Have you ever been around someone who seemed ‘wise beyond their years’? On the other side of that, do you ever notice how some of the ‘adults’ in our society are regularly having public temper tantrums more outrageous than 3-year-olds do?
You see, emotional maturity is not a given. It doesn’t just happen with age. It’s not innate to our species to be emotionally mature. It’s a lifelong pursuit that takes hard work and intentional practice.
But it’s life-giving. Emotionally mature people, in general, have greater levels of mental health and well-being, better relationships, and create more peaceful communities and societies.
Here’s what people who grow into emotional maturity practice doing regularly…
1. They are aware of their emotions, triggers, and reactivity.
Self-differentiated people work hard to observe and stay aware of their inner experience as they interact with their surroundings. They are able to slow down enough to notice their emotions as they arise in each moment. They are also able to notice when they are becoming emotionally reactive or reenacting a conditioned pattern from their past.
2. They practice consciously responding over automatically reacting.
Because they can slow down and become aware of their emotions, they can interrupt an emotional reaction or a conditioned pattern. They can introduce a space between the emotion and what they end up doing with it. They then use that space to temper the emotion and think about how to best respond to the situation at hand.
They introduce more choices for the next move, instead of unconsciously going with the default programming. Instead of the emotion blindly running the show, the emotion instead informs a consciously chosen response to the circumstance.
3. They practice taking responsibility for their own experience.
Emotionally mature people don’t blame others for their emotions, dump their emotions onto others, or pull others into their emotional dramas. They don’t constantly seek approval and direction from others. They see their emotional experience as their burden alone to bear.
They know how to self-regulate and self-validate. They know how to acknowledge and process their own emotions. They can think for themselves and have clearly defined principles and intentions for how they want to live their life. They understand that, while they can’t control what happens to them, they are always in control of how they choose to respond.
4. They practice having and respecting boundaries.
Boundaries help people preserve and use their energy wisely, so that they bring their best selves to the world as often as possible. Healthy boundaries also hold those around us to a quality standard of behavior. It ensures that we don’t remain in interactions or relationships that are harmful.
Emotionally mature people understand that healthy boundaries are a vital part of personal well-being and healthy relationships. Thus, they practice defining, setting, and reinforcing healthy boundaries with others and respecting the boundaries of others.
5. They practice living by principles over emotions.
Emotionally mature people understand that living by emotional reactions and automatic behaviors can lead to a lot of unnecessary chaos and suffering. Instead, they practice living by individual principles and values that they spent plenty of time thinking through and defining for themselves.
This doesn’t mean neglecting emotions altogether, but rather moving them out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s seat. Living a life guided by principles means living a life that is informed by emotions, but not driven by them. Our principles lead us instead, even when our emotions are pulling us in the other direction.
6. They practice balancing individuality and togetherness.
There are two seemingly opposing forces that shape all human relationships and are driven by our emotions. On one hand, we have the desire to be connected to others and to feel like we belong. On the other, we have the desire to be our own separate individual to belong to ourselves. This often manifests as the tradeoff between choosing self or choosing others.
People tend to polarize toward one side or the other, but emotionally mature people practice balancing the tension between both poles. With practice, they become skilled at knowing when to choose self and when to choose others, and this becomes a fluid dance for them over time. Thus, they have both a strong relationship with themselves while remaining in close connection with significant others in their lives.
7. They practice embracing the discomfort of growth.
Emotionally mature people are willing to endure the discomfort inherent to the process of challenging old ways of being and learning new ones. They lean into adversity and conflict. They listen to perspectives that challenge their worldview. They hold space for the opinions, beliefs, and life choices of others, even when they differ significantly from their own.
They practice being flexible and remain open to the unknown. They see life as an endless journey of learning and growing; of expanding one’s mind and letting go of what no longer serves them; of repeated cycles of psychological death and rebirth; of continuously evolving into new iterations of oneself.
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