Self and Self-Awareness

10 Signs You Lack Self-Awareness - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

10 Signs You Lack Self-Awareness

Here are ten signs you lack self-awareness:

  • You always feel off-balance.
  • You can’t seem to control your emotions: You’re angry, or sad, or scared a lot of the time.
  • You do things to not feel your emotions.
  • You have unresolved issues in your life that affect you and others adversely.
  • You feel like you’re living life as someone else.
  • You don’t know who you really are deep inside.
  • There is a lot of conflict in your life, within yourself and with others.
  • You feel like you’re not following your true path in life.
  • You’re unhappy with how your life is going.
  • You listen to others instead of listening to your inner voice.

If you recognize yourself in any of these items then you have a great opportunity to take an honest look at yourself and start working on being the best version of you possible. Self-awareness isn’t something that happens automatically, you have to identify the areas in your life that require some attention and work on them so you become a healthier more well-rounded person.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the Secret to Success in Life - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and the Secret to Success in Life

The secret to success is that there’s no big mystery to it, all you have to do is increase your self-awareness and do three basic things: follow your dreams, have a plan, and take action. These are the hidden secrets that influence the people who are self-aware and lead happy and fulfilled lives. As you actively work on these vital steps you will find yourself unraveling the mysteries of your own success.

1. The first secret is following your dreams. At the very core of every person who reaches unlimited success is a powerful connection with his or her dreams. We can spend a lot of time making huge sums of money or acquiring influence and status but it can leave us empty at the end of the day. The one thing that makes people feel consistently successful is the ability to do what they want in life, something that speaks to them on a very deep level. When you begin pursuing your most personal desires you start the process of validating yourself. This relationship is far more important than the accumulation of wealth and status. It relates to your natural talents and the amazing abilities you were born with. When you are functioning from your innermost dreams you are connecting with something bigger than any obstacle you could ever encounter. You suddenly open up the doors of opportunity because you are moving in the direction you were put on this earth to follow. Suddenly people will recognize you for your gifts and talents rather than based on the stuff you merely do to get by.

2. The second secret is taking action. Every single endeavor in human history required that someone take some kind of action. Nothing ever happens on purpose unless someone actually does something. While this may seem like a simple concept, millions upon millions of people wake up every morning and do nothing to advance their goals and dreams in any sort of organized manner. They get up and work hard and dream a lot about how things might be but they never take that first deliberate step toward their dreams. It may sound basic, but all it takes to move in any direction you want is your commitment to actually do something instead of just thinking about it. You unlock an amazing amount of power when you move from simply thinking or hoping something will happen to taking action in some way. Taking action means doing something that proves you are moving toward your objectives.

3. The third secret is having a plan. We all need a way to keep our momentum going when we are pursuing our dreams. There is a certain power to writing things down and committing to follow them that is absent when the ideas are simply bouncing around in our head. A coherent plan helps us keep moving and increases the likelihood that we will reach our goals. Make sure you create a document that is brief, clear and to the point. Keep things simple and remember to only include a manageable amount of tasks. Also keep in mind that you don’t have to do everything at once, one specific task at a time is enough. Design your plan so that you fully complete one part of it before moving on to the next. Take time to celebrate when you finish one part and then proceed confidently to the next. When you have a coach for what you are going to do the world suddenly becomes less scary because you have an actual series of steps you can follow.

The powerful secret of success is that you can be successful if you have the self-awareness to follow your dreams, formulate a plan, and take action. When you follow these basic steps you open up the door to opportunities you never knew existed and weren’t available to you until you decided to start the process. Achieving your dreams requires conscious thought, deliberate action and consistent practice. The secret is that you get to decide when you start courageously moving toward success.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be successful in a way that is meaningful to you?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Living Your Dream Life - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Living Your Dream Life

Did you know you can start living your dream life today? You don’t have to settle for whatever comes your way when you choose to use self-awareness to look deep inside yourself and identify what your passion is in life. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to start making your dreams come true:

  • What are my innate talents and abilities?
  • What is one thing that brings me great joy in life and reflects who I am deep inside?
  • What is the thing I love doing so much that time flies by?
  • If I could choose any one thing to do in life, what would it be?
  • What ideas do I have to incorporate more of this thing into my life?
  • What single action am I willing to take today to move in the direction of my dreams?

Think about questions like these to clarify what you really want to do and how you’ll start the process. Living your dream life means building self-awareness about who you are and what path you want to take. Once you understand yourself well you’ll be able to incorporate more and more of what you love into your life.

There will be pitfalls along the way and it will take time and effort to create your dream situation but, if  you’re willing to keep looking at yourself and taking small steps, you’ll live much more authentically. Remember that you don’t have to make everything happen at once, just keep moving forward consciously.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and start living your dream life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Increasing the Love in Your Life - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Increasing the Love in Your Life

When you possess self-awareness, you deeply understand and are able to positively manage your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. This sense of well-being allows you to let more love into you life, as in loving yourself and others.

Love is a wonderful part of self-awareness. Imagine your life filled with many kinds of love including:

  • Love for yourself.
  • Love for and from others.
  • Love for your career.
  • Love for the planet and all its creatures.
  • Love for life.

