Awareness Meaning

15 Signs of Self-Awareness

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Here are fifteen signs that a person has self-awareness:

  • Understand themselves better.
  • Behave proactively instead of reactively.
  • Connect more meaningfully with others.
  • Feel more at ease with themselves.
  • Have worked through past hurts.
  • Behave positively.
  • Pursue their dreams.
  • Enjoy positive relationships.
  • Treat others with kindness and compassion.
  • Have less conflict in their lives.
  • Understand where they end and others begin.
  • Have healthy boundaries.
  • Do things to help others.
  • Make the world a better place.
  • Live life based on their true selves.

You’ll know you’re around someone with self-awareness because they are following their dreams and do things in a way that bring joy to themselves and others. What would you add to this list?

Cheers,

Guy

Your Self-Awareness Journey

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Your self-awareness journey is particular to you. It will go in any direction that you commit to going. That means that you get to choose what you do and how you move forward. Don’t worry about what others say, it’s up to you which path you take. The key is to make decisions based on your authentic self and enjoy the trip. Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Be open to new ideas and approaches.
  • Commit to getting to know yourself at a deep level.
  • Work on healing your inner hurts.
  • Create an inventory of the things you do well and the areas you want to improve.
  • Talk to some professionals about building self-awareness.
  • Resolve to live your life based on who you really are deep inside.
  • Understand how your emotions, thoughts, and actions affect your life.
  • Decide to live consciously.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Have Great Listening Skills

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One of the most valuable skills self-aware leaders use to encourage effective communication is listening. Many leaders say they’re good listeners but most aren’t. It’s not because they don’t want to listen but rather because our workplaces and leadership styles aren’t designed to promote listening.

Here are some things you can do to be a leader who possess self-awareness and listens well:

1. Don’t talk.

2. Nod and prompt the other person to say more.

3. Ask open-ended questions that don’t have yes or no answers.

4. Lean forward and look interested.

5. Don’t think of the next thing you’re going to say.

6. Don’t think of how you’re going to rebut or contradict a point.

7. Don’t talk.

How many of these behaviors do you practice in the course of your workplace communication? Really listening means listening attentively for meaning. We all understand words but do we really understand what the other person is feeling? Pay attention to what the other person looks like when he or she talks, their demeanor or body language. Do they look upset, do they look confused? Ask open-ended questions that help the other person talk more rather than offering advice or opinions.

If you try some of these ideas you can learn a lot about your employees, co-workers and clients. I also encourage leaders to practice having conversations where they don’t talk at all and just nod. It’s remarkable what you can learn when you don’t talk.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be a good listener?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Respect

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Respect is a word that gets thrown around a lot by people who lack self-awareness but that isn’t always clearly defined. This leaves everyone guessing and doing different things that may or may not lead to respect. We sometimes ask for respect from others or we strive hard to be respectful in our relationships but we don’t always ask for it for ourselves. We may find ourselves in relationships where we give all the respect in the world and get little or none in return.

So what creates this uncertain, rocky landscape when it comes to respect? It’s often caused by lack of self-awareness and because people don’t really know what respect is. I simply define respect as loving yourself and others, and thinking and behaving kindly toward yourself and others.

The important thing is for you to define it in a way that works for you and that you can clearly communicate to others. We often do not receive respect because we do not tell people what we need and we don’t take action to educate them. We essentially give other people the power to treat us negatively and not respect us. These patterns keep repeating because we don’t know what else to do. As we begin our journey toward asking for respect it is helpful to define the term. In romance and relationships, respect may be defined as someone allowing us be who we are, to help us and encourage us to grow, to share our triumphs and disappointments, to listen to us and to make us feel great. So how do we find this elusive thing called respect?

