Emotional Intelligence Exercise: Increase Your Self-Awareness

Purpose

Knowing how we feel is part of our self-awareness. The more we are aware of our feelings, the better we can control our behaviours and understand those of others. This exercise helps delegates to become more aware of their emotions and learn to describe them. It also encourages them to think of ways to get to a target emotion, such as happiness.

Objective

Indicate how you feel now and find out as many emotions as you can.

What You Need

• Blank 3” by 5” cards.

Setup

PART 1:

• Run this exercise after a break as you are about to start a session.
• When the delegates come in, ask them “How do you feel?”. Invariably, most people would say they are fine.
• Once everyone is sited, explain that you just asked everyone if they were fine. Ask, “Why do we almost always say we are fine, even though when we are not?”
• Expand the conversation based on the responses you get. Use the following as example questions:
• “Do you find it easy to talk about your feelings?”
• “What makes it hard to talk about your feelings?”
• “Can you consciously shift your feelings from one to another?”

PART 2:

• Explain that it is beneficial to know the range of feeling a person can experience so you are aware of how else you can feel and how others might be feeling at any given moment. You can then take steps to change the way you feel.
• Place the blank cards as a stack for everyone to access.
• Ask all delegates to work together to identify as many emotions as they can and write one emotion on each card.
• Ask delegates to spread these cards on a table so everyone can see them. This helps them to avoid making duplicates.
• Encourage them to move around the table and get inspired by emotions already written down to find more emotions.
• Allocate about 10 minutes for this part.

PART 3:

• Collect the cards and place them upside down on the table, either as a stack or spread them out.
• Ask each delegate to pick two cards at random.
• One by one, ask delegate to reveal their cards and explain what it takes to get from one state to another. If they are negative emotions, what does it take to get to a positive state?
• After the explanation, encourage others to join and provide their answers as well.
• Repeat until everyone has participated.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 0 minutes

Activity: 10 min PART 1 + 10 min PART 2 + 15 min PART 3 = 35 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

Do you think you came up with many emotions? Was it easy? Are you surprised there are so many emotions? Was it easy to switch from one emotion to another?

List of Emotions

Here are some examples of emotions for your reference:

aggressive

angry

anticipation

awe

bad

boiling

bold

brave

calm

careful

chicken

clumsy

cold

comfortable

contempt

content

cowardly

crazy

curious

dejected

depressed

disgust

disappointment

down

dread

embarrassed

energy

enthusiastic

excited

fine

flattered

free

frightened

fury

glad

good

great

hateful

happy

helpful

helpless

hot

hurt

hysterical

important

impressed

indifferent

invisible

itchy

joy

joyful

kind

lazy

like an idiot

love

mad

mean

miserable

nauseated

needed

nice

nuts

overjoyed

optimistic

poor

proud

put-down

puzzled

rage

remorse

rich

sad

safe

scared

shocked

shy

sick

silly

sleepy

sly

smart

sorry

strong

stupid

surprised

submission

terrible

thankful

thin

tired

trust

unhappy

unimportant

unprotected

upset

warm

weak

wealthy

weird

well