Awareness of Emotions

Team Building, Self-Awareness, and Healing the Past to Move Forward

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When people in a workplace, starting with leadership, possess self-awareness, they are able to practice effective team building and heal negative situations, memories, and other remnants from the past in order to move forward together successfully.

Many teams hang on to hurts from the past that get in the way of practicing effective team building. Although it’s highly beneficial to heal past hurts, it’s common for leaders and teams that lack self-awareness to pretend that they don’t exist and avoid dealing with them. When you heal the past you get rid of the junk that clogs up your workplace interactions. You get a chance to hit the reset button and move in whatever direction you want with your team.

I am not recommending that your group wallows in agony and despair. Your goal is to develop self-awareness, benefit from acknowledging the past, and then move forward. If you have some issue that affects your team’s functioning today why not do something to move past it? Once you resolve it you’ll be ready to grow without having that issue holding you back in any way. Here’s how you can get started working together on putting the past behind you.

1.  Think of something that happened to the team that still affects everyone to this day.

2.  Acknowledge that it exists.

3.  Write down how it affects each person currently.

4.  How would the group be different if this issue were not in the picture?

5.  What is each member of the team willing to do to move beyond the issue?

Your answers to these ideas will help you start a dialogue and create a starting point so that you can move forward without the the past weighing you down. You’ll also all work together more happily without the stuff that was holding you back.

What will you do to increase self-awareness in your workplace and build strong teams that heal the past?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Family Functioning

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Self-awareness is a major component of healthy family functioning because, the more people understand themselves, the easier it will be for them to get along with each other and interact positively. We’ve been led to believe that families are about order, control, hierarchy, respect, tradition and other words that put people in boxes rather than encourage them to be themselves and live joyfully. People in restrictive families are often asked to do things like:

  • Keep secrets.
  • Sublimate their own identity to fit the group.
  • Follow rules, no matter how unreasonable or arbitrary.
  • Be in constant conflict and call it love.
  • Occasionally do nice things for each other.
  • Have no effective problem-solving or conflict resolution mechanisms.
  • Talk only about approved subjects.
  • Blindly defer to people who may not know what they’re doing.
  • Only express approved emotions.
  • Negative behaviors are tolerated.

These types of actions are common in many families but don’t lead to celebrating individuals and helping them discover who they really are deep inside. When family members possess a high level of self-awareness they likely promote behaviors such as:

  • Talking openly about difficult subjects.
  • Building one’s own identify and being accepted.
  • Worrying less about rules and more about critical thinking.
  • Treating each other with kindness and empathy.
  • Consistently doing nice things for each other.
  • Understanding how to fix problems and resolve conflicts.
  • All conversation topics are valid and important.
  • Everyone is equal.
  • All emotions are welcome.
  • Positive behaviors are the norm.

There is a vast difference between the type of interactions that result from the first list and the second. The higher your level of self-awareness is, the more likely you are to move away from power and control to encouraging everyone to be his or her amazing self without restrictions or conditions. What will you do to improve your family functioning?

Cheers,
Guy

Self-Aware People Are Kind, Sensitive, and Creative

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I love connecting with kind, sensitive, creative people who value self-awareness because they tend to spread positive vibes that help build a happier, more compassionate and enlightened world.

So, why would anyone want to be this type of person? Because it leads to greater joy and fulfillment. Kindness means behaving in a way that demonstrates empathy and care for something or someone else. It’s a peaceful state of being that creates harmony. Sensitivity means dealing positively with your own feelings and being attuned to others’ emotions as well. Creativity means that you have the courage to think differently and challenge conventions. When you mix these three qualities you have a person who possesses self-awareness and is able to live a deeply satisfying, positive life and have a beneficial impact on his or her environment.

Imagine a world where people treat each other with kindness, are sensitive to their own and each other’s feelings, and create beautiful things. It’s a very different state of being than what we’ve been led to believe is the way things should be (competitions, strife, jealousy, brokenness). Having self-awareness means that you’re able to rise above pettiness and self-centeredness and behave in ways that benefit the greater good.

What will you do to practice self-awareness and be a kind, sensitive, creative person?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Seeing the Big Picture

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A lot of people think that working on their self-awareness is a selfish pursuit but they may be missing the point. When you deeply understand why you think or act the way you do, you move from being someone who lives unconsciously to someone who understands the implications surrounding their thoughts and behaviors. For example: If you get mad at friends or family all the time, you’re behaving in a way that is specific and limited, whereas if you take the time to think about what you’re doing and how you can move in a positive direction, you increase your ability to see things from a wider perspective.

