Understanding Self-Awareness and Impulses

In last month’s column, we explored some of the misconceptions surrounding self-awareness- an essential skill for today’s leaders, especially in schools and districts. Another common misconception about self-awareness is that to be self-aware means that we typically think about self-awareness in the long term. In other words, we believe that to be self-aware means to know how our day-to-day actions add up to our permanent likes and dislikes, our personalities, our strengths and weaknesses, and our strongest values and beliefs, some of which may never change.

Self-Awareness in the Moment

Self-awareness, however, can also be about the short-term, the more immediate side of our emotions or our impulses.  CASEL discusses impulse control as a skill under self-management or what you can do to minimize or control the urge you have to act. We believe, however, that being more self-aware of impulses in the moment is a recognition of how these skills need to interact to make us better leaders and better humans. In essence, it is almost impossible to control an impulse if you are not first aware that it exists. 

Take this situation for example. Over the course of a morning, a busy principal finally gets five minutes to decompress after dealing with many different situations, both easy and hard,  and people, both easy and hard.  A teacher walks in and asks a simple question to which the principal snaps at her, telling her to just give him five minutes. In this case, the lack of self-awareness reduces self-management of the impulse. 

Recognizing What is Emerging

Scenarios like this repeatedly play out in the exceedingly busy world of school and district leaders, but without our awareness, these instances can begin to label leaders as demanding or hard to work with. Our belief is that one important form of self-awareness means recognizing what is emerging in the moment and choosing whether to act on it. 

This form of self-awareness acts as the critical gateway to all other SEL competencies for leaders. You can’t self-manage, be more socially aware, build better relationships, or make more responsible decisions without better self-awareness in the moment. Too often leaders in their harried and fragmented days often forget that awareness in the moment can prevent many larger issues down the road.

Impulses

What exactly is an impulse, and how do they emerge? An impulse can be defined as a strong and unreflective urge to act or a non-deliberate action, in essence suggesting we have no control over them. An impulse expresses an urgency to act. I feel angry, I snap; I feel hungry, I eat. 

The impulse also acts as a desire for something, especially an emotional calming- if I do action X it will quiet emotion Y causing me less discomfort. The impulse doesn’t consider the bigger picture but demands emotional calming, as in our example. If the principal shows irritation at being bothered, he may be able to get five minutes to calm his nerves, but not considering the impact on the teacher. 

Impulsive behavior is typically seen as negative, but we have impulses all the time. Our brain appraises a situation, predicts and shoots forward a thought or emotion often without our knowing it. Our mind tells us to do that, say that, eat that, go there, and we often follow blindly to soothe our emotions. We feel the slightest bit of boredom, and our brain tells us we need a quick shot of interest, so we check our smartphone without even thinking about it. Rapidly and without conscious thought, we stifle the emotion over time, creating a habit.   

Some impulses are helpful, and some are not; it depends on the content and context. An impulse that leads to saying the wrong thing to a large group is much different than saying something helpful off the top of your head to a single person. Over time, however, without realizing it, these impulses become habits that begin to define how people perceive our leadership. So how can leaders become a steady, emotional resource for their teachers, not prone to impulses, rather than a demand on their emotional state?

Sharpening our Self-Awareness

Most of us who have led districts and schools recognize the insight we have at the end of a long day of meetings, calls, and situations. We often realize we have lost touch with ourselves, our inner feelings sometime early in the day, and only when walking to our cars to drive home, do we realize how stressed or tired we really are. Over the years, we have become masterful at stuffing our feelings and awareness away and out of touch. To improve our self-awareness in the moment, we need to sharpen the precision of our awareness and then understand and tame our impulses.

• First, train yourself to slow down throughout the day. Set a timer on your phone or watch every hour for 3-5 minutes to check on your self-awareness. Imagine a camera strapped to your forehead, constantly looking outward. For this three to five-minute period, visualize turning the camera inward to see what is happening with your thinking, your breathing, and your type and level of emotion.
• Second, begin to associate your impulses with signs in your body. Does your impulse to speak start as a feeling in the back of your throat? Does your impulse to react with anger start with a tightening of your jaw? Whatever the feeling you have, begin to associate it with what it is asking you to do and what emotion needs calming at the time.  Is your impulse to check your phone boredom or a reluctance to do something? Is your impulse to avoid somebody fear or reluctance to have a hard conversation?
• Third, once you can begin to become more aware of your impulse in a moment, you can begin to use a simple recipe that combines self-awareness and self-management to tame these impulses:

1. Self-awareness-Feel the impulse and the emotion
2. Self-awareness-Determine the strength of the impulse and if it deserves any attention
3. Self-management-Disengage from the impulse by telling yourself to slow down
4. Self-management- Evaluate the need to act and consider the action in relation to your values, the other person, or the long-term relationship and the upside or downside of acting
5. Self-management- Choose to act or not

These small actions, if intentionally done and practiced during the ups and downs of the day, can help all leaders become more self-aware in the moment and begin to tame those impulses that we believe we have no control over. The increasing demands on leaders today don’t often allow leaders time and space to worry about self-awareness. But if self-awareness in the moment is the gateway to all other SEL skills a leader needs today, they can become a more supportive resource to others around them as they become more practiced at acting rather than reacting. Leaders just need to practice curbing these impulses and raising them to a different level of awareness.  

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