Emotional Maturity – Are you there yet?
Emotional maturity is rising above petty emotions such as anger, resentment and frustration and existing from a place of compassionate understanding and self control. An emotionally mature person is able to feel what others feel, and therefore knows how to respond to them and create an emotional connection. This level of maturity is what creates the types of relationships and connections we all dream of having as they offer us great emotional support, understanding and comfort.
Emotional maturity is about having the instincts, wisdom, control and maturity to get out of emotional difficulties and misunderstandings. It is about knowing how to restore emotional harmony between family members, friends and work colleagues. It’s being able to be empathetic and give a smile, showing kindness and warmth, being emotionally generous and trusting in and using your intuition as well as your emotional wisdom.
My top 10 keys to becoming emotionally mature are:
1.Authenticity which means always being true to how you feel and never hiding nor suppressing emotions. It means becoming aware of the flux and flow of emotions but not overly identifying with them. It’s perceiving emotions as clouds in the sky which come and go and acknowledging your true authentic self to be the ever shining sun. It’s not that the emotionally mature person is without emotions, more that they are authentic with them.
2. Projection, which is about aiming your emotions toward another person in a negative way. It’s the classic ‘kick the dog’ theory where we need to learn to contain, control and have temperance rather than project them on to others.
3. Blame – learning that even though there is always two sides and that another person may well be responsible for an action, that they are never responsible for our actions and feelings. Our emotions are our choice and responsilbity.
4.Self obsession – this is the opposite to blame as this is the times where we take too much personal responsiblity about situations and obsess about what we did wrong and what we could have done differently or better. We certainly need to self reflect, realise and learn life lessons and this is often via misery and failure but we must never get to the point of self obsession.
5. Expression – emotion means outward moving and so to get to emotional wisdom, mastery and maturity we need to learn how to express them with the clarity, meaning and purpose for which they are designed for. Expression comes in many forms for example; a singer can get to emotional maturity in life through mastering the level of control and expression through their music.
6.Control – while many of us would associate this word with control ‘freak’ its more about having a level of self control and sovereignty. Another word for mastery is control. Many believe that authenticity is to express any emotion or feeling that arises, but the emotionally mature person would see this as a lack of emotional control. Many people perceive intuition and any fleeting emotion to be a sign to change, quit or to move direction when the wise may see this also as a lack of control.
7. Know the difference between emotion and feeling – most people do not know this but emotions are driven from the mind which is why some say that emotions are not real, they are generated from thought so if you change your thoughts and mind-set, you will change your emotional state. Feelings are what I call non descriptive emotions, they are more general and do not need to be described, labelled and articulated through the mind, in fact when they do, they convert to emotions. Feeling is where the action is! Intuition is realised and then channelled through feelings and so is dynamic flow, synchronicity and the sense of knowing and instinct. Emotion is mind and feeling is the soul expressing through the body vehicle.
8. Resistance breeds persistence – the more you try to get rid of emotions the more they stick to you. Awareness is the key with a firm and solid understanding and realisation that you are not the emotions, you are the sun behind the emotional clouds and they will pass as clouds do. Don’t get sucked into focusing on the vortex and pull of emotion – positive or negative – because they are a trap with the wise knowing that both sides balance the see saw. An emotionally mature person does not get too excited about emotional highs nor get too dejected with the lows. There is no difference to those with emotional wisdom.
9.The past, present and future – you need to watch out for triggers that set off an emotional response because your mind has had thoughts about certain things from the past or fantasies or goals about the future. Both are not real and neither is here right now. Emotional maturity is the ability to keep your mind focused on a task at hand – that is what is real and right in front of you. Emotions are the cause of many delusions and fantasies as they cloud and colour a situation and prevent you from seeing the truth as it is.
10. Through the doorway of equanimity – equanimity is an elevated state of being which means to be of balanced mind where ‘praise and blame are both the same, neither high nor low. Equanimity ‘feels’ like nothing – no thing attached to the mind. This is the doorway to absolute bliss and contentment but most people stop when they are so close to the door because they get attached and addicted to the highs and lows of emotion. In meditation, it always feels that the fist part of getting through the chatterbox mind and restless body is going to be the hardest when in fact after some months of practice, boredom, equanimity and the door of.
Everything comes from ‘nothing’ and to ‘be’ nothing is to be able to experience everything. We are not the emotions, we experience them and we feel them, we eventually tire of them because we discover that feeling is where the ocean and depth of our soul is.
Hope this helps
Peter O’Neill
iam@peteroneill.com.au
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