You can choose to live life based only on what you think, feel and do in the moment but you’ll be much happier and fulfilled if you pause and think about all the other options available to you. What will you do to use your self-awareness to see the big picture?

Take care

Guy

Self-Awareness and Critical Thinking

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If you’re actively working on increasing your self-awareness then you’re familiar with critical thinking, the process by which you determine whether something is true or false. When you’re able to use facts to determine whether something is valid or not, you’re better equipped to deal with any situation that comes your way and live a happier life. Let’s look at the difference between an individual who doesn’t think critically and one who does:

Person 1

Someone says something to this person that scares her. She can’t figure out what to do and doesn’t know how to assess what’s true or false about what she’s being told. Because she doesn’t understand the topic at hand, she draws conclusions based on visceral feelings, suppositions, or hunches rather than facts. Unable to ascertain what’s really going on, she remains uninformed and fearful.

Person 2

This person has been told the same thing, initially feels scared, but has the presence of mind to evaluate the topic. She does some research to determine what is true or false about what she’s been told based on demonstrable and verifiable facts. She is able to view the issue in context and asses its likely impact on her life. She reacts appropriately based on the information she’s collected.

You’ll be much more likely to live a meaningful and balanced life if you take the time to determine what’s actually true or false about any given topic or situation. Some people leave things to emotion, chance, or superstition; you can choose to take a dispassionate look at the issue and deal with it based on demonstrable facts. How will you use your critical thinking skills?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Be Genuinely Happy

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Are you really happy or just pretending? Over many years of providing self-awareness consulting to individuals and groups, I’ve noticed that the less happy people are, the more vociferously they will claim to be happy. It’s as if they feel they have to put up a brave front so that nobody will know how much they’re really hurting inside.

You can’t be genuinely happy in life if you lack self-awareness and walk around with tons of unresolved or conflicting issues rattling around in your head. I’ve met many a “happy” person who is so quick to anger that it’s frightening. When you’re truly self-aware and content, you feel, think and behave in ways that are consistent with happiness, for example:

  • You treat others well.
  • You’re kind to people without expecting anything in return.
  • You don’t feel like you have to beat anyone.
  • You help others succeed.
  • You think and behave with empathy.
  • The various parts of your psyche aren’t fighting each other.
  • You don’t suppress your emotions.
  • You feel a sense of well-being and balance inside.
  • You smile and laugh genuinely and often.
  • You live life as the real you.

True happiness comes from a deep sense of peace and well-being inside you. It means that you’ve built up your self-awareness, worked on your hurts, and healed yourself to the point where pain doesn’t rule your life or you’re not trying to ignore it.

What will you do to to increase self-awareness and be genuinely happy?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Being Damaged

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Self-awareness is a quality that is in short supply in deeply damaged people because they tend to behave unconsciously, based on their inner pain. When someone is hurt at a core level and lashes out based on those inner wounds, it’s a visceral reaction rather than one based on careful deliberation. Here are some characteristics of a deeply damaged person:

  • Thinking, feeling and behaving negatively based on past hurts.
  • Lack of empathy toward others.
  • Rigid thinking and inability to consider other points of view.
  • Inability to heal.
  • Reluctance to change, stuck in current way of doing things.
  • Lashing out at others based on unresolved issues inside himself.
  • Unwilling to examine what causes his inner turmoil.
  • Lack of understanding of what will really make him happy.
  • Seeks approval from people who don’t really value him.
  • Pattern of negative relationships.
  • Harsh, hard, commanding personality on the outside, fragile on the inside.
  • Lies to self and others to justify incongruous, inconsistent thoughts and beliefs.
  • Treats other people poorly, a reflection of his inner feelings about himself.

If you’ve ever met a person like this, you’ve probably gotten a creepy feeling about them, unless you fall into this category, in which case the behavior seems normal. Thankfully, even deeply troubled people can change the course of their lives by replacing their old thoughts and behaviors with more positive ones. It’s a long and arduous process, but anyone with the will to let go of the damage and love themselves is capable of doing it.

The key to being genuinely happy in life is to think and behave positively to make the world a better place for yourself and others. Self-awareness allows you to take a careful, meaningful look at yourself and heal the hurts that keep you from being your true, shiny self. What will you do to move beyond the damage?

Cheers,

Guy

self-awareness consulting

The Self-Awareness Guy