Replacing the feelings of fear and anger in your life with love allows you to feel great about yourself and others. Your life moves in entirely different ways, wonderful opportunities and experiences open up to you, full of joy and fulfillment. Love can literally change your life if you let it in. What will you do to develop self-awareness and invite love into your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Ask for Help - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Aware People Ask for Help

When I help people figure out what they want out of life they often ask me why some people achieve their goals and some don’t. The answer is that successful people have the self-awareness to ask for outside help so that they can learn new ways of doing things that break the patterns they’ve established. As a self-awareness consultant, I am familiar with people’s power to change their lives dramatically with the help of someone supportive helping them reach their goals.

It’s great to have friends and family but there is an additional valuable place for having someone helping us who does not know us. It introduces an objectivity and clarity we can’t get from people who know us. Some people look for help from a therapist, for others a consultant is a great option, for others a class or group of some kind helps them acquire new insight. The people who most succeed at changing things in their lives are those who actively build self-awareness and seek outside support that opens their minds to new possibilities.

An outside, supportive person can help us see things from a more neutral point of view and can identify things that people who know us don’t see. If we are stuck in the same rut it’s often refreshing to just have a neutral, outside perspective that gives us clear feedback. Try it sometime: think of something you want to work on in your life and then reach out to an outside helper who can help you get where you want to go. The only thing you have to lose are the negative things you endure now.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and ask for help?

Cheers,

Guy

Developing Self-Awareness: 2 Exercises - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Developing Self-Awareness: 2 Exercises

Here are two exercises for developing self-awareness.

1. The Personal Inventory

The way this self-awareness exercise works is that it requires that you actively look at yourself and start working on the things that don’t lead in a positive direction in your life. The process of working on certain issues helps you gain better insight into the areas of your life that might benefit from some extra attention.

  • In a notebook divide a page into two columns, label one column “Positive” and the other “Other Than Positive.”
  • Write down all the positive things you feel, think, and do in the “Positive” column.
  • Write down the things you think, feel, and do that lead in an “Other Than Positive” column.
  • Read the items in the “Positive” column and praise yourself for each item.
  • Look at your “Other Than Positive” column and pick the one item that seems the easiest to deal with. Once you pick a single item, decide on one action you will do to improve that item. Each subsequent day keep picking something to deal with that same item until it is no longer an issue that leads you in a less than positive direction.
  • Once your “Other Than Positive” item is no longer an issue, go back to the first step and repeat the entire process.
  • Repeat this exercise until you have very few “Other Than Positive” items.
  • Remember that developing self-awareness takes months, years, and will likely require a lifetime of commitment to learning and growing.

2. Looking Deep Inside

In this self-awareness exercise you get to take a deeper look at your emotions. A key element of self-awareness is the ability to look deep within and understand who your really are deep down inside and why you feel, think, and do what you do. Here’s how it works:

  • Think of an issue that creates a lot of discomfort in your life.
  • Label that issue with one of these four emotions (whichever fits the best): Anger, Sadness, Happiness, Fear.
  • Once you have chosen a single label then allow yourself five minutes to think of the issue and the emotion attached to it. After five minutes, write down your impressions of what you felt.
  • Keep repeating this exercise until you have a strong sense that the discomfort is no longer there or is greatly lessened.
  • Pick another issue and repeat the entire process.
  • Remember that this isn’t a one-time activity, it requires long-term commitment to developing your self-awareness.

You’ll find these exercises are challenging, some people even find them nearly impossible at first, but that’s the whole point of self-awareness; it’s a gradual process that takes time and repeated effort. So that you don’t get overloaded, I would recommend you work on these exercises on alternating weeks until you get really good at doing them, at which time you can do them simultaneously; the idea is to keep working on them until they become second nature. You’ll find that your self-awareness will naturally increase as you do the exercises. Please feel free to share your progress in the comments section below this post or contact me directly, I’d love to hear how you’re doing.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Parents Know How to Talk with Their Kids - Unlock Your True Potential: Empowering Tips for Building Self-Awareness

Self-Aware Parents Know How to Talk with Their Kids

Many parents who lack self-awareness forget the cardinal rule of talking with children: listen to them. We get so caught up in coaching and directing their behavior or protecting them that we forget that they are people. The single most important key to talking with your kids is listening.

How to Listen

  1. Don’t talk.
  2. Don’t judge.
  3. Invite your child to talk about anything her or she wants with no repercussions.
  4. No commenting or editorializing allowed from you. No stories about when you were their age.
  5. Invite them to keep talking to you anytime they want.
  6. The only things you are allowed to say are, “Tell me more,” “I understand,” and “Thank you for talking with me,” or “I love you.” Try nodding and smiling as ways to invite them to talk more.
  7. Try to avoid applying your beliefs to what they say.
  8. Thank them and tell them you love them. Then say nothing else.

Practice these skills over time (at least one month, or longer) and always remember to tell your child you love them and that you are open to listening to them. If they don’t want to talk, respect their wishes and let them know that you are there when they are ready. When they do finally trust you, they will open up and then you can apply the ideas above. Once you’ve established and modeled that you can listen they may even invite you to offer your wisdom. They have to believe that you care enough to listen to them first.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and listen to your kids?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy