- Self awareness is the first dimension of emotional intelligence.
- Want to discover who you are and what you are about? Need to find your calling and do great work?
- Read how I discovered the purpose of my life and put it to work, and learn how you can do the same.
By Francois Basili, President, HumaNext LLC
We usually smile in a mix of recognition and dismissiveness when we hear the famous question: What is the meaning of life? It's a question many philosophers have struggled with for centuries. Most religions and spiritual movements have attempted to provide answers. Yet few people have settled for a definite, totally satisfying answer to that question.
But the reason for not finding a satisfying answer is that we might have been asking the wrong question. The question of "what is the meaning of life?" is too abstract. The more relevant question I should be asking is "What is the meaning of my life?" and because the word "meaning" is also a bit abstract and too philosophical, the more practical question to ask is "What is the purpose of my life?"
My further readings and research in this area, together with more work on personal profiling, assessment, and understanding have lead me closer and closer to the answer. Finally, my work in the area of emotional intelligence while developing our training program, "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" has provided me with the opportunity of looking deeper into "Self Awareness" as one of the key dimensions of emotional intelligence.
In the "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" training workshop, I offer two practical activities or processes for self awareness and discovery. The first is an activity called "The Life Picture Exercise" where you draw a panoramic picture of your life, with all of its milestone events, influential persons, and major accomplishments. Then you do some analysis and understanding of your life picture and discuss them with others.
Looking at my life's picture helped me discover that I am interested in all learning. I want to understand everything as a way of understanding how life works. And once I understood something, I wanted to explain it to others by writing about it, or training people in the topic, or starting a training business that offers a large number of training programs and learning tools, as well as workshops I personally develop and deliver.
You can discover and follow your life's purpose and learn how to coach others to discover theirs as part of learning "Applying Emotional Intelligence at Work" at HumaNext Annual Event: http://www.humanext.com/HumaNext-Events.html