Self-Knowledge

Beginning Your Self-Awareness Journey

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Beginning your self-awareness journey requires examining what you actually think, feel and do in the physical world. It’s one thing to say that you do something but it’s quite another to understand how it affects you and others and consciously decide to direct it. A lot of people recognize that they do certain things but don’t take the additional step of working toward improving what they do or creating change in their lives.

When you’re genuinely building self-awareness, you’re in an ongoing process of examining what you do in life and consciously moving in a positive direction. You listen to your inner voice, let it guide you toward who you really are deep inside, and the rest of your life follows. You can begin this process at any time, all it requires is your decision to look at yourself as objectively as possible. What will you do to begin your self-awareness journey?

Cheers,

Guy

12 Examples of Self-Awareness

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Here are twelve examples of self-awareness:

  • You’re in touch with your feelings and comfortable with them.
  • You know who you are deep inside.
  • You’re not afraid to examine and work on resolving the difficult issues in your life.
  • You consistently work on improving your understanding of yourself.
  • You treat yourself and others kindly.
  • You’re living your dreams.
  • You behave consciously and mindfully.
  • You heal your hurts.
  • You feel like your life is genuinely meaningful and fulfilling.
  • You understand that self-awareness is an ongoing process.
  • You contribute positive things to the world that benefit as many people as possible.
  • You live authentically.

Self-awareness is a state of being where you deeply understand yourself and live based on who you really are deep inside. Each of the examples I’ve mentioned here are things you can work on starting today in order to help you live a happy life. All you have to do is decide to work on one of them and keep going until you’re good at it, then move on to the next item. Over time, you’ll develop your self-awareness.

Cheers,

Guy

2 Self-Awareness Exercises

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Self-awareness refers to your ability to understand how your emotions, thoughts, and actions affect you, the people around you, and the world in general. Here are two self-awareness exercises to help you start getting to know yourself better:

The Writing about an Emotion Exercise

  1. Sit in a comfortable, quiet area with paper and pen and think of some emotion that pops up in your life and causes you some kind of discomfort.
  2. Name the emotion by using one of these four words: happiness, sadness, anger, fear.
  3. Once you’ve named the emotion write it down.
  4. Under the emotion write down three undesirable results that emotion has created in your life.
  5. After each result you’ve written, jot down the actual results you’d like to see, the positive side of things.
  6. Once you have the positives written down, pick one of the positives you’d like to work on and decide on one small thing you can do to make it happen.
  7. Keep taking small actions to reach the positive result you would like.

This exercise works by encouraging you to focus consciously on what emotions you feel and to direct them in a positive direction instead of letting them run your life. The idea is to repeat this exercise for any emotion that is causing you discomfort. It builds self-awareness by asking you to carefully examine what you feel. At first, it will seem hard but, with practice, you’ll get good at repeating these steps.

The What I Did Exercise

  1. Think of a time when you did something that hurt someone, write it down.
  2. Write down how you feel about hurting that person.
  3. Write down what they might have felt.
  4. Write down ten positive things you could have done instead.
  5. Picture the the scenario in your mind again and insert each of the alternatives into the scenario. Repeat the process through all ten positive alternatives.
  6. Write down what you would do differently if that kind of situation arose in your life again.

This exercise encourages you to examine some action you did in the past that hurt another person and think about what you might have done differently. It raises your self-awareness by asking you to consider what you did and provide a positive alternative. It also asks you to think about other people’s perspectives and how they might have seen the event.

Try doing these two exercises a couple of times a week until they seem second nature. The idea is to continue becoming more self-aware by carefully examining what you feel, think, and do.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Know What Emotional Intelligence Is

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What is emotional intelligence? You know that feeling you get inside when you encounter an emotion and you’re able to experience it fully without falling apart? That’s what it is. Self-aware people know what emotional intelligence is because they are in touch with what’s going on inside themselves and how it affects what they do each day.

You are a human being that has emotions. In an ideal world, you would deal with or manage your emotions so that they always lead in a positive direction, but that doesn’t always happen because you likely haven’t been taught what to do when you or others feel things that are scary or uncomfortable.

You were raised in a certain way and move in circles that tell you what role emotions should have on your life. The problem is that the information you get about how to feel things may be fatally flawed.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and effectively deal with or manage your emotions when they arise, and do the same for others. It means you’re an emotionally stable person who isn’t afraid of feeling things or interacting with people when they’re experiencing their own emotions.

As you continue your journey through life you’ll find that it will benefit you greatly to learn how to manage your emotions in a positive way. What will you do to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence?

Cheers,

Guy

Insecure People Lack Self-Awareness

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Insecure people lack self-awareness and are often afraid of other human beings, new situations, and different ideas. Self-aware individuals are comfortable with diversity and change and are able to get along with a wide range of people.

Insecurity chips away at our self-esteem and keeps us stuck feeling poorly about ourselves. It can even affect our relationships because it inserts and unhealthy element into the relationship. Insecurity can be defined as when someone feels that they are not worthwhile. People feel insecure when they are scared, feel threatened or feel like they are not important.

