Build these 2 'strength skills' to be more successful, says psychotherapist: They're 'essential for us'

If you want 2024 to be a great year, start building your "strength skills" right away, says Farah Harris.

Specifically, improving your emotional intelligence and self-awareness can help you bring your aspirations to life — no matter who you are or what you're trying to achieve, says Harris, a Flossmoor, Illinois-based psychotherapist and author.

"[They] require you to practice pausing, so you can actually feel your feelings," Harris tells CNBC Make It, adding that incorporating them into our lives is "essential for us."

Feeling your feelings, as Harris puts it, allows you to process the emotions that impact and shape your goals — like motivation, happiness or fear — and create a plan that accounts for them.

You can foster these skills by analyzing what you want to achieve — specifically, why you want to achieve it — and learning to separate your identity from your job, two common pitfalls that professionals face, Harris says.

Here's how.

In the coming weeks, lots of people will set New Year's resolutions, like "I'll go to the gym three days per week" or "I'll cut my excess spending in half this year."

Many of those resolutions will fail because they aren't framed in a brain-friendly way, Harris says. If you want to go to the gym more, there's probably a reason — and it needs to be included in the wording of your goal.

"You need to be able to have some type of emotional attachment to the goal," says Harris. "Otherwise, it's fleeting."

To do that, format your goals like this, she says:

• I recognize that when I eat healthier, I get better sleep at night.
• I want to exercise more, to increase my longevity.
• I feel proud when I curb my spending habits, so I want to spend [X amount] on fun each month.
• I will prioritize mental health days, so I can perform better at work.

The strategy requires you to understand and manage your emotions, which inherently helps you grow your emotional intelligence, Harris says.

Emotions like gratitude, compassion and pride are great goal-drivers, because they encourage you to have a "long-term view of our present-day actions," psychologist David Desteno wrote in the University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Magazine in 2020.

It's hard to meet your workplace goals when you feel incapable of doing so, or like you don't belong in your role.

Separating who you are from the work you do can help. A teacher forgetting to submit a lesson plan doesn't make them a bad teacher, for example. It may simply mean they need to work on their organization and time management skills.

"It's about what I do [at work], not who I am," Harris says. "The being and the doing needs to be separate so that we can actually hone in on the areas where we need improvement."

Even simply reciting a daily mantra like "I am not my job" can help, says Harris. She also recommends setting aside specific blocks of time for your hobbies, relationships or anything else outside of work that makes you happy.

Both acts help boost your self-awareness, she says. It's an "underrated" skill that can help you be more creative at work, make better decisions and build stronger personal and professional relationships, Harvard-trained neuroscientist Juliette Han told Make It in June.

"You can have all the technical skills and charisma in the world, but if you're completely oblivious of yourself, how you come across and interact in the world, it's a lot harder to build strong relationships, interact with your boss and co-workers and deepen the friendships you need to truly succeed," she said.

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