12 keys to achieving emotional maturity

Emotional maturity involves a recognition and understanding of emotions. This allows us to know ourselves in a sincere and deep way that leads us to organize and fulfill our objectives and goals.

While this concept has been accompanying us over the years, today it begins to take on greater importance.

Not only as a tool of self-knowledge, but also as a tool to carry out our desires and obtain better results.

In the following article, we will delve into this topic where you can acquire valuable information to achieve this emotional state of well-being.

What is emotional maturity?

Emotional maturity is not related to people’s biological age, but to their experiences as individuals and their ability to manifest and integrate their emotions.

In this sense, an emotionally mature person is someone who shows commitment to life, who helps others and is not afraid to ask for help, and who takes responsibility for their actions. In simple words, he takes charge of his actions.

Thanks to this he can understand and understand the emotions of others, moving away from conflicts and being able to work together with others.

Characteristics of emotional maturity

According to various studies, we all have emotional maturity to a greater or lesser extent. In this sense, we all have a certain degree of emotional maturity, since this is based on the way in which we react to different situations and to others.

On the other hand, below we invite you to read the following characteristics so that you can recognize to what extent they are part of your daily life.

Requires the development of emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence, according to Trujillo and Rivas , is the “ability to identify and discriminate one’s own emotions and those of others, to manage and regulate those emotions and to use them adaptively”.

Therefore, in order to develop emotional intelligence we must recognize our own feelings and those of others. In this way we will be able to develop our maximum skills and manage our relationships in a mature and healthy way.

In this sense, a good exercise to put into practice and develop emotional intelligence is to be able to analyze how we feel at a moment, or in a certain situation, and give it a score according to the intensity that we feel corresponds to that emotion. For example, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 would be very angry and 1 would be almost not at all.

Involves recognizing and expressing emotions

Once we are aware of our emotions, we must learn to express them at the right time and in the right way.

In order to express ourselves correctly, we must also understand the environment in which we find ourselves, being sincere and coherent with what, how and where we manifest ourselves.

It implies the full development of identity and self-knowledge

Developing our identity and deepening our self-knowledge may seem complex at first glance, and since we are sometimes afraid of reaching our maximum competence or “passing the level” we stay away from any exercise to improve.

Have you ever wondered what you do and why you do it? Well, that is a first and simple step to begin to recognize what we are, removing all bias.

Depends on upbringing, environment and genetics

According to Matsumoto, the culture to which an individual belongs determines their values and norms.

This means that the social norms of each culture also determine the meaning of emotions and what kind of emotions can be displayed openly. As a result, behavior and emotional perception can vary greatly between cultures.

It is associated with self-esteem

Self-esteem plays a key role in understanding our emotions. We do not become attached to it, but we understand them, accept them and let them go from detachment and without putting up any resistance.

People with a high degree of emotional intelligence are positive. They accept that they have the power to progress and develop and understand that there are situations in life that do not depend on one.

In these situations there are two ways: accept it and move on or regret it. Regret has less and less place when we accept that we are creators of our own reality.

It involves the development of resilience

Resilience is the ability to anticipate difficulties and traumatic situations, that is, the ability to overcome bad experiences.

Therefore, working and developing personal resilience makes us responsible for our emotions, allows us to develop positive behaviors and not succumb to stress and anxiety.

In fact, according toto a report from the University of Malaga , a resilient person can benefit from the use of adaptive skills that will allow them to face the difficulties and obstacles of daily life.

It requires effort and will

Like any personal path, developing our emotional intelligence requires effort, but above all, will. We must be aware that intelligence or emotional maturity is never fully achieved.

On the other hand, it is normal to question all that we have advanced, but it is worth all the way we have traveled and the progress we have reached.

Don’t we want to live and feel better? Now that we have the answer, it’s time to start getting down to business.

Keys to achieving emotional maturity

Now that you understand what it’s all about, we’ll take a closer look at some actionable tips you can implement right away to reach emotional maturity.

To do this, it is important to understand that achieving emotional maturity requires understanding and carrying out the following steps.

