Understanding You!

Understanding yourself is a step in the right direction when developing emotional Intelligence. When you understand how you develop and grow you will be better off. I best thing you can do for yourself, is get to really know who you are.

According to Daniel Hart and William Damon, understanding yourself happens through the stages of life. They go on to say that there are four developmental levels and what the importance of each are.

1.Infancy and early childhood: At this stage, people cannot really answer the question, Why is it important? Also they cannot describe themselves any further than their physical appearances.
2. Middle and late childhood: This stage is more organized. They can start to figure out how to answer the why is it important question. They are starting to characterize themselves a little better.
3. Early adolescence: Continues to combine more characteristics of themselves. They begin to see how well they interact with others. When they describe themselves it is more about their social personality now.
4. Late adolescence: In the last stage, all of their qualities are shaped into their moral belief system. The why is it important question now has a strong personal connection to the person. The person has developed a better understanding of themselves.
(Hart & Damon, 1985)

Developing how to understand yourself happens throughout the course of your life. You don’t just wake up one day and have it all figured out. It start developing when you are an infant and continues to grow. You need to be aware that you are always developing and will continue to learn about yourself. With keeping this in mind, you will be able to adapt to changes that you go through in life.

You can apply this when you are in the workplace. You will always have stresses, challenges, unexpected things come up. When you understand yourself, you know how you are going to react to things that do come up. You will be able to control your emotions and push through. This will defiantly going to help you when you are at work.

So get to know yourself. Understand that you are always developing and changing. Keep up with the changes. Do this and you are on the right track to understanding yourself better and developing emotional intelligence.

This will be extremely important when you are in the workplace because you will be able to control and understand your own emotions and feelings.

Citation:
Hart, D., & Damon, W. (1985). Contrast between understanding self and understanding others. In The development of the self. Orlando: Academic Press.