awareness of emotions

Self-Awareness and Making the World a Better Place - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Making the World a Better Place

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Self-awareness is a vital component of making the world a better place because when people understand themselves well and possess inner peace and balance they tend to interact positively and compassionately with others. Here are some ways that self-awareness helps build a better world:

  • You’re willing to take an honest, candid look at who you are and improve the areas that need attention so you can interact positively with others.
  • You’re open to change and different ideas.
  • Working through your unresolved issues makes you less likely to put them on others.
  • Feeling balanced and at peace within yourself makes you less susceptible to influences that lead in a negative direction.
  • When you feel great about yourself in a healthy way you don’t have to dominate or subjugate others.
  • When you know yourself deep inside you don’t have to look to outside entities to give you meaning because you do it for yourself.
  • You live with compassion because you realize that everyone has challenges to overcome and we are all interconnected and interdependent.
  • You take care of yourself and others.
  • You live consciously and mindfully instead of reacting to your environment.
  • Feeling healthy inside greatly reduces fear and increases your ability to think and act courageously.
  • When you’re balanced and fulfilled you’re more likely to have empathy toward others.
  • You share your positive attributes with the world.

Making the world a better place means finding ways for people to be happy about who they are instead of working out their issues on each other. Self-awareness is an essential tool because it helps people find the peace and balance necessary to connect meaningfully with themselves and others. How will you make the world a better place for yourself and as many other people as possible?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Personal Development - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Personal Development

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As you develop self-awareness you’ll find that it will help your personal development journey as well. The more you understand yourself and why you think, feel and do certain things, the more power you have to grow and succeed. You’ll also create a greater number of opportunities to shift the direction of your life because you’ll realize which areas you excel in and which might benefit from some attention.

Self-awareness is essential to developing as a person because it allows you to do things mindfully instead of settling for whatever comes your way. You don’t have to stay stuck in one place your entire life, you can deliberately decide to explore a different path. What will you do to keep developing as a person?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Welcoming Change - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Welcoming Change

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When you have a high level of self-awareness, you welcome change more easily because you know yourself well and you’re able to find peace and balance no matter what happens in life. A lot of people feel out of control and live reactively because they don’t have a reliable inner compass that keeps them calm and stable. While they may project confidence on the outside, inside it’s a different story. Here are some ways to welcome change instead of running screaming from it:

  • Realize change is always happening.
  • Realize change will continue to happen.
  • Realize you can handle change.
  • Realize that change often opens up new doors of opportunity.
  • Realize that there are things about you that can benefit from change.
  • Realize that you can become stronger by changing.
  • Realize that change can heal you.
  • Realize that change can make your life more enjoyable and fulfilling.

The key to welcoming change is to do something positive with it instead of running around wishing things were different or agonizing about what you can’t control. What will you do to welcome change?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Emotional Depth - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Emotional Depth

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When you enjoy a high level of self-awareness you’re also likely in touch with your emotions, which helps you relate well to others and live a happier life. Here are some of the characteristics of emotional depth:

  • You recognize and understand other people’s feelings.
  • You understand how your emotions affect others.
  • You don’t work out your personal hurts on other people.
  • You don’t blindly run over people because you’re trying to ignore or placate some deeper emotional issue inside you.
  • You don’t pretend emotions don’t exist or put down people who are “too emotional.”
  • People like you.
  • You’re successful because you’re a nice person.
  • You live a life of empathy.

Many people think that being emotional is something to be avoided at all costs when it’s really just a natural part of being a human being. It’s how you deal with your emotions that impacts how balanced and at peace you are. What will you do to increase your emotional depth?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Effective Communication - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Effective Communication

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Leaders who lack self-awareness often become so consumed with their own day-to-day experiences and perceptions of their environment that they forget that other people exist and have needs too. This behavior leads to a communication style based on a lack of meaningful connection and understanding between leadership and employees.

A frequently overlooked element of effective communication is empathy; the ability to understand what other people are going through from their perspective. When you master this skill, you communicate on a much deeper level because you’re being self-aware and connecting below the surface. It’s the difference between having civil but superficial conversations and genuinely understanding people.

My consulting clients often ask me why people behave the way they do and what they can do about it. That’s where self-awareness, empathy, and effective communication come in. When you communicate on a deeper level you move from being surprised by what people do to understanding their behavior. That’s because you’ve made a shift from assuming you know what they’re thinking and feeling to finding out what they’re really going through. How can you develop this skill? Try the following ideas:

1. Stop talking and listen actively instead.

2. Put yourself in the other person’s situation and imagine you’re experiencing the same thing from their vantage point.

3. When the other person is done talking, ask open-ended questions to encourage him or her to tell you more.

4. Remind yourself that what they’re saying isn’t about you, it’s about how they experience the world.

5. Strive to accept anything the person says as their perception rather than something that threatens you or must be changed.

When you use empathy as part of effective communication you move beyond being in the room with someone and saying words. You connect with them in a more meaningful way. Think in terms of how you feel when someone really values and appreciates what you’re thinking and feeling.

Empathy is about demonstrating that you value other people’s perspectives. They may not think exactly as you do but their thoughts mean as much to them as yours mean to you. Once you can empathize with someone else’s experience, you’re communicating in a way that shows them you respect where they’re coming from.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and empathy and practice effective communication?

Cheers,

Guy

Lack of Self-Awareness and Ignoring Facts - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Lack of Self-Awareness and Ignoring Facts

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Building your self-awareness leads to living a more cohesive, integrated, happy life. I’ve noticed over the years that some people make life more complicated than it needs to be because they ignore facts. It takes a huge amount of time and energy to pretend that something false is true, and all the while you’re trying to support something inaccurate, you’re wasting your life.

The much easier and more satisfying path in life is to stick to demonstrable facts, which will keep you from bending yourself into a pretzel shape to explain things. A big reason I enjoy providing life guidance for people who value self-awareness is that they tend to be open to all kinds of facts and ideas and are comfortable with exploring new avenues of knowledge and understanding.

Life becomes infinitely more complex when you lack self-awareness and try to pretend that facts don’t matter. If you don’t believe in verifiable data then you have to create a whole alternative reality that requires constant rationalization and explanation. The easier route is to just make sure that your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors align with actual evidence so you can live wide awake.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and base your life on verifiable facts?

Cheers,

Guy

The Peace of Mind of Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Peace of Mind of Self-Awareness

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Self-awareness can bring you amazing peace of mind if you let it. The challenge is being able to let go of all the noise and obstacles that get in the way of learning about yourself and living authentically. A lot of people struggle with the idea that there is a different way of living where they get to be themselves and enjoy the results they get from thinking, feeling and acting naturally.

You can start increasing your peace of mind and self-awareness by taking time each day to think about your strengths and areas for improvement. Celebrate the wonderful things about you and also work on one thing you’d like to improve. Repeat the process and, along the way, you’ll discover more and more about your amazing gifts. What will you do to increase your self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy