When we are not aware of our feelings and the cause of them, leading a happy, productive life is difficult if not impossible. Sure, there may be outward signs of success, such as money, prestige, or career success. But to be truly happy, we must be able to determine what makes us feel good. At the same time, we must be able to to determine when something makes us feel bad. Then we must use this knowledge to inform our actions. This sounds deceptively simple, but it is surprising how few people are actually able to determine exactly what they are feeling when they feel it. Being fully aware of our feelings requires not just acknowledging them, but identifying them and, eventually accepting the message that they are trying to tell us.
Unfortunately, our society is not geared around feelings our emotions, but instead to tends to result in most of is attempting to ignore them. Some researchers in the field argue that people use various methods such as eating, drinking, smoking, taking medications, exercising obessively, or working excessively as ways to ignore their emotions. We stay in jobs we hate, relationship that are unfulfilling, or get trapped in repeating negative behaviours because we are ignoring the emotions that these things elicit. We get very good at rationalizing why we continue to repeat our behaviours or stay in relationships where we don't feel fully engaged.
When you develop your level of emotional self-awareness, you are able to specify how you are feeling at and given moment. You can identify where the feeling is coming from, as well as how the body is expressing that feeling. For example, you might realize you are angry, and that your muscles in your body are tense. Or you might recognize that you are anxious and realize that your palms are sweating as a result. Yet all the time, under the surface, something isn't right. Our body is trying to tell us that we are happy, stressed, unfulfilled, lonely, scared, or feeling and other emotion. It is telling us that we need to do something different.