The Self-Awareness Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Be Genuinely Happy - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Be Genuinely Happy

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Are you really happy or just pretending? Over many years of providing self-awareness consulting to individuals and groups, I’ve noticed that the less happy people are, the more vociferously they will claim to be happy. It’s as if they feel they have to put up a brave front so that nobody will know how much they’re really hurting inside.

You can’t be genuinely happy in life if you lack self-awareness and walk around with tons of unresolved or conflicting issues rattling around in your head. I’ve met many a “happy” person who is so quick to anger that it’s frightening. When you’re truly self-aware and content, you feel, think and behave in ways that are consistent with happiness, for example:

  • You treat others well.
  • You’re kind to people without expecting anything in return.
  • You don’t feel like you have to beat anyone.
  • You help others succeed.
  • You think and behave with empathy.
  • The various parts of your psyche aren’t fighting each other.
  • You don’t suppress your emotions.
  • You feel a sense of well-being and balance inside.
  • You smile and laugh genuinely and often.
  • You live life as the real you.

True happiness comes from a deep sense of peace and well-being inside you. It means that you’ve built up your self-awareness, worked on your hurts, and healed yourself to the point where pain doesn’t rule your life or you’re not trying to ignore it.

What will you do to to increase self-awareness and be genuinely happy?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Being a Happy Leader

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / , ,

Most of the consulting I do is with leaders who value self-awareness and are (or aspire to be) genuinely happy; not superficially jubilant or pretending to be joyful so as not to appear weak. Self-aware, happy leaders create positive workplaces where people feel great about themselves and the atmosphere is welcoming and supportive. They focus on encouraging and sharing joy.

Happy and leadership aren’t two words we see a lot in corporate culture. It’s almost heretical to suggest that someone who is deeply happy could do anything but sit around being all blissed out. So we settle for leaders who aren’t self-aware and don’t even like themselves, let alone their employees or workplaces, and it shows in countless organizations that hobble along dysfunctionally or produce robustly but unhappily.

The key is to merge happiness with effectiveness by building contented leaders who also get a lot done. One of the best ways to begin the process is by encouraging self-awareness, which is a deep understanding of who you are and how your thoughts and actions affect you and others. It guides how you treat yourself and others and what kind of leadership you practice. Let’s look at a real world example to illustrate this idea.

Leader A says he’s a happy-go-lucky person who always enjoys going to work. He has a lot of friends and describes himself as confident and an optimist. He has a work life that looks great to everyone around him but, if he’s forced to take a closer look, he’s only superficially happy. Just below the surface he carries unresolved issues that are so painful he does everything in his power to never look at them. He constantly struggles with voices inside his head that judge him and others and cast a negative shadow on everything he does. He constantly questions his self worth and doesn’t trust others. He thinks his employees are out to get him or make him look bad. He bristles if anyone questions his authority. Leader A smiles on the outside but is constantly battling the demons he harbors inside. Stubbornly self-reliant, he doesn’t seek help and is convinced nobody would be there for him anyway. This type of leader is not living a life of self-awareness because he won’t even begin the process of understanding who he is in order to move forward. He chooses instead to live a life of superficial happiness based on his outward appearance. He treats his employees accordingly.

Leader B also struggles with issues that hurt him deeply and threaten to create internal imbalance. He appears happy to his employees and co-workers but his happiness comes from a very different place. Leader B decided years ago to consciously examine the events that brought him pain. He worked actively to acknowledge and heal his past and created a plan to move beyond the hurt. Leader B feels consistently and genuinely happy because he has healed the wounds from his past. His happiness is real because it’s grounded in deep self-awareness that grew from healing himself. He effortlessly shares his joy with his employees and co-workers.

True self-awareness and happiness come from deep inside you. They are states of being that can only be achieved when you resolve the issues from your past. This doesn’t mean that you need to live in the past, the goal is to pay attention to the things that hurt you earlier in life and fix them so you can move in a positive direction.

