Awareness of Emotions

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Self-Awareness Helps You Stop Reacting to Everything

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Many people who lack self-awareness spend their lives reacting to perceived slights and conflicts. They have learned somewhere that the way you deal with anything is to jump into reactive mode and get mad at people. You’ve probably met someone like this: They see someone across the room and immediately assume that that person is talking about them, so they jump into a rage, get sad or shut down.

Reacting based on assumptions or our inner dialogue is one of the major behaviors that keeps people from connecting with one another. If we spend our time assuming that someone is trying to hurt us we live a very specific kind of life that is based on ongoing hurt and conflict. People live this way for a variety of reasons but mainly because they learned it at a young age and don’t know any other way of doing things, that and a lack of self-awareness. The good news is that you get to choose what kind of life you live starting right now. Here are some tips so that you can move from reactive to calm:

1. Assume people aren’t talking about you.
2. Assume that people aren’t trying to hurt you.
3. Live a life that helps you bring joy to others.
4. Seek professional help to work through why you react to others.
5. Learn to identify the feelings that come up inside you and calm them down.
6. Try not to pre-judge people’s motivations.
7. Have an alternate plan for how you will react positively.
8. Listen to people until they are finished talking; then act.
9. Practice patience.
10. Focus first on building your self-awareness and growing as a person.

There’s nothing wrong with experiencing emotions unless they limit our ability to interact positively with others. Try working on the steps we’ve mentioned and you’ll be on your way to seeing the world in a different light. What will you do to develop self-awareness and stop reacting to everything?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy