Have you noticed lately how many people are stressed and want to change the way they are feeling? Trust me, I get it and, I too, am having a whole range of emotions. One thing I have worked out over the years is emotions change and in order to feel better, I need to know how I feel now. Which is why I do emotional check-ins many times during the day – so I can name my emotions to navigate them.
So today I wanted to share with you –
- What are emotional check-ins?
- Why are emotional check-ins important?
- How to do an emotional check-in.
So let’s get started…
What are Emotional Check-ins?
Emotional check-ins are as they sound – checking-in on where you are emotionally in that moment.
Why Are Emotional Check-ins Important?
Emotional check-ins are important for a number fo reasons from self-regulation to decision-making. However, for me the most important reason is when I discover how I am feeling, I can then choose to respond rather than react or be on auto-pilot and live my life on purpose and whole-heartedly. Basically – name it to navigate it 🙂 Remember though – this is not about perfection, this is about (un)learning and mistakes are inevitable.
How to do an Emotional Check-in…
There are many ways to do emotional check-ins. Depending on how practised you are at them, they can range in time from 30 seconds to an hour or more for journaling on an emotion and/or feeling. One of the ways I started doing emotional check-ins was an abbreviated version of the STOP technique. The technique is as follows –
- S – stop,
- T – take a breath and bring my awareness to the in-breath and the out-breath
- O – open to my emotions with a sense of curiosity by simply asking –
- What am I feeling?
- How do I know?
- P – proceed and reconnect with my surroundings and the activity I was doing before I stopped in the moment. Once I know what I am feeling and I label it, I can then consciously choose what my next step is to navigate my emotions and/or feelings. Also – remember emotions and/or feelings are continually changing, so that is why it might be useful to put this in your toolkit!
Over to You…
I hope this post has given you some insight in to emotional check-ins and why they are important (i.e. name them to navigate them). Please remember this is a practise and something that took me a considerable amount of time and I am still (un)learning as I needed to continue develop my emotional literacy 🙂 So make sure you take your self-compassion with you!
If you are ready to reclaim your courage and take the next step towards freedom and opening your heart, why not join our Toolkit?
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