Leaders who lead from a place of self-awareness, balance, and bliss not only create kinder workplaces, they also feel better about themselves. Once you leave the burdens of the past behind, it frees you up to experience the workplace in new ways. It’s like going to work without the giant boulder you used to carry around.

Self-aware leadership is not about being selfish or self-indulgent, it’s about understanding who you are and constantly working on becoming the best person you can be so you can lead better. As you become more comfortable with yourself you’ll find that work (and life) will be easier. What will you do to build self-awareness and be a genuinely happy leader?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Being Damaged

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

Self-awareness is a quality that is in short supply in deeply damaged people because they tend to behave unconsciously, based on their inner pain. When someone is hurt at a core level and lashes out based on those inner wounds, it’s a visceral reaction rather than one based on careful deliberation. Here are some characteristics of a deeply damaged person:

  • Thinking, feeling and behaving negatively based on past hurts.
  • Lack of empathy toward others.
  • Rigid thinking and inability to consider other points of view.
  • Inability to heal.
  • Reluctance to change, stuck in current way of doing things.
  • Lashing out at others based on unresolved issues inside himself.
  • Unwilling to examine what causes his inner turmoil.
  • Lack of understanding of what will really make him happy.
  • Seeks approval from people who don’t really value him.
  • Pattern of negative relationships.
  • Harsh, hard, commanding personality on the outside, fragile on the inside.
  • Lies to self and others to justify incongruous, inconsistent thoughts and beliefs.
  • Treats other people poorly, a reflection of his inner feelings about himself.

If you’ve ever met a person like this, you’ve probably gotten a creepy feeling about them, unless you fall into this category, in which case the behavior seems normal. Thankfully, even deeply troubled people can change the course of their lives by replacing their old thoughts and behaviors with more positive ones. It’s a long and arduous process, but anyone with the will to let go of the damage and love themselves is capable of doing it.

The key to being genuinely happy in life is to think and behave positively to make the world a better place for yourself and others. Self-awareness allows you to take a careful, meaningful look at yourself and heal the hurts that keep you from being your true, shiny self. What will you do to move beyond the damage?

Cheers,

Guy

self-awareness consulting

Self-Awareness and Finding Your Path as a Leader - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Finding Your Path as a Leader

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / ,

Self-awareness helps you find your path as a leader because, when you understand who you are and what you really want in life, you are able to identify things that bring you joy at work instead of misery.

Many leaders experience discomfort at work because they are not doing the things they love. This feeling manifests itself in many ways including unhappiness, lack of motivation and loss of focus. The great thing about work is that you can move in any direction you want at any time. Here’s a couple ideas to help you begin your journey.

Define Your Path

How will you know where you want to go if you haven’t defined it yet? Take some time to increase your self-awareness and figure out who you are and what really brings you joy at work. Focus on ways to reach for your dreams. The idea is to work in an environment that reflects what you really love to do and becomes your path. The more you connect with yourself the clearer your path will look.

Listen to Your Inner Voice

We spend so much time listening to what other people think we should do that we frequently ignore the most important voice, our own. Once you focus on developing your self-awareness and connecting with your dreams at work, the voice inside you will let you know if you’re on course or veering in some other direction. Your inner voice gives you clues and insight and tells you when you’re on the path. Learn to listen to it and pay attention to what it says.

Take Action

Once you’re on your path, doors will open for you that you didn’t know existed before. Make sure to take advantage of opportunities that come your way and that fit with your true goals and dreams. Focus on small actions that build your self-awareness and confidence, and always keep in mind that  staying on your path means staying true to yourself.

Following your path is a matter of building self-awareness by getting in touch with who you really are and building a career based on that idea. Remember to take it easy on yourself; it’s OK to go off the path occasionally as long as you’re living the majority of your life on or near it. What will you do to increase self-awareness and be more fulfilled at work?

