Emotional Wisdom — Understanding Where Your Emotions Take You

Each of us has a constant stream of emotions, but how many of us are aware of that stream and fully understand where our emotions come from and how they affect our lives?

It’s easier for more extreme emotions. We might get excited and happy before we’re about to travel. This kind of emotion bubbles up inside us, and our awareness of it is unavoidable. The same can be said for extremely negative emotions, for example when we suffer the loss of a loved one. In these times, we would do anything to escape the pain we are feeling. It overwhelms us, and we aren’t able to think about anything else. Our full awareness is caught up in our painful emotional stream. But what about times when we don’t feel overwhelming emotions? What about our day-to-day emotional context and how it affects our outlook and actions? It is possible to be fully aware of these emotions too. It’s not only possible; it’s a necessary step in living our lives to the fullest. Our emotional context is a driver for every decision we make, every word we speak, and every action we take. If we can become fully aware of this layer of our psyche, we can live our lives more intentionally and purposefully, and if we can take the next step and develop insights into our emotional stream—if we can see how our emotions are likely to evolve—we can live with a keen sense of identity and direction.

Moving from emotional awareness to emotional wisdom

The first step in emotional awareness is to develop a habit of scanning our emotions. It’s possible to do this automatically, but until that happens, we have to be intentional. This means regularly asking ourselves how we feel. This question shouldn’t be open-ended because in assessing our overall emotional states, we may not recognize the nuances. It’s necessary to ask ourselves about our current states and our specific emotions. This can be done with tools such as Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, which allows you to assess your emotional state intuitively based on eight “basic emotions” and their connections with other emotions. If your approach is more methodical, you can assess your emotions individually. The Atlas of Emotions allows us to work through a detailed list of emotions in five major categories. With tools like these, we can develop an ongoing awareness of our emotional states, how and why they evolve, and what factors in our lives can influence them.

From this point of emotional awareness, we can begin to develop emotional wisdom. As with anything else, knowledge and wisdom do not always go hand in hand. Technology is a prime example of this. Technological advances come in leaps and bounds, and with them, we see many advances that improve our health and our lives in many ways. But we also see technology used to create better and more accurate weapons that can kill everyone on the planet many times over. We didn’t develop the wisdom to live in peace before we had developed the knowledge necessary to wage all-out war. With emotions, we can, for example, know that we are inexorably drawn to someone, but we don’t have the wisdom to recognize the true nature of these feelings and how they impact our lives and the lives of the people we’re drawn to. It might be true love, it might be an obsession based on our psychological context (e.g., needing validation of our self-worth), or it might just be overwhelming lust. Emotional wisdom is the only way we can understand the true nature, context, and consequences of our emotions and develop the ability to act intelligently based on that understanding.

Interacting with people from a position of awareness

When we interact with people, we’re working with not only our own emotions but also the emotions of the people with whom we interact. To make the most of our interactions and have more meaningful relationships, we can learn about people’s emotional landscapes. The idea of emotional intelligence, developed by Davitz and Beldoch in 1976 and popularized in 1995 in a book by Daniel Goleman, refers to an awareness of our emotional context, the ability to manage our emotions, and empathy (along with motivation and social skills). Part of understanding ourselves is an awareness of how we react to others’ emotional makeup. This requires a strong dose of empathy and an openness to how others’ emotions drive their words, actions, and opinions. If we can understand the source of these elements, we can engage with people more meaningfully.

Developing emotional wisdom

So where do we start? Although emotional wisdom may sound complicated, if we can master the essential elements and turn them into habits, we can make them a regular part of our lives. To do so, we must incorporate the following practices into our lives:

1. Emotional awareness. An awareness of our moment-to-moment emotional states should be developed through regular checks using the tools mentioned above or similar approaches.
2. Awareness of context (the background). Awareness of our and others’ emotions should not be developed in a vacuum. Situational awareness related to what may be driving these emotions is necessary. Interactions entail various conditions, issues, or struggles, and emotional wisdom requires us to consider these factors.
3. Awareness of dynamic (how our emotions interact with others’ emotions). Our emotional states don’t always easily mesh with those of others. If we’re introspective or melancholy and the person we’re with is bubbly and high-spirited, our interaction is affected. The other person may bring us out of our shell, or the other person’s mood may irritate us. Regardless of the outcome, we need to assess and be aware of this dynamic.
4. Empathy. A key ingredient in emotional wisdom is empathy or the ability to recognize and connect to the emotions of others. This requires patience, observation, and the ability to listen with an open mind. Here are further thoughts about empathy.
5. Developing intentional practices. The ability to develop each of these practices as habits requires a mindfulness approach that is beneficial to us in many ways. Mindfulness is a good way to organize these elements into a cohesive skill set that allows us to naturally incorporate emotional wisdom into our lives.

The emotional dynamic is the cornerstone of every interaction we have. Learning to recognize and incorporate this dynamic into our interactions will help us make them meaningful, genuine, and constructive.

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Artwork by Agsandrew