Self-Consciousness Archives – Page 14 of 31

Self-Aware People Avoid Tough Love

May 30, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

“Tough love” is a horrible concept because it contaminates and corrupts the whole idea of love. A huge part of self-awareness is self-love and the ability to love others. When you are self-aware, you have the courage to work through your toughest issues and you eventually arrive at a place of peace, calm, hope, and love, not some awful scenario of violence and harshness.

The term “tough love” completely destroys the empathy, kindness, healing, softness, and caring that comes with real love. I wish that the people who use the term “tough love” would switch to some more accurate definition such as, “Trying to help someone by imposing punitive and harsh measures for what we say is there own good.”

The problem with “tough love” is that it perpetuates the same hurt and pain that likely created the issue in the first place. Let’s take a teenager acting out as an example: The teen is behaving a certain way (barring medical or psychological issues) because of their experiences in life. I have yet to meet a person who is acting negatively who comes from a wonderfully functional home. When we impose harsh measures on that person to try to correct their behavior, we’re not loving them, we’re hurting them more, which usually leads to more negative behaviors whether internal or external.

What if we decided to build self-awareness and actually love people instead of getting tough with them? I don’t know about you, but I’ve consistently noticed that people prefer to be treated kindly rather than punitively. So many teen (and adult) problems would go away if people would take time each day to simply listen to the person without interruptions or judgments, and commit to doing it long-term.

Punishment only adds hurt to hurt. I firmly believe we should get rid of this whole toughness thing and replace it with self-awareness, empathy, and real love. People often fight me when I suggest that we can care for people, hug them, listen to them, show them they really matter, and let go of the need to control and dominate them. That’s how far we’ve sunk, we can’t even imagine a world where we treat each other with love.

I propose we establish a new pattern of love and unconditional regard instead of inflicting more pain. The only way we’ll ever heal one person, or the world, is to believe and act from a place of true love. Yes, it will take considerable time and effort to make the change, but everything worthwhile requires commitment.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and get away from tough love?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and What Kind of Person You Are

May 29, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

If you consistently work on increasing your self-awareness, you become a certain kind of person, usually someone who possesses the following qualities:

You’re comfortable with yourself because you’ve worked on healing your inner hurts and resolving the challenging issues in your life.
You don’t have to boast about how great you are or be superior to others. Your confidence comes from knowing yourself so well that you just live life as yourself and celebrate others who are doing the same.
You tend to build positive relationships.
Your thoughts and beliefs are integrated with your behaviors. For example: You’re consistently kind to people in all areas of your life.
You’re comfortable with your entire range of feelings.
You function based on hope and compassion rather than fear and competition.
Your public life matches your private life.
You don’t worry about what others think but you also make sure you’re compassionate and work to promote as much good for as many people as possible.
Your life has meaning and purpose.
You genuinely like yourself deep inside.
You live life as the real you.

The great thing about being a human being is that you can choose how you think, feel and behave, which determines what kind of person you are. What will you do to keep building your self-awareness and moving in a positive direction?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Decide How to Live Their Lives

May 29, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

If you possess self-awareness, you decide how to live your life, not anyone else. I wish I had known this a long time ago.

For too many years, I followed everyone else’s lead instead of my own. I would let other people tell me what I should do with my life, what kind of relationships I should have, and how I should think and behave. It made me feel horrible about myself, to the point where I was self-destructing.

People are amazingly adept at telling you, in both overt and more subtle ways, that you shouldn’t be yourself. They make suggestions and demands that keep you from being the authentic you. The key to living a great life is to increase your self-awareness so you can do your own thing and make your own choices. Move forward courageously, and positively, based on what your inner voice is telling you. Do what you love doing.

I’m so glad I figured out that I could follow my own path. What will you do to develop self-awareness and live your own life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps People Be Less Broken

May 28, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

The world teems with people who are broken and don’t yet have the self-awareness to heal themselves and live healthy, balanced lives. To clarify: I don’t believe anyone is actually broken, I’m using the word to refer to people who don’t yet realize they could be significantly happier and more whole by:

Discovering who they really are; their talents, passions, dreams.
Healing their hurts and unresolved issues.
Loving themselves so they can live healthily and feel empathy toward others.
Letting go of the need to be right, win, or dominate others.
Living their lives as themselves, doing the things they really find meaningful.
Behaving with love, kindness and empathy toward themselves and others.
Finding strength inside themselves instead of from an outside source.
Being comfortable with all their emotions.
Doing away with negative thoughts and behaviors.
Waking up each day full of joy, peace and balance.

Imagine how powerful you would be if you did one of these things, or if you did most or all of them. As a person striving to increase your self-awareness, you get to decide what kind of life you live. If you already do the things on this list, you know how wonderful they make you feel and how they help make the world a better place for everyone. What will you do to move past being broken?

Cheers,

Guy

7 Benefits of Self-Awareness

May 27, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

The more self-awareness you possess, the more positive your life can be. Here are seven benefits of self-awareness:

Greater ability to manage your thinking and behavior.
Getting to know yourself more fully.
Dealing with your personal issues at a deeper level.
Becoming healthier and happier inside.
Understanding who you really are as a person.
Living your life authentically.
Treating yourself and others well.

It takes deliberate time and effort to build self-awareness but, the more you get to know yourself, the more in-tune you’ll be with who you really are and what brings you happiness in life. What would you add to this list?

Cheers,
Guy

Self-Awareness and Fear

May 26, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

Many people live in fear rather than actively working on increasing their self-awareness so they can live more courageously and happily. When you know yourself deep inside you have the power to resolve the issues that scare you rather than repeating them unconsciously. Here are some of the signs of living in fear:

Afraid of new experiences.
Fear of people who are perceived as different.
Resistance to new ideas or change.
Strict adherence to routines.
Mistrust of anyone not in one’s inner circle.
Constant feeling of lack of safety.
Uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Lashing out toward people and things perceived as threats.
Reluctance to acknowledge or heal inner hurts.

People don’t do these things because they feel happy and balanced inside, they perpetuate them because they don’t know what else to do. Thankfully, there are ways to alleviate fear and they all start with the person’s willingness to change direction. Eliminating fear is a gradual process where the person in question deliberately decides to move in a positive direction and replace the old thoughts, feelings and actions with new ones that aren’t based on anxiety or alarm. What will you do to not live in fear?

Cheers,

Guy

self-awareness consulting

Self-Awareness Is about You

May 25, 2023 - The Self-Awareness Guy

It’s hard to experience self-awareness if you decide you don’t want to work on it. You have a lot of power to decide what you’re willing to do. You can move forward confidently or you can put up obstacles. The only person who chooses whether you grow and succeed is you.

Take some time to think of the areas in your life you’d like to improve and what would make you feel happy and balanced. Then it’s up to you to determine where you want to start and what you’re willing to do. The key in self-awareness is to live authentically and take action on the things that will help you live a genuine life.

Cheers,

Guy