The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-Awareness and the Tough Love Myth - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and the Tough Love Myth

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When you have a high level of self-awareness you tend to stay away from treating other people harshly, as in the so-called “Tough Love” approach to parenting, leadership or any other interaction where you’re trying to correct someone else’s undesirable or out of control behavior. Tough Love is practiced by millions and looks like this:

  • Inability to empathize with the other person’s situation.
  • Unnecessarily harsh or punitive approach to correcting behavior.
  • Resorting to punishment as first option.
  • Not connecting meaningfully with the other person.
  • Lack of listening.
  • Lack of patience.
  • Short-term thinking versus a long-term strategy.
  • Relying on ultimatums.
  • Dictatorial, telling someone what to do from the outside.

The perplexing thing about Tough Love is that there are so many other, more positive, ways to treat people, for example:

  • Empathizing with the other person.
  • Finding other options besides harsh behavior or punishment.
  • Negotiation and collaboration before punishment.
  • Building positive relationships.
  • Listening often and actively.
  • Being patient.
  • Interacting with people to build healthy, long-term relationships.
  • Realizing that change is an ongoing process.
  • Trusting and encouraging people to come up with their own solutions.

It’s really easy to make someone’s life miserable by punishing them, but it takes much more imagination and skill to encourage them to gain the insight necessary to overcome an obstacle. When you possess self-awareness, you have a choice as to how you interact with others regardless of how difficult their behavior or situation is: You can be kind, empathic, and resourceful, or rigid and draconian. Which approach will you choose?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Not Choosing the Safe Path in Life - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Not Choosing the Safe Path in Life

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There are people who lack self-awareness and spend their entire lives choosing the safe path, which means that they do what they’ve always done, how they’ve always done it. They value feeling safe and secure over all else, including self-awareness, no matter what the consequences. In the process, they lose their true selves and live middle-of-the-road, ordinary, as-uneventful-as-possible existences.

I’ve always wondered why people live like this, and the answer that often arises is: lack of self-awareness leading to fear. When people are scared of stepping outside their comfort zones or of being their real selves, they tend to do everything they can to remain in their cocoon. They never fly because they’re too busy worrying about everything that might possibly go wrong or be slightly different.

One of the reasons I love consulting for people who value self-awareness is that they live more courageously, striving to understand who they are and where they want to go. It’s not that they live dangerously, just that they’re willing to test their own thought processes and face their fears.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and avoid choosing the safe path in life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Forgive - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Forgive

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A big part of self-awareness is learning to forgive, as in:

  • Forgive yourself.
  • Forgive others.
  • Forgive the past
  • Forgive the negative things that happen in life.

Forgiveness means that you are able to let go of the resentments and hurts that hold you back and consciously decide to move forward positively in life. When you forgive, you give yourself the opportunity to be the wonderful person you are deep inside.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Being Happy - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Being Happy

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One of the most important reasons to increase your self-awareness is so you can be happy. There are a lot of people walking around who insist they’re happy but who really are hiding a lot of turmoil just under the surface. Being happy means that the various parts of your life are in balance rather than conflict or tension. It’s nearly impossible to feel genuine happiness if you have areas of your life that always remind you that all is not well.

A big part of self-awareness is working on your warts by taking an honest look at yourself. Heal the parts of you that create tension in your life and you’ll be able to feel joy like never before. It may be difficult or painful at first, but the long-term rewards are immense. What will you do to use self-awareness to be more happy?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Figure out Who You Are - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Figure out Who You Are

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness, Self-Consciousness / , , ,

A big part of self-awareness is discovering who you are and what you want to do with your life. Take some time to think about what’s important to you and where you see yourself going. Make sure to be truthful with yourself. Don’t settle for whatever life throws you, choose to move your life in the direction of your dreams.

Why do any of this? Because you’re worth it. Countless people all over the world spend their entire lives living as someone else or doing what others expect them to do. You can be one of the very few who actually breaks the mold and moves forward authentically.

It takes courage to consciously decide to live life as the real you. There is always the chance that you’ll encounter setbacks. Don’t be discouraged. You’re an amazing person who deserves to do meaningful things and follow your own path. All you have to do is determine who you really are and do small things each day to simply be yourself.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and figure out who you are?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Better Relationships - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Better Relationships

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Self-awareness helps increase empathy which, in turn, helps people build better relationships. When you understand your own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors well, you’re better able to get along with others.

It’s easy to become so focused on our own experience that we forget that other people exist. In relationships, walking in someone else’s shoes is a great approach to really understanding other people and helps us build empathy for others. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s experience and point of view.

People who lack self-awareness often ask me why it is that someone does such and such or this and that. I suggest that we can figure out what people are going through and understand them much better if we just put ourselves in their situation. In this way, we can learn about them without projecting our own needs and opinions on them. Try a few of the following things to increase your empathic ability:

1. Listen actively without talking.
2. Put yourself in that person’s situation and imagine you are going through the same thing.
3. Ask questions that allow the person to tell you more about themselves instead of yes and no questions.
4. Keep in mind that what you are hearing isn’t about you; it’s about them.
5. Try to accept anything the person says as simply their reality rather than something you have to react to.

Try these a few times over a period of time. Empathy is about really understanding that there are other valid points of view in the world. Those perspectives may not be ours but they mean as much to that person as our worldview does to us. Once you can connect with someone else’s reality, you’re own your way to really understanding other people and showing them that you respect where they are coming from.

What will you do to develop self-awareness, increase your empathy, and enjoy better relationships?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Prevents Authoritarianism - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Prevents Authoritarianism

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A lack of self-awareness leads to one of the most toxic dynamics in many of our families, relationships, workplaces, and organizations: authoritarianism, the need to impose one’s will and beliefs on others. It all seems fine and good when it’s a parent trying to teach a child not to run out into the street, but it never stops at that, it almost always metamorphoses into a raging urgency to tell the kid what to do in every circumstance—what to believe, what career to pursue, how to live, what kind of relationships he/she should have, how to think.

Many people who lack self-awareness have a built-in need to impose their will on others, regardless of the consequences. I’ve found that a far more positive approach is to be supportive of people, to be there if they need me and to let them do their thing if they don’t. I trust that individuals are smart enough to make their own decisions and that they will ask for help if they need it. I believe in each person’s ability to chart their own course and live their own lives. My only function is to be there to cheer them on.

I can hear the sound of people screaming for power and control as I write this, so entrenched is the need to dominate others. Self-awareness means having the insight to put your stuff aside so that you can interact positively with others and show them that they matter too.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and avoid imposing authority on others?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy