The digital age is defined as: the time period starting in the 1970s with the introduction of the personal computer with subsequent technology introduced providing the ability to transfer information freely and quickly.
The emotional nature of the information that constantly comes at us, whether we are accessing it ourselves or it is fed to us directly, travels the spectrum of emotional wellness. News is seemingly focused on so many ‘bad’ things, individuals can easily hide behind their social activity amplifying cruelty, cyberbullying is rampant for our children. The need for emotional intelligence has never been greater, especially the foundation of EI –
Self-Perception
Self-Perception determines how in touch you are with your feelings, how good you feel about yourself (self-assuredness), and what you’re doing in life. Success means you are aware of your feelings, feel strong, and have confidence in pursuing your life goals.
Self-Perception consists of 3 skills:
- Self-regard
- Self-actualization
- Emotional Self-awareness
Self-Regard
- Respecting and accepting oneself, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and appreciating them
- General feelings of self-assuredness, self-confidence, self-adequacy, inner strength and security
- Able to openly and appropriately acknowledge mistakes
Self-Actualization
- Realizing your potential by becoming involved in pursuits that lead to a meaningful, purpose-driven, and full life
- Lifelong pursuit toward mastery and excellence of your talents and abilities; general improvement of yourself
- Self-satisfaction and pleasure toward all life goals; personal, work, community, education, financial
Emotional Self-Awareness
- Recognition of your feelings
- Able to differentiate between your emotions
- Know why you are experiencing an emotion and its impact on you and others around you
A developed and balanced emotional quotient, beginning with understanding myself, allows me to better express myself to the outside world. This leads to healthier interactions with other people, allowing for better decision making. When good decisions are made, my stress is managed more effectively which leads to understanding my emotions better…and so on the circle of the EQi-2.0 model.
Developing your emotional quotient in the Self-perception realm will arm you with the foundation to handle what is usually experienced in the information age – information!
Whether we seek it out or it comes to us without our efforts, whether it is healthy and good in its intention or cruel and damaging. A developed self-perception realm arms us with the emotional skill set to take care of ourselves so that we can then properly take care of others.
When one maintains a well-developed self-awareness, under all 3 skills mentioned here, one is not just able to handle the conflict that can come from negative information, one behaves in a way that avoids contributing to that. When I am confident, self-assured, respectful of myself, I am then able to behave that way to the outside world.
The implication for those kids who are starting with an ill-formed or damaged sense of self due to any number of factors makes the prospect of this statement all the more horrifying: “The digital age has the power to derail us quickly and easily.” Parents, guardians, clergy and educators face an uphill battle with many of today’s youth.
Thanks for sharing this piece of knowledge with me Teresa. I’ve been on my own journey with improving my self-perception and self-awareness and this piece reminds me that It’s not a journey with a start and finish, but a cycle to improve upon each step of the way.
Spot on, Teresa.
One of the fledgling projects I’m working on is finding leverage points in the virtual-ftf-synchronous-asynchronous learning environment that can actually foster better understanding, including about emotional competence. I’ve noticed two things in my work since the schitt hit the fan:
1. People are eager to connect and discover. I had a two-day session last week, and we had all kinds of technical problems, including power outages, dropped conference lines, the list goes on. Now I understand that people get credit for this session, yet they came back across the board focused on what we had been talking about and with new insights that had popped up for them in the techie-break.
2. There are advantages to these new platforms that we have not begun to develop. I think it starts with seeing the brave new world in terms of resources rather than sticking points.
Keep on fightin’ the good fight!
Mac