Self-Consciousness

Self-Awareness and Trusting Your Inner Voice - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Trusting Your Inner Voice

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Nothing is a beautiful as the voice inside you. Pay attention to it and you’ll live a life of great self-awareness, success and happiness. Ignore it and you’ll move in a very different direction. Your inner voice is that part of you that tells you what you really want to do in life and who you are deep inside.

Self-awareness means paying attention to your inner voice as it guides you toward living authentically and making your dreams come true. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to begin discovering your true path:

  1. If I could choose any career in life what would it be?
  2. What is the talent I possess that I could use to bring joy into my life?
  3. What message(s) is my inner voice sending me?
  4. How would my life be different if I listened to my inner voice?
  5. What will I commit to doing today to achieve what my inner voice tells me to?

As you answer these questions you’ll begin thinking more deeply about the things you find meaningful and fulfilling. Imagine living your life based on what you want to do rather than settling for whatever comes your way or what other people tell you to do. What will you do to listen to your inner voice?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Moving Your Life in the Direction You Choose - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Moving Your Life in the Direction You Choose

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A big part of self-awareness is knowing yourself well enough to consciously move your life in any direction you choose. The way you behave each day predicts the results you will get, whether you succeed or stagnate. Here are some practical things you can do to start your journey:

1. Focus on the thing you want to happen, this is your goal.
2. Determine three actions you can take to achieve that specific goal.
3. Pick one action and start following through on it today.
4. When you’ve achieved one goal, move on to the next.
5. Take time to celebrate yourself and your accomplishment.

The purposeful act of following through and taking action trains your mind to take on challenges. When you achieve a goal it gives you strength and courage to keep moving forward in life, you begin to see the power you have over your circumstances, and it also increases your self-awareness.

The key to success in life is going from the thinking phase to the doing part. Try working through the five steps we’ve outlined and keep doing it until you succeed. Along the way you will be practicing the skills necessary to move your life in any direction you choose.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and move your life forward positively?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Realize Things Can't Make Them Happy - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Realize Things Can’t Make Them Happy

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I frequently consult with people who lack self-awareness and genuinely believe that buying things will make them happy. Time after time they realize that buying stuff really doesn’t affect their long term happiness. Sure, there is a buzz that comes from buying something you like but it doesn’t resolve the underlying things that are vital to fulfillment. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy buying things, it just requires that you put some thought into why you buy stuff. If you buy objects with the hopes of feeling better about yourself, I have some basic questions you can ask yourself to build self-awareness and help you focus on what’s really going on.

1. Do I really need this object?
2. How am I focusing on fixing the deeper issues in my life?
3. Do I feel less whole when I can’t shop?
4. In what ways does buying things affect my emotions?
5. Does shopping help me postpone feeling emotions?
6. Do I hide the fact that I buy stuff from others?
7. Do I have to buy other stuff to keep the buzz going?
8. In what other areas of my life could I devote more energy and thought?
9. Could my money be used for long-term success?
10. How am I defined by my things?

The answers to these questions will help you get some perspective on how your buying habits affect your life. There’s nothing wrong or horrible with buying nice things unless it prevents you from looking at the deeper stuff in life.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be happy from sources other than buying things?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Regaining Hope - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Regaining Hope

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Self-awareness helps you regain hope because, when you understand why you feel, think, and behave the way you do, you are able to move your life in a positive direction and move past the barriers that used to hold you back.

Many of us reach points in our lives where we feel like nothing is going right. I ask people to continue building self-awareness and focus on the things that are going right. It may sound simplistic but much of how we see the world is based on perspective.

Why is it that one person sees an event as a tragedy while another sees it simply as a bump in the road? Perspective. Why is it that one person crumbles when faced with adversity but others thrive? Perspective.

When you give up hope you give up believing that you can affect the world around you. This is only a perception because, in fact, you can always do something to move your life in a different direction. Try these simple techniques to overcome the challenges in your life.

1. Take an inventory of the things you do well.
2. Pick one of the things you came up with to work on.
3. Take steps to finish the work.
4. Move on to the next thing you want to do.

Regaining hope is often about finding your inner confidence. You reconnect to your inner hope and confidence by actually doing things and experiencing the challenge of completing tasks. Doing things literally impels you to do something besides dwell on your loss of hope. Try these steps and move in a direction that satisfies you. You deserve it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and live hopefully?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Being an Independent Thinker - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Being an Independent Thinker

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Self-awareness means understanding who you are and why you think the way you do so you can be your own person. Every time I’ve let other people think for me, I’ve felt powerless and have been unhappy with the results. It’s very common in our society to undermine people’s natural gifts and talents by telling them what to do. There’s no shortage of “helpful” advice to guide those who are seeking something or are just used to getting their answers from the outside, but it robs them of their ability to control their own destinies.

The key to living a meaningful, fulfilling life is to listen to yourself and follow your own path rather than one prescribed by someone else. When I discovered that I could think for myself, I began honoring the person I really am and following my own natural course. I now wake up each day and do what I want to do instead of what someone else tells me to.

People who value self-awareness tend to be independent thinkers who listen to their own inner voices. They do their own thing, arrive at their own conclusions, and live more genuinely happy lives.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be an independent thinker?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Living Superficially - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Living Superficially

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If you possess a high level of self-awareness you’re probably not living superficially, which means that you enjoy life on a deeper level. People who don’t know themselves well tend to think, feel and behave in ways that are almost exclusively superficial and, ultimately, unfulfilling. The more you understand yourself the easier it is for you to go below the surface and appreciate the nuance and complexity inside and around you. There are many benefits to going deeper:

  • You get to live your life based on your real dreams, talents, and abilities.
  • You get to connect with others on a more meaningful level.
  • You enjoy fulfilling conversations and interactions.
  • You know more about yourself and understand others more completely.
  • People know the real you.
  • Your relationships are based on deeper interaction.
  • You share yourself with the world.
  • You’re genuinely happy.

Some people go through their entire lives living superficially and miss out on all the rich, gratifying experiences that living more deeply provides. What will you do to keep increasing your self-awareness and move beyond living superficially?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Experiencing Joy in Life - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Experiencing Joy in Life

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When I coach people who lack self-awareness they often tell me they have difficulty experiencing joy in their lives. Joy is a wonderful concept which I define as experiencing pure bliss and contentment. Joy is also complex in that we could not experience it if we did not also experience pain. A life of perpetual joy would soon begin to feel bland, so we need the ups and downs that come with everyday experience.

How do you define joy? Joy can be that moment at which you feel complete happiness and want for nothing else. It can be gazing into someone’s eyes whom you love or doing something that means a lot to you. Joy is what we experience when we work through difficulties and as we let go of the things that bring us down. Here’s what some smart people have to say about the matter:

Pearl S. Buck:

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Audre Lorde:

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Kahlil Gibran:

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

Feeling joy in life arises from doing the work necessary to heal your hurts and learning how to manage your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. It requires deliberate and continuous effort, but the rewards are wonderful.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and experience joy in life?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy