The Emotional Circle of Self refers to one's own self image and you're perceived impact upon those around you.
In psychological terms, the Emotional Circle includes the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo in one big mixing bowl.
Emotional well-being is unique to humans because we seem to be the only species that has an understanding of self identity, affect, and permanence/mortality.
Thus, the Emotional Circle of Self is where you house and express your self confidence. Most often, good emotional health is a product of good balance and strength throughout the other four Circles of Human Health.
As with the other components in the Circle Theory, the Emotional Circle of Self works within the guidelines of the Gradient Theory.
This is where you house character traits like confidence, pride, and intellect. It is also the Circle of yourself that you'll refer to when you consciously or unconsciously project an image of yourself to those around you and how you perceive their impression of that image has been received.
For instance, lets say you identify with the ability to be likable and friendly. In social situations, you will believe yourself to be likable and friendly, and will therefore feel relatively unreserved in meeting new people, going to parties, or finding yourself in variable social situations. Because you believe that people see you as likable and friendly, you will likely project an image that shows you being likable and friendly and, you will accurately assess that the people around you would qualify you as likable and friendly.
There is a potential monkey wrench in this last process for Emotional health - your impression of what others think of you. That monkey wrench is empathy. Some people exist with a greater ability to accurately assess the needs, wants, and thoughts of those around them. Others do not. If your ability to empathize with those around you is hindered in some way (a possibility which seems to be growing from, I believe, the greater reliance on technology for social interaction) then you will have a more inaccurate assessment of how others perceive you. You may be thinking that you're projecting friendliness while your social interactions find you obnoxious. Or you may believe that you are shy while others see you as sociable and interactive.
Further, the severity or "brightness" of the Emotional Circle of Self is variable depending upon your social situation. You may feel smart and empowered among your peers at work but if you went to a career convention and met others that you felt are more accomplished than yourself, you may feel less intelligent but more open to apprenticeship.
A big part of your ability to manage your personal Emotional Circle comes from how you handle your variable impressions of yourself. Using the previous example, if you typically feel smart in front of your friends and colleagues then find yourself in a situation with lots of people you consider smart making you feel less so, do you feel:
A) Inspired and empowered to learn?
B) Defeated and isolated?
Certainly embracing perspective A is going to be more healthy and rewarding than perspective B. Also, by embracing path A over B, you'll gain exponential, not just added, emotional fulfillment. Here is why:
If you feel defeated and isolated, these emotional impressions are the opposite of inspired and empowered. You're emotional self worth will diminish based upon this movement in this particular gradient. Because your self worth has been diminished, you'll feel at least slightly less confident in other aspects of your emotional identity as well.
If, on the other hand, you feel inspired and empowered - or even commit yourself to being inspired and empowered through mental conditioning - then you will gain emotional fulfillment through multiple sources. First, you give yourself the ability to learn thereby feeling more intelligent having learned. Second, despite your existing intellectual capability, you approached others with humility rather than defensiveness thus your new contacts will have a better impression of you as a person further boosting your emotional well being. And third, if your new contacts have a better impression of you then you will gain the satisfaction of having been accepted in an arena of higher achievers. All of these shifts in emotional gradient will help you be more stable and confident while also making you seem appropriately humble and endearing.
The Emotional Circle of Self offers you the ability to face day to day mental and social challenges you face. A strong Emotional Circle gives you the ability to conduct yourself peacefully and rationally in almost any situation. In contrast, a weak sense of emotional well being will force a person to aggressively seek reward from one of the other Circles of Self thereby making you feel more imbalanced on the inside.
The Emotional Circle is tricky because no one else can tell you how you feel about yourself. All they can do is tell you how you should feel - and they will likely be wrong because telling you how to feel is a fallacy. Creating a strong emotional self is a matter of gaining personal satisfaction from your intellect, convictions, and abilities and recognizing that you will not be better than everyone at everything yet you will be better than everyone at some things. You have to accept both as true if you are going to have a truly health Emotional Circle of Self.