1. Accept and acknowledge mistakes

First of all, we must learn and accept our mistakes before ourselves and then before others. Repeating words or phrases like “I’m sorry” without really understanding that emotion makes us emotionally immature.

2. Accept and respect limits

What are your limits? Are you aware of them? Sometimes these types of questions can be very effective to work on our personal development.

Recognizing our own limits: what is good for us, what is bad for us, what we expect from ourselves and what we want from others, is the first step to be able to know what the external limits are and understand that we cannot act on a whim.

3. Focus attention fully

Focusing attention on emotions, focusing on the present moment and on what we are doing makes us capable of focusing on what we feel.

Being scattered, we not only find it difficult to concentrate on our activities, but it also becomes difficult for us to understand each other.

If we feel scattered, it is necessary to take a few minutes, connect with our breath and the present moment, and continue with what we were doing.

4. Communicate assertively

Being consistent with our emotions is also knowing how to express and communicate them accurately.

Putting ambiguity aside not only makes us more sincere people, but also makes our environment begin to acquire and recognize a more real and sincere way of expressing itself, where exchange is more conducive.

5. Know yourself

To know ourselves, we must first accept ourselves and inquire into our deepest processes and emotions. A good exercise is to write and ask yourself the necessary questions.

What do I want? Why do I want it? Did someone tell me or did I just choose it?

All these questions give rise to many more, since the path of self- knowledge is a path that we develop throughout our lives.

6. Learn to listen

Learning to listen not only implies understanding the words and giving space to the other, but also understanding what he wants to tell us and how he tells us.

By listening to others, we not only learn from others, but we also acquire different points of view and information that perhaps if it only depended on us we would never have focused on.

7. Be empathic with others

In order to be empathetic with others we must first identify and understand our emotions.

Being empathetic is not justifying others, but understanding that everyone has their personal path and motivations and that they are as valid as ours. Learn not to judge and at the same time, not to judge ourselves.

8. Regulate emotions

Overflowing emotionslead us to act in a fit and excessive way. Before acting we must be able to think both emotionally and rationally.

It is important that when we feel that emotions overwhelm us, we focus on calming the stress in some way, be it with a few breaths , exercising or any other method that helps us calm them down.

9. Understand the needs of others

The needs of others are just as valid as our own, even when we disagree.

Giving others space to speak, being attentive and open to dialogue will allow people to express themselves clearly and safely and, in this way, we will be able to avoid unnecessary conflicts or misunderstandings.

10. Learn to detach

Most of us have acquired and appropriated behaviors or desires that were not our own. Many people want something that their parents always wanted and never stopped to analyze why and what they wanted it for.

Detachment implies accepting that many parts of our behavior and personality are attitudes that we learned or imitated from our environment. The time has come to let go of everything that is not part of us in order to reach our true self.

11. Avoid complaints

Complaining involves focusing on the negative. When something upsets us, instead of focusing on the complaint, we must focus our energy on what we need to feel better.

This means that we can change our reality or how we could make it more enjoyable for us.

12. Live in the present

In recent years, humanity has lived completely accelerated. This made most adults unable to recognize their emotions and, at a slight degree of intensity, they overflow.

That being said, the only way to truly live is to think about the present, the past is gone and the future is out of reach. Being aware that the only thing real and true is our present is what allows us to make wiser decisions and live in a more enjoyable reality.

Importance of emotional maturity

Emotional maturity is the tool that allows us not only to understand who we are and what our desires and capabilities are, but also makes our way of relating to the world more real.

Being emotionally mature gives us the ability to create and understand that each of us has the potential to achieve what we propose and the only way to project is to be aware of our abilities and difficulties, as well as to be able to be realistic and understand the environment.

According to Del Barrio, when emotions are not expressed, are not controlled, or do not adapt to the surrounding situation, dysfunctions appear. The emotional imbalance that occurs when there is a lack of adaptation of one’s own reactions or when there are misinterpretations of the emotions of others.

People with little emotional maturity usually lead a comfortable life, but do not progress because they are not really aware of their potential and overflow with emotions.

That is why we must aim for emotional maturity to begin to be taught in our first years of life, to train responsible adults who can make use of their capacities in their widest spectrum.