A logical starting point in the quest to respect ourselves is increasing our self-awareness and figuring out what we want out of our relationships and how we want to be treated. If we don’t know what we want, then how can we expect others to fulfill our wishes? Think in terms of defining who you are as a person and what is important to you. The second step toward honoring ourselves is to ask for respect from others. This is accomplished by asking the significant people in our lives for what we need. It’s our job to educate others about how we would like to be treated. As you’ve probably noticed, people aren’t mind readers – we have to tell them what we want. Many of us believe that people will just automatically understand how to respect us but, for the most part, people treat us exactly like we show them how to. We get results based on what we put out. If you act like a doormat you will attract people who will treat you like one. If you act healthy and balanced you will attract that kind of people.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and respect yourself and others?

Cheers,

Guy

12 Ways to Increase Your Self-Awareness

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Here are some practical ways to increase your self-awareness starting today:

  • Make a list of the things you do well.
  • Think about how you might use your natural talents to live authentically.
  • Make a list of the things you do that might benefit from some improvement.
  • Think about what you can do right now to become wiser and healthier.
  • Decide on one thing you want to improve about yourself and do one small task each day to work on making it happen.
  • Keep an open mind about learning new things and changing.
  • Treat yourself and others well.
  • Be completely honest with yourself about the things you do that lead in a positive direction and the ones that hold you back.
  • Learn how to be comfortable with all your feelings.
  • Work on healing your hurts.
  • Decide that you’re going to live consciously.
  • Listen to your inner voice.

You don’t have to do all these things at once, try doing one at a time until it feels natural and move on to the next. The idea is to get to know yourself really well and live a life that reflects who you are deep inside. What will you do to increase your self-awareness?

Cheers,
Guy

Self-Aware People Listen More Than Talk

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A lot of people who lack self-awareness have been conditioned to believe that they need to talk a lot. We’ve all met a person who seems to be in love with the sound of their voice and rarely lets people into the conversation. What we sometimes forget is that communication is over 90% non-verbal which means that talking is just a small part of what we’re supposed to be doing.

Yet millions of people wake up every day ready to tell the world something rather than learning something from the world. We spend our time trying to tell our story rather than gaining more insight into others’ experiences. Think about your own style: Do you talk more or do you listen more? What would happen if you shifted your style just slightly. Self-aware people understand that getting their point across is often as much about understanding someone else’s point of view as it is putting one’s own opinion into the mix.

Here are some tips to help you add to your communication skills:

  1. Try to listen more than you talk.
  2. Ask open-ended questions.
  3. Try not to think of the next thing you’re going to say.
  4. Try not to think of the perfect rebuttal.
  5. Stay away from questions that lead the conversation in a certain direction.
  6. Let people say what they want and give them the space to do so.
  7. Listen.
  8. Did I mention listening?

The key skill we ignore in life is listening. It’s incredible what we learn when we take the time to really listen to someone. Suddenly we understand people better and can make decisions based on rich information. We avoid misunderstandings and we connect with people on a deeper level.

Perhaps the most powerful proof that listening helps improve our lives is that it allows us to breathe. We don’t have to fill up space, we don’t have to think of witty things to say and we get to learn all kinds of interesting things about others and relax more.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and listen more than talk?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Are Deep

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Possessing self-awareness is synonymous with being a deep person, where all the meaningful parts of life reside, although most people prefer to stay in the shallow end. There’s nothing horrible about talking about the weather, sports, or cats, but I prefer to go where other people dare not: the inner workings of the mind in all its tumultuousness, ambiguity, insecurity, and pain.

I’ve always been someone who feels things very intensely, often to the point of discomfort, so it makes sense that my self-awareness work tends to reflect deeper emotions. Many people try to ignore these feelings and uncertainties, sometimes for an entire lifetime, but I figure we’re all wired to feel and we each get to choose whether we use our natural ability to emote. So many of the problems in the world could be resolved if people were willing to work out their inner turmoil before putting it on others.

Being a deep person allows you to experience life at its fullest, warts and all, but with the idea that you’ll be stronger and more balanced when you deal with your issues. When you acknowledge and feel pain, you can then do something positive to heal it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be a deep person?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy