In life, you’ll occasionally experience situations that will profoundly test your emotional forte and maturity. How you react to such situations determines whether you measure up in terms of emotional maturity. You can also just other people’s psychological strength and maturity by how they carry themselves when they are faced with emotionally challenging situations. This article discusses the 11 main signs of emotional maturity.
11 Signs of Emotional Maturity
First of all, you need to understand that you won’t become emotionally mature overnight. It’s a continuous process that involves constant effort and dedication. To become emotionally mature, you have to familiarize yourself with various nuances of human interactions and learn how to use them for psychological support when you are dealing with stressful situations. You also need to be aware of the common signs of emotional maturity so that you can know when you exercise it and when you don’t.
1. Accepting Yourself Fully
We all have our weaknesses and imperfections. So, you don’t have to hate yourself because of your imperfections. Many people who have low self-esteem are suffering from self-hate. This results in emotional instability, which leaves you emotionally susceptible to simple aggravations.
If you don’t love and accept yourself the way you are, you will always be irritated by people and situations that shouldn’t even provoke you. Therefore, emotional maturity means accepting yourself fully with all your imperfections and understanding that everyone has their weaknesses and faults. Also, realize that having flaws doesn’t make you a bad person.
So, don’t go through life wishing you were different. Just change what you can and accept to live with what you can’t. Learn to stay authentic and accept the fact that you are responsible for your actions. You also need to realize that you can’t control what other people feel or think about you.
So, live your life without offending others and find a way to let go of anger and bad experiences in your life. The first step in becoming emotionally mature is being able to accept yourself with all your flaws and weaknesses.
2. Feeling Comfortable When You Are Alone
By nature, humans are social beings. Nobody wants to go through life alone. However, sometimes the circumstances that have led you to be alone are beyond your control. Therefore, the only option you have is to find comfort in your situation.
As difficult as this may be, you have to find the inner strength to be alone without feeling lonely. If you can comfortably be alone for a significant period without feeling like you are missing someone or something, then you are one step closer to achieving total emotional maturity.
Accept the fact that sometimes it’s okay to be alone and realize that being on your own offers you an opportunity to rejuvenate, reflect, and pay attention to yourself and your life goals. When you become comfortable being alone, you won’t feel uncomfortable staying silent for a long time or the need to fill the silence with needless talk.
3. Seeing the Good in Other People
People are naturally selfish and dishonest. That’s why terrifying and inconceivable happenings continue to occur worldwide every day. Therefore, it’s very hard not to focus on the negative aspects of other people, especially when you’ve already had a bad experience with them.
Unfortunately, focusing on the negative side of the people you interact with daily will only result in more emotional instability. So, if you want to mature emotionally, teach yourself to see the good in people, no matter how badly they’ve hurt you. Start by realizing that sometimes people will hurt you unintentionally.
So, instead of holding grudges or hating them, you should try to understand where they are coming from and why they behave the way they do toward you. This will help you to find reasons to forgive them and learn to see the good in them.
When you are mature emotionally, you will always be compelled to assist the people who hurt you instead of being judgmental and condescending.
Rather than condemning other people for their mistakes and flaws, find ways to assist them to be better. To succeed in this, you must start by seeing the good in them.
4. Ability to Express Your Feelings to Other People
Becoming emotionally mature means having the confidence to express your feelings to other people clearly, especially when they hurt you. This doesn’t mean being confrontational or aggressive toward people who hurt you. It means being compassionate yet firm when articulating your feelings to the other person.
You don’t have to yell to get someone’s attention and to drive the point home. Just “keep your cool” and choose words that will let the other person know how you feel without humiliating them. Additionally, you have to learn to let go of the bad feelings when someone hurts you. Sometimes you just have to let go of the people and things that hurt your feelings so that you can heal and gain emotional maturity.
Sometimes you just have to learn communication skills so that you can freely and clearly let people know how you feel without exacerbating the situation. You have to practice this regularly and exercise patience.
5. Your Desires and Plans in Life Are Clear
It’s very difficult for someone or something to annoy you when you already know what you want in life. When you have a clear plan of what you want to do in life and how you will achieve it, you won’t be bothered by the inevitable hitches that occur along the way. Nobody or situation will be too important to sidetrack you from your goals.
Emotional maturity also means being clear about your values and principles. This gives you the ability to make critical decisions and choices in life that will only accelerate you toward your goals and dreams. Being mature emotionally also means having the courage to let go of irrelevant people and things in your life that may be derailing you from achieving your goals.
6. Being Honest
For you to attain emotional maturity, you have to be able to remain honest to yourself and other people in every situation. You shouldn’t lie to yourself and others, even if the lie seems insignificant. Dishonesty is a dangerous trait that will harm you and the people around you.
You’ll know you’ve attained emotional maturity when you become open and truthful in your daily interactions with other people. This helps you to build trust with the people around you thus enhancing your relationships.
7. You Don’t Fear Your Emotions
When you get hold of your emotions, you can easily survive any situation. This starts by understanding the various types of emotions that you are likely to experience at different times. This way, you’ll be aware of the situations that make you feel sad, joyful, disappointed, angry, etc.
This means that you can easily predict what certain situations will make you feel and so you are not afraid of experiencing these emotions. Understanding your emotions helps you to develop a positive outlook so that you can have a positive perspective in every situation. For example, you won’t be afraid of feeling sad because you already know that sadness enables you to make out joy.
8. Ability to Control Your Emotions
If you can control your emotions, no situation will be too stressful. This involves learning how to allow emotions to rise without overpowering you. You can even let the emotions settle in for a significant period before you offload them.
This allows you to understand the emotions so that you can develop the proper mechanism of dealing with them maturely. Once you’ve obtained full control of a particular emotion, you can share it constructively.
9. You Have Healthy Tools to Navigate Every Emotion
Sometimes emotions can be so overwhelming, leaving you feeling completely devastated. But when you are emotionally mature, you don’t panic at the sight of a stressful situation. Instead, you embrace the feeling and discover useful tools that can help you to deal with the emotions effectively.
For instance, you can embrace basic techniques for dealing with different types of emotions, including exercising, journaling, counseling, punching bags, mindfulness, artistry, and talking with friends or relatives. If you don’t shy away from sharing your problems with a trusted friend or a professional counselor, then you are edging a step closer to total emotional maturity.
10. Viewing Emotions as Guidance
Emotions portray how you truly feel in a particular situation. If you are sad, you will show sadness. However, just because you are sad it doesn’t mean you should remain sad.
Your emotions only describe the situation but they are bigger than the situation itself. Therefore, emotional maturity is when you can easily use a particular emotion to change a situation. For example, you can use sadness to pursue joy.
11. You Can Easily Say Sorry
People who aren’t emotionally mature find it hard to apologize, even when they are in the wrong. They would rather shift the blame than say sorry. So, if you find yourself apologizing, even when you are not to blame, know that your emotional maturity is beckoning.
