self-Awareness and emotion
the first lesson in self-Awareness is to become aware of your emotions.
We cannot choose our emotions. They are a part of us whether we acknowledge it or not.
Whether we like it or not, all human behaviour is built on feeling .
When i say all human behaviour is built on feeling, I mean that every choice we make is based on feeling we want to experience or want to avoid experiencing. You may or may not be aware of the feeling but the fact is that each decision/choice is driven by a feeling underneath.
you feeling influence (even if you are not aware) the kind of clothes you choose to wear,the kind of people you like to be with, the way you respond to different situations , the kind of things you like to do , the decisions you take, etc. then it becomes essential that you learn how to be aware of your emotions.
expressing one's feeling is a neglected part of our life though the fact remains that from the moment we are born we have feeling (refer to chart on page 10 ). by the time the child turns five he/she can feel a wide range of emotions, but the child is not encouraged and sometimes not even allowed to express his/her feelings. (Think for a while, when you were a child, who encouraged you to express your negative feelings?) what happened when you expressed those feeling? Today as an adult do you talk about your feeling of sadness, loneliness, anger, frustration, anxiety, etc. comfortably and easily?