Three Reflection Exercises to Map Emotional Self-Awareness

Emotional self-awareness (ESA) is one of the four core skills of emotional intelligence. While the definition and concept of ESA are generally clear to students, cultivating deeper ESA can be more challenging. In response to students’ expressions of difficulty both identifying and naming emotions, I developed these three reflection exercises in the spirit of cultivating ESA. Students have responded well to the activities. They come away from the reflections with a concrete map both of what is within as well as more outside the norm of their emotional experiences.