Self-Knowledge

10 Self-Awareness Examples

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People often ask me to give them examples of self-awareness, here are ten:

  1. You recognize your strengths.
  2. You’re able to identify your areas for improvement and actively work on them.
  3. Your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors move you in a positive direction.
  4. You’re comfortable around other people’s emotions, even when they’re intense.
  5. You are always working on understanding yourself better and living consciously.
  6. You actively seek help to resolve the hurts from your past.
  7. You understand how your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors affect not only you, but also others.
  8. You are able to manage your self-talk and distinguish between reality and fiction.
  9. You are comfortable socially.
  10. You are pursuing a life that reflects who you really are deep down inside.

Developing self-awareness doesn’t just happen by reading a book or attending a workshop, it’s a process of working on yourself and understanding how you function and how it affects you and the world around you. What are you doing to increase your self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

Why Is Self-Awareness Important?

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Why is self-awareness important? Here are some lovely reasons:

  • You get to live life as yourself.
  • You can pursue your dreams.
  • You honor yourself every day.
  • You look within for answers.
  • You live a more fulfilling life.
  • You are in touch with your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.
  • You understand why you do stuff.
  • You enjoy positive relationships.
  • You’re able to move in a positive direction.
  • You live consciously instead of reacting to everything that comes your way.
  • You understand your strengths and areas for improvement.
  • You’re constantly growing.
  • You treat yourself and others well.
  • You genuinely like yourself.

Self-awareness is of vital importance because it’s like the difference between being able to breathe or not. When you possess self-awareness you can enjoy who you are and live a deeply rewarding life. What would you add to this list?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Taking Action Go Hand in Hand

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Self-awareness and taking action go hand in hand because, when you understand your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you are in a great position to do things to move your life forward consciously and positively.

The only difference between those who succeed and those who stay stuck is taking action. I’m always amazed at the incredible things people can do when they decide to act to make their dreams a reality. Here’s what some smart people say about the subject:

Annie Dillard:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Aristotle:

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Alfred Adler:

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

Anatole France:

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Ann Radcliffe:

One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.

Go out today and take action to make your dreams a reality, you’ll be glad you did. Remember that you don’t have to do everything at once, just do one small thing each day and, over time, you’ll see the results in your life. What will you do to develop self-awareness and take action?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Loving Yourself

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Loving yourself is easier when you possess self-awareness because you understand who you are at a deeper level and are able to live authentically. A lot of people walk through life barely liking who they are and it shows in their thoughts and actions toward themselves and others, including behaviors like self-sabotage, unhealthy relationships and not pursuing their dreams. If you don’t love yourself, you’ll have a difficult time discovering the real you because it will remain hidden until you’re ready.

The key to being happy in life and genuinely loving who you are is to understand your strengths and areas for improvement. Take a careful look at the things you think, feel and do that bring you success and those that don’t and work on improving the areas that need some attention. Loving yourself is an ongoing process of looking at yourself, keeping the things that build you up and letting go of the stuff that holds you back. As you do more positive things in life, you’ll grow to admire the person you’ve become. What will you do to start loving yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

The Importance of Self-Awareness in Social Work

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As someone with a family services, program management, and personal/professional development background, as well as an MSW, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a wide range of people, both self-aware and otherwise. A question that often crossed my mind as I worked with social workers is whether they understood the importance of self-awareness in social work. It’s vitally important for social workers to possess a high degree of self-awareness because it directly impacts their clients. I’ll share some real-world examples of social worker behaviors that are both self-aware and unaware. Here are some things social workers who lack self-awareness do:

  • They become enmeshed with clients to the point that they hamper the client’s progress.
  • They are unable to determine where they end and the client begins due to a lack of healthy boundaries.
  • They aren’t aware of how their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors affect them or their clients.
  • They function based on the need to dominate or control instead of facilitating.
  • Their self-esteem is derived from their clients liking or looking up to them.
  • They enable their clients’ less-than-positive behaviors.
  • They prolong the worker/client relationship way past its expiration date.
  • They make clients dependent on them.
  • They are in constant conflict with co-workers, subordinates, and colleagues.
  • They make things more difficult than they have to be.
  • They refuse to work with other professionals due to their own personal issues.
  • They work out their personal issues on their clients.
  • They lack empathy.
  • They like power a little too much.
  • They make things difficult for others, often acting as a gatekeeper.
  • They yearn for public recognition.
  • They set up fiefdoms and zealously guard their power.
  • They haven’t healed their own hurts before trying to heal others.
  • They’re personally unhappy.

Although these behaviors are common in many fields, they are especially counterproductive in client/worker relationships because the client’s wellness and success in life is at stake. On the other hand, social workers who possess self-awareness do things like:

  • Constantly work on healing their own hurts so they can be as healthy as possible for their clients.
  • Establish and adhere to healthy boundaries.
  • Do things that encourage collaboration with other professionals to help the client.
  • Possess empathy.
  • Are deeply aware of and are able to manage their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors and understand how they affect their clients.
  • Are not interested in power, control, or having to appear special in some way.
  • They make things easy for people, going the extra mile to be helpful in a professional way.
  • They understand clients’ issues are not theirs.
  • They have healthy, professional relationships with clients.
  • They facilitate the process of clients’ finding their own answers.
  • They know how to help someone and get out of the way.
  • They’re balanced, happy, healthy people.
  • They enjoy healthy personal and professional relationships.
  • They understand, value, and possess self-awareness.

One of the main reasons I write this blog is that I’ve seen my fair share of people damaging other people and I told myself many years ago that I would do what I could to help people become more aware of what they were feeling, thinking, and doing so they could live positively and build a better world for everyone. Ultimately, the importance of self-awareness in social work is that it greatly increases the well-being and chances of success for the social worker, the client, and the world.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Hope

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Self-awareness gives you hope because you’re able to live proactively and consciously rather than enduring whatever comes your way. If you don’t know yourself very well you might see the world as a vast, unknown, scary entity that has total control over you, which might lead you to say things like:

  • Life is hard and it will always be.
  • I have no opportunities.
  • I can only rely on myself.
  • Things will never change.

Fortunately, you have a lot of control over your thoughts, feelings and behaviors and you can view even the most difficult situations from whatever perspective you choose. For example, you could convert the statements above to ones that indicate you understand how much power you have:

  • Life may be hard at times but I can decide to move forward positively.
  • I’m going to look for the opportunities in this situation.
  • I know I can rely on myself but I can also connect with others.
  • I can make change happen.

Each of these sets of examples represents a different worldview: One is based on the assumption that the world is harsh and negative and the other suggests that you can affect your environment even if things are difficult. When you understand yourself really well, you shift from living passively to choosing how you experience the world. What will you do to increase your hopefulness through self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

10 Signs You Practice Self-Awareness

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It’s easy to tell who values self-awareness because they behave in ways that are uplifting for them and the people around them. Here are ten signs that you practice self-awareness:

  1. You know where you end and others begin.
  2. You behave positively toward yourself and others.
  3. You have compassion and empathy for others.
  4. You are able to see other people’s points of view.
  5. You keep your personal stuff out of your interactions with others.
  6. You heal your own hurts.
  7. You know who you really are deep inside.
  8. You live authentically.
  9. You help yourself and others grow and succeed.
  10. You get up each morning and think, feel and behave like the real you.

If you do these things habitually, you’re a person who possesses healthy self-awareness. If you don’t, no worries, just pick one area to strengthen and practice until you become good at it. The key to building self-awareness is to always be cognizant of what you’re doing and whether you’re living positively and genuinely. What will you do to keep building self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy