Warriors! Hello and welcome to episode 415 of the Love Your Life Show. It is me, Susie Pettit, your certified life, relationship, and parenting coach.

The topic we are going to teach on today impacts all areas of your life. So hold on, put down what you’re doing, and pay attention. This episode is going to function like a masterclass on a big, foundational piece of our lives. It is something very few of us were taught growing up, which means most of us are unskilled at it—myself included.

What are we talking about? As you probably guessed from the title, it is Emotional Maturity.

What Emotional Maturity Really Is (And Isn’t)

Before you think, “Well, I am a certain age, of course I’m emotionally mature,” stay with me. You can easily turn on the TV, look at world leaders of a certain age, and see how they lack emotional maturity. It has very little to do with age, especially for those of us born in the last century.

If you were born in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even the early 90s, emotional intelligence (EQ)wasn’t widely understood. People literally didn’t know the brain worked this way. Today’s parents know that building emotional intelligence is one of their core jobs, but our parents didn’t know that.

In fact, we were often taught things that diminished our emotional intelligence. It usually sounded like this:

“Susie, shame on you. You didn’t clean your room, and now Dad’s mad.”

“I wouldn’t have yelled if you didn’t spill the milk all over the new rug.”

We grew up in an era where people believed that what you did or didn’t do made someone else feel a certain way. They missed the entire cognitive mindfulness piece because they just didn’t know.

If you want a deep dive into how the brain works, grab my free podcast roadmap at [https://smbwell.com/roadmap] to listen to the foundational episodes on emotional intelligence.

Let’s establish a working definition: Emotional maturity is our ability to understand what’s happening inside of us, manage our own emotional experience, and respond intentionally instead of reactively. It requires emotional awareness and emotional regulation.

The Sliding Scale of Maturity

Think of emotional maturity as a skill you grow over time. However, it isn’t fixed. If we are tired, fatigued, or stressed, we won’t have the same access to it. We have a baseline “set point” that we can continually raise, but day-to-day, it acts like an old doctor’s scale—it’s a sliding continuum, not a fixed personality trait.

In plain “Susie speak”:

1. EQ (Emotional Intelligence): Knowing what our emotions are and where they come from.

2. ER (Emotional Regulation): Having the ability to handle what goes on inside of us and deal with those impulses in a mature way.

The more emotionally mature you are, the better you are at pausing. When a reactive part of your brain screams, “Just say the thing!” emotional maturity allows you to discern: Will saying or doing this make the situation better or worse?

Because of how our brains are structured, we will face opportunities to practice this every single day. The good news is that the self-awareness work we do in coaching and in the *Love Your Life School* helps raise your set point so you don’t dip back down to where you used to be.

I spent the first four decades of my life operating at the emotional maturity level of a 12 or 14-year-old. Today, I mostly clock in as an adult. I still have my moments, but I can catch myself when I am in an activated child place. Every single trigger on this earth is just an opportunity to check our internal state and pause before a knee-jerk reaction.

A Real-Life Example: The “Big Sigh”

To show you how this plays out in real life, I had an experience just five minutes ago that tested my own emotional maturity.

My husband and I were discussing plans for the upcoming weekend. We had no plans, and since it was Tuesday, I hadn’t given it much thought. He asked me what I wanted to do. I am practicing speaking up for my needs without delivering a 400-word salad of explanation and defense. I paused, realized I needed downtime because we had unexpected house guests the weekend prior, and we are about to go away in his camper van for two weeks.

So I simply said: “I don’t know yet what I want to do this weekend, but I know that I don’t want to spend the night elsewhere.”

As I said it, I noticed my chest was tight and my shoulders were clenched. That is emotional intelligence—identifying the physical sensation of the emotion in my body. My old childhood programming tells me it isn’t safe to state what I want, even though it is perfectly safe with my husband.

When I gave him my answer, my husband let out a big, dramatic sigh.

We’ve all been there. You tell your teen you’re visiting grandparents: Sigh. You tell your partner about a school fee: Sigh. People are allowed to sigh.

Emotional maturity isn’t about trying to pretend the sigh didn’t happen or forcing myself to feel happy and positive. I felt uncomfortable because I love him and his feelings matter to me. But emotional maturity means his feelings are not my responsibility. My primary emotional responsibility is to myself.

Breaking Old Patterns & Self-Abandonment

If I hadn’t been practicing emotional maturity, my brain would have defaulted to old patterns: *”Oh no, he’s upset. Let me explain myself better. Let me give him all my reasons. Maybe I should just change my mind.”*

That response is entirely focused on managing *his* emotions so that *he* feels differently.

Has this happened to you? You walk into a conversation clear about what you want, someone reacts poorly (an eye roll, a sigh, a delayed text), and you completely derail. You stop paying attention to yourself and focus entirely on fixing them.

“Emotional maturity allows us to stay connected to ourselves and let other people have their own emotional experience.”

Let him sigh. Let him feel uncomfortable. Let me feel my own discomfort, and still do what I need to do.

Many of us confuse emotional immaturity—like people-pleasing and self-abandoning to keep the peace—with being “grown up” because we were praised for being quiet and accommodating as children. We learned hyper-vigilance: *Who is upset? How can I fix it? That approach leaves us feeling completely out of control because it links our mood to everyone else’s status.

Three Foundational Skills to Practice This Week

Since this is a short episode, let’s focus on three foundational pieces of emotional maturity you can practice this week:

1. Awareness

Ask yourself: *What is happening inside of me right now? What am I feeling, and what sensations am I noticing in my body?* In the conversation with my husband, my maturity started before I even spoke because I noticed my tight chest and clenched shoulders and took a deep breath. Practice pausing this week to monitor your own internal state instead of tracking everyone else’s.

2. Discernment

Understand the difference between an emotion and an action. Just because you feel a feeling doesn’t mean you need to act on it reactively. You can feel angry without acting angrily. You can feel worried without jumping in to fix. You can feel hurt without sending an impulsive text. Lengthen the pause between the feeling and the action, and ask yourself: *Will acting on this impulse make the situation better or worse?*

3. Understanding the Source of Feelings

This relies heavily on the cognitive thought model. Other people and external events do not cause our feelings. Your teenager didn’t stress you out; your friend didn’t hurt your feelings. Our feelings come entirely from our thoughts about what happened, not the event itself. When you realize your emotional experience is generated inside you, you stop handing the keys to your well-being over to other people.

Conclusion & Next Steps

Emotional maturity is the ultimate skill set that will make every area of your life better. Next week, we will discuss how to help the next generation develop these skills early so we don’t reinforce old, erroneous patterns.

Also, keep on your horizon that the entire month of September in the Love Your Life School is dedicated to emotional regulation. If you don’t want to wait until September, hop on over and book a free 25-minute clarity call with me at my website. We can explore one-on-one coaching or the school to see what next step is perfect for you.

Take care of yourself, dear ones, and work on your emotional maturity. It is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Big love!