in deciding what course of action will promote connection, understanding, mutual respect, care, love and problem-solving.
Being fully self aware requires emotional competency. The first aspect of emotional competency is the understanding that all emotions are normal and useful aspects of being human. The second is the ability to not only recognize one’s emotion but to express the related feelings appropriately to the self and others. This makes one feel at ease around others, and it helps one’s ability to effectively lead his or her life.
Daniel Goleman, in his book Emotional Intelligence, sums up an old Japanese tale to demonstrate the concept of self awareness. The tale goes: a belligerent Samurai “once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. But the monk replied, with scorn, “you are nothing but a lout--I can’t waste my time with the likes of you!”
With his very honor attacked, the Samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled “I could kill you for your impertinence.” “That,” the monk calmly replied, “is hell.” Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”
This sudden awakening of the Samurai to his own rage shows the crucial difference between being caught up in an emotion and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates’aphorism “know thyself” also speaks to an awareness of one’s own emotions as they occur. In our own Persian literature, the concepts,self awareness and self knowledge (“khod agahee” and “khod shenasee”) have been familiar concepts in teaching self-development.
Dr. Khazrai is a licensed marriage & family therapist with 25 years of experience practicing in Newport Beach.