Cheers,

Guy

Unhappy People Lack Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Unhappy People Lack Self-Awareness

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

Years ago, I had to interact with this unhappy person who was always stomping around in a state of heightened agitation and unease. I remember feeling drained and annoyed by what seemed to be a person who lacked self-awareness, was always in his own little world, and didn’t seem to care about anyone else but himself. I always wanted to tell him that there was so much more to life than being miserable and upset all the time, or that he didn’t have to get his stuff on others.

Then I realized that I was the unhappy person. Regardless of how he was behaving, it was I who was becoming upset about the things he was doing. For many years after this realization, I worked hard on calming and healing myself instead of focusing on others. Where once I would get perturbed by someone like him, I eventually learned to handle it.

The moral of the story is that we have within us the power to react any way we want to any person or event in our lives. Self-awareness means possessing the balance within you to find calm in the heaviest storm. What will you do about the unhappy person in your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Value Diversity - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Value Diversity

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / ,

Self-aware leaders and organizations are aware of the benefits of a diversity in the workplace. Diversity is not just a buzzword that creates extra work for human resources departments, it is a tangible asset that can be used to benefit the organization. First a brief definition of diversity. I have worked with many companies to help them overcome the challenges diversity presents and each company defines diversity differently. I don’t believe in complicating things so I propose the following definition:

Workplace Diversity

The issues related to developing a workplace that is uniformly inclusive and encourages meaningful participation from all individuals in the organization regardless of background.

This brief definition gets rid of a lot of the extraneous noise related to diversity. We tend to ask too many questions and stumble around issues like race, age, gender, disability and culture when all we really want to do is help our employees get along.

Proactive human resources departments understand the benefits of designing policies that draw from the talent pool and encourage productivity and innovation. Why would any company limit the potential of the employees unless it expressly wanted to limit its own success?

If you are in human resources or are a leader/manager looking for ideas to increase inclusiveness then you might consider the following diversity-boosting ideas.

1. Hire based on qualifications required for a specific job.

2. Strive to create as varied a mix of people in your workplace as possible.

3. Ask your managers to actively identify people’s talents and use them.

4. Encourage people to leave their preconceptions at the door.

5. Create opportunities for the growth and success of all your employees.

6. Set up an ongoing training program that helps individuals discuss diversity.

7. Create a comprehensive written strategy for increasing diversity in your workplace.

8. Practice these approaches over time.

Diversity is not a mystery and is easily incorporated into the culture of any organization. It requires self-awareness, buy-in, and commitment starting at the top. The rewards are impressive. Many companies report increased innovation, productivity, morale and team effectiveness when they implement a thoughtful plan to boost diversity.

Diversity is not a destabilizing force, it is an opportunity to harness the power of the many amazing talents of your workforce. Those who understand this potential succeed at high levels. What will you do to develop self-awareness and use diversity to help your organization thrive?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Leads to Real Happiness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Leads to Real Happiness

/ / Self-Awareness / , , , , ,

A lot of people claim they’re happy and then think, say, and do things that indicate they’re not. The thing I like so much about self-awareness is that it’s an actual path to happiness, not just some false assertion. Here’s how it works:

  1. You take an ongoing, honest, candid look at yourself, examining your strengths and areas for improvement.
  2. You identify the parts of your life that don’t lead to joy, these are often the remnants of your formative years when you were hurt in some way.
  3. You feel all the emotions related to your past hurts and actively work on healing them. You go to therapy if necessary.
  4. You begin forming a clear picture of your whole self.
  5. What you feel, think, say, and do all follow the same path and don’t conflict with each other.
  6. You identify who you genuinely are deep inside and what you really want to do with your life.
  7. You take action every day to live life as the real you.
  8. Your level of kindness and compassion toward yourself and others keeps growing.
  9. You feel, think, and behave positively toward yourself and others; not just say you do.
  10. You become so happy inside that you make the world a better place for everyone.

If you value self-awareness, you’re likely doing one or several of these things right now and you’re on your way to living a peaceful, loving, balanced, dynamic, fulfilling, healthy life. What does real happiness mean to you?

Cheers,
Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy