Self-Knowledge

Self-Awareness Can Help You Be Happy Right Now

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A topic that often comes up during my self-awareness consulting sessions is how to be happy, preferably right now, as if there is such a thing as easy joy. Achieving true happiness is a state of being that develops over time and requires doing things like:

  • Following your dreams.
  • Taking action each day to make your dreams come true.
  • Being kind to yourself and others.
  • Being creative.
  • Getting to know yourself.
  • Building self-awareness.
  • Healing your hurts.
  • Being the real you.

I’ve found that you can increase your happiness right this moment by making sure you’re doing things that reflect who you are deep inside, which means that you’re increasing your self-awareness and living authentically. What will you do to develop your self-awareness and be happy?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Be Less Discouraged

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Self-awareness can help you feel less discouraged as you follow your path in life. My clients often ask me why they are not gaining self-awareness at the rate they would like to. I let them know that it’s natural to have an ebb and flow in one’s personal growth. It takes time and effort to work on one’s problems and become mentally healthy.

Developing self-awareness doesn’t happen overnight but the wonderful thing is that, as you work on becoming more self-aware, you learn and grow along the way without even knowing it. Each moment you spend healing your hurts and learning about your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors helps you understand yourself better and move toward living a rich, rewarding life.

It’s really normal to think you are making no progress in your quest for self-awareness . It happens because we get stuck in the day-to-day tasks and events in our lives. Self-awareness emerges over time, it doesn’t happen overnight or without conscious effort. When you feel like nothing is working tell yourself to keep taking action. It’s the action of continuing to move forward that will strengthen you and move your life in a positive direction.

What will you do to develop your self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Choose Courage over Fear

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Self-awareness helps you choose courage over fear because life has a way of creating challenging situations whether you want them or not. When these difficult circumstances present themselves you have a choice as to whether you think and behave based on fear or courage. Each approach leads you in a different direction and only one helps you live a more balanced, happy life. Lets look at a few examples of the difference between the two:

Fear: I’ve always done it this way.
Courage: I can try something new.

Fear: I hate change.
Courage: I see change as an opportunity.

Fear: That issue is too daunting and complex.
Courage: I can resolve the issue little by little.

Fear: I need to control everything and everyone around me.
Courage: I’m fine with letting go of control.

Fear: That’s unfamiliar and strange.
Courage: I can learn something from it.

Fear: Self-awareness is for people who eat granola.
Courage: I’m willing to learn about myself and others.

Living in fear limits your opportunities while thinking and acting with courage helps you deal with any situation that comes your way. The idea in life is to think and behave in ways that help you be more flexible and resilient, not less. What will you do to develop self-awareness so you can choose courage over fear?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Getting Rid of the Negative Messages in Your Head

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Self-awareness can help you get rid of the negative messages in your head because, when you get to know yourself well and understand your strengths and areas for improvement, you’re able to make adjustments to move in a more positive direction.

Have you ever met someone who seems to have strong self-esteem but depends on someone else for his or her happiness or behaves in ways that don’t lead in a positive direction? We all do things on an unconscious level that keep us from succeeding. The messages you learned early in life can hold you back and keep you from achieving what you want. The good news is that you can change those messages by following some basic steps.

  1. Identify the message. Ask yourself, “Where did this message begin.”
  2. Ask yourself if the message is true. For example, do you really not deserve to succeed?
  3. Think of the opposite of the message and do that instead. Make it a positive message that gets you where you want to go.
  4. Every time a negative, limiting message comes into your head do these steps until it is gone.

It will take you some time to get good at changing your messages but you will do it if you stick with it over time. Plan on spending at least 30 days practicing the new behavior and then check in with yourself to see how you’re doing. You may be very happy with the results. If you’re not, it looks like you have another message to work on. What will you do to build your self-awareness and get rid of the negative messages in your head?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Can Help You Talk about Difficult Topics

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Self-awareness can help you talk about difficult topics with others because, the more you know yourself, the better able you are to have complex conversations with others.

There’s a frequently recited adage that you shouldn’t talk about religion and politics in polite company, advice created by people who don’t know how to talk about charged topics without getting angry or hurt. The key to effective communication is for the participants to have the self-awareness to realize that other people’s ideas, beliefs, values and opinions aren’t necessarily an attack on their own, just another perspective. Here are some ideas that will help you talk about difficult issues in your personal or professional life:

  • Go in with good intentions. Keep an open mind and engage in the conversation with the idea that you’re going to learn something and that you’ll do everything you can to make sure things go well.
  • Assume the other person isn’t trying to hurt you. Interact based on the premise that you’re having a positive two-way conversation, not that you’re walking into a life-threatening ambush.
  • Listen to the other person. Don’t talk, interrupt or give your opinion, just listen actively and learn about the other person’s point of view whether you agree with it or not.
  • Practice self-awareness. Be aware of your own thoughts, feelings and actions and manage them so you don’t get angry or defensive.
  • Stay calm. Communication doesn’t have to be a contact sport, it can be calm and pleasant.
  • Resist the urge to fight back. Increase your chances of interacting positively by keeping yourself under control.
  • Avoid participating in an argument. Look at the conversation as an opportunity to learn about another perspective instead of creating conflict.
  • Realize the other person’s point of view is just a point of view. No matter what someone says, it doesn’t mean that you have to change your values or beliefs.
  • Know when to back off. Sometimes people aren’t ready or able to talk about a certain topic. Let them know you’re available to talk when they’re ready.

Individuals who understand and master these skills are able to talk about any issue because their communication style shifts from confrontational to actively listening to what other people are saying. Virtually nothing someone else says merits an explosive reaction unless you decide it does. The key to effective communication is to move from reacting viscerally to consciously working on listening, learning and getting along with the other person. What will you do to increase your self-awareness so you’re able to talk about difficult topics?

Cheers,

Guy

Using Self-Awareness to Overcome Your Fears

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You can use self-awareness to overcome your fears because, the more you understand your emotions, thoughts, and actions, the easier it is to not be scared of things.

Fear often keeps us repeating the same patterns, even to the extent of repeating behaviors we dislike. We get stuck doing the same thing over and over and don’t see a way out. Overcoming fears is a challenge we avoid because we tend to hang on to the familiar rather than the unknown.

The paradoxical thing is that the unknown can often lead us in new and wonderful directions we couldn’t even imagine when we started out. Facing your fears is a matter of finding out what they are, where they come from and taking action to move in a different direction. Here is what some smart people have to say about the subject.

Bonaro W. Overstreet

Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves.

Don Miguel Ruiz:

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are.

Dorothy Thompson:

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.

Eleanor Roosevelt:

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. What will you do to use your self-awareness to move beyond fear?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Being Sensitive

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A lot of people who are labeled sensitive go through life being mocked or belittled for having an extraordinary way of looking at the world. Being sensitive simply means that you have the self-awareness to be in touch with deeper feelings and are able to experience things more intensely and fully.

Being a sensitive person requires a lot of courage because you’ll likely feel things that others are afraid of, don’t want to deal with, or will never get close to experiencing. That’s what makes you unique and wonderful, the ability to examine yourself and the world around you and feel things that are important to anyone who wants to live with self-awareness.

As a highly sensitive person, I feel things in my heart; literally like a flooding sensation in my chest. I’m tuned into what others are thinking and feeling even when they aren’t. There have been times in my life when I was told to squelch these feelings and it made me feel horrible about myself. Luckily, as I kept building my self-awareness, I realized that I could actually be myself and make a career of it, which allowed me to live a meaningful, happy life.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and be a sensitive person?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy