Emotional Sobriety

We've talked a little about emotional sobriety, and I found something that I thought was interesting to share.

"Emotional intelligence consists of four core abilities:

Self-awareness – The ability to recognize your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior, know your strengths and weaknesses, and have self-confidence.

Self-management – The ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviors, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances.

Social awareness – The ability to understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization.

Relationship management – The ability to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict."

So I've got social awareness down, and I'm pretty sure I'm good in the relationship management part, but the italicized stuff is tough for me, and I'm sure for a lot of you.

Oh, to know my strengths and weaknesses. To finish my fourth step. Yeah, I know, I'm still behind in that manner. I've been working on thinking about doing it. I'm still waiting to look at it and think, "Oh yeah, that's why I do that." And a lot of reasons why I "do that" is the other thing, self-management. I'm impulsive. I know it. I say what's on my mind, sometimes to the determent of the conversation. I pick up and move in a week because I think it's the right thing to do (and it was. I'm just saying, I'm often right.)

Perhaps some of this will end up on my fourth step, but I don't know how you do things about emotional sobriety. I need to recognize these character defects and be able to, well, to at least recognize them. I suppose once I know what they are I'll be better able to handle them.