Some people withdraw when they are insecure, others lash out. Regardless of how we behave, insecurity is about having a how we feel about ourselves. So what can we do to feel better about ourselves? Think of the following ideas to increase your self-awareness and self confidence, and reduce your insecurity:

Characteristics of Secure People
Aren’t threatened by others.
Listen well and don’t require attention by talking.
Don’t require attention all the time.
Are comfortable with other people’s success.
Don’t feel they have to win.
Don’t put other people down to make themselves feel better.

Characteristics of Insecure People
Threatened by others.
Talk a lot to get attention.
Need to be the center of attention.
Jealous of others’ success.
Competitive, always need to win.
Put people down to feel better.

Think of yourself, where do you fall on these two extremes? If you see yourself on the insecure side, don’t worry, all you have to do is increase some of the positive traits. Even very insecure people can feel better about themselves by doing things that allow them to build self-awareness and experience their own success.

I suggest to my clients that they find out something they like to do and pursue it. Learn from the successes and challenges in life and you will learn how to feel great about yourself. Feeling secure takes some practice but the rewards are amazing.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and feel less insecure?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the Record of Your Actions

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An important part of self-awareness is understanding how your behaviors affect not only you, but others as well. As you go through life, you create a record of your actions:

  • The way you treat yourself and others.
  • Whether you live authentically or not.
  • Whether you heal your hurts or run from them.
  • Whether you follow your true path in life.
  • The beneficial vibes you spread.
  • The good deeds you do.
  • The quality of your relationships.
  • Your inner health.
  • The depth of your understanding of yourself.
  • Your level of kindness, compassion and balance.

Each one of your actions reflects who you are at that particular moment. The pattern you establish throughout your life becomes the verifiable record of whom you chose to be. It’s up to you to consciously decide how you behave in life and whether you leave a positive imprint on the world around you. What will your actions say about you?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Consulting Produces Long-Term Results

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Many leaders hire a self-awareness consultant for a session or two only to find that they produce little or no long-term results. Most leaders and their employees are highly motivated and conscientious professionals who genuinely want their training programs to succeed but who habitually focus on short-term patches instead of long-term programs that benefit their organizations over time.

Short-term thinking permeates many of our workplaces. I’ve had more than a few leaders who lack self-awareness ask me to transform their workplaces and employees in a single, three-hour session, and they actually believe it can be done. It takes considerably more time and effort for consulting to take hold in any organization. As with any behavior, it takes time to shift our thinking and replace it with new actions. Here are ten ideas that will help you make the most of your work with a self-awareness consultant and create long-term results:

1. Self-awareness consulting works best when it’s ongoing. A one-time session might be mildly effective if you’re teaching people a specific workplace task but it doesn’t create long-term changes in thinking and behavior. Learning any new skill (such as how to communicate well, manage effectively or build teams) takes deliberate practice over time.

2. Help your employees keep practicing the new skills. Your staff members benefit from your support to keep the consulting going. Try to set people up for success by giving them opportunities to practice the material instead of expecting them to be perfect immediately after one or two sessions.

3. Self-awareness consulting starts with leadership. No initiative succeeds in an organization if leaders aren’t fully committed to participating actively in the program. If you’re not involved on an ongoing basis, then your staff members will think the program doesn’t really matter.

4. Don’t hire a self-awareness consultant on the cheap. You don’t have to spend excessive amounts on trendy experts just show your employees that you’re willing to invest in their growth and development. It’s more productive to pay more for an ongoing, quality consulting program than many inexpensive and ineffective ones.

5. Focus on specific workplace behaviors. You either practice positive behaviors in the workplace or go down some other path. Focus on hiring a self-awareness consultant that helps leaders and employees behave in positive ways and build a more productive work environment.

6. Don’t punish employees with a consultant. Your program will lose all credibility if you force employees to attend as a corrective measure or because you think they did something wrong. Self-awareness consulting is about ongoing educational opportunity and growth, not about disciplining employees.

7. Attendance is highly encouraged. No one is allowed to schedule meetings or be called out from sessions, especially leadership. Make time during the workday so that people can see that the consulting program is worth their time. Leadership attends consistently and sets the example for the rest of the staff.

8. Set specific goals and measure results as you go. Identify one or two areas you want your consulting program to affect and measure what’s happening before and after the training as well as at intervals in the future. Keep practicing what works and make modifications to strengthen areas that need extra attention.

9. Have the self-awareness consultant train you and your staff to keep things going. Design your consulting programs so that key employees gain the expertise necessary to train other staff members. When your staff can train itself you can keep the knowledge spreading indefinitely and continue making refinements.

10. Make the consulting program part of your culture. You decide how important the program is in your organization. If everyone from your leadership down is highly invested in and actively involved in the program, then it will become a natural element in your workplace.

Try these ideas and you’ll enjoy the benefits of self-awareness consulting that creates lasting change in your organization. All it takes is your commitment and the energy to keep it going. What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote long-term self-awareness consulting in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy