Self-Consciousness

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

Self-Awareness and Being Creative

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When you possess self-awareness you’re able to explore your creativity. Being creative requires courage because you have to put yourself out there and expose your ideas to scrutiny and criticism.

Creativity simply means coming up with something that didn’t exist before, it requires a sense of optimism and daring, a willingness to challenge the status quo or prevailing wisdom.

We all have the ability to be creative but some people have been programmed to believe that it’s difficult or even dangerous, some even go as far as holding on to the same way of doing things no matter what the results are.

The great thing about human beings is that we have the ability to generate new ideas and bring them to fruition. We don’t have to stay stuck and we can forge a world based on kindness and compassion instead of fear and suspicion.

People who value self-awareness and being creative are able to pioneer bold movements and envision new solutions to the issues we all face.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and explore your creativity?

Cheers,

Guy

Making Sense of the World around You with Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Making Sense of the World around You with Self-Awareness

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Making sense of the world around you can be a scary endeavor but self-awareness can help you do it because, when you are in touch with why you feel, think, and behave the way you do, you understand yourself, others, and the world around you better.

A lot of people look to external sources without realizing that they have all the answers they need inside. Right this moment, you possess within you the capacity to build your self-awareness and find the answers you need. If you’re trying to make sense of an often chaotic, difficult, tragic, and arbitrary world, you have the ability to do things to soothe yourself and find meaning and purpose. Try these ideas to get you on your true path:

  • Do things that build you up inside.
  • Learn how to love yourself.
  • Find answers to the difficult questions in life inside you.
  • Look internally rather than externally for answers.
  • Realize that the world doesn’t always make sense and often is chaotic and random but that you can find inner peace regardless of the situation.
  • Find your true path in life and follow it.
  • Realize that making sense of the world is a process that begins with first knowing yourself well and then applying your wisdom to everything else.
  • Turn negative situations into opportunities to learn and grow.

Trying doing one of these things and then check in with yourself, then do another. As you keep working on yourself, you’ll be building self-awareness and learn how to overcome any obstacle that comes your way. What will you do to develop your self-awareness and make sense of the world around you?

Cheers,

Guy

Using Self-Awareness to Take Care of Yourself at Work - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Using Self-Awareness to Take Care of Yourself at Work

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Self-awareness can help you take care of yourself at work. We’re not always taught how to look after ourselves at work. We pack our work lives full of activities and tasks but we don’t take the time to nurture ourselves. Building your self-awareness and taking care of yourself is important because it makes you more effective in all areas of your work experience and helps you recharge your batteries.

Try these ideas to bring some balance into your work life and smooth out some of the bumps.

  1. Stop. Take a moment during your day to do nothing and just relax. Lie down, take a nap, go for a walk or just look outside. The idea is to just stop and enjoy a slower pace.
  2. Breathe. Take deep breaths, slow and controlled. Inhale fully and exhale. Think of yourself inhaling serenity and exhaling stress.
  3. Think of something joyful and fun. Sweep aside all the garbled noise that clutters your brain and focus on thinking of something that makes you feel great.
  4. Find a way to vent. Find someone who will listen to you without interrupting and who will simply be there for you to talk about whatever you want.
  5. Celebrate yourself. Do nice things for yourself that don’t cost money. Give yourself a pat on the back and give yourself kudos for the things you’ve accomplished.

The key to taking care of yourself at work is to forget about others and focus on you. Try the ideas we’ve discussed here to introduce some calm into your work life and heal yourself. You deserve it.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and take care of yourself at work?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Healing Your Workplace - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Healing Your Workplace

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Self-awareness, team building, and healing are strongly linked in the workplace because teams can’t function well if everyone is walking around carrying personal grudges and hurts. It often falls on the team leader to help everyone function effectively but it’s nearly impossible if he or she is carrying around a lot of negative energy.

There are many negative workplace experiences that affected people negatively. Individuals sometimes hold on to these feelings for a long time even when they realize intellectually that they would be better off letting them go. I consult with leaders and employees about how they can end this cycle of negative feelings and thoughts and build stronger teams and it almost always begins with healing.

Healing your workplace is one of the most important concepts for you and your employees’ well-being and it begins with having the self-awareness to heal yourself. If you think about it, you deal with people very differently when you are healthy rather than hurt. If you want to create a work environment that is free of hurts from the past, then think about the following questions.

1.  What do I need to heal?

This question will help you define what it is that you need to look at. There is no right or wrong answer, you get to decide what part of you or your workplace is hurt and then you get to heal it. No issue is to small or trivial, if you need to heal it it is a valid starting point. You can have several issues but try to pick one to start on.

2.  How will I heal myself?

There are many avenues you can take to heal yourself and they almost always involve getting help from an outside person who can help you get a clear perspective. You benefit from realizing that you need help and then reaching out to someone who can partner with you to make it happen. There is no right or wrong approach to healing, look for an approach that works for you. Some people talk to a friend, others a therapist and others HR.

3.  How will I know that I am healed?

The goal of healing is to come to terms and feel at peace with the issues you face. You will know you are healed when an issue no longer stirs negative feelings inside you. You will also see improvements in your day to day work life because that issue won’t be affecting you in the same way.  Healing can take time so be patient and keep working on taking care of yourself. Take it easy on yourself and only work on healing one thing at a time. Once you feel better about one thing then you are then ready to move on to the next issue.

Do some careful thinking about these three questions and you will begin the process of building self-awareness and discovering what hurts and how to heal it. The idea is not to reopen terrible wounds and relive those moments, it’s to acknowledge that you have an issue and work on it. Once you heal yourself you’ll be in a great position to help your team do the same. The result is a workplace where people aren’t working out their personal stuff on each other.

How will you increase your self-awareness and start healing your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Are Open-Minded - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Are Open-Minded

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People who possess self-awareness tend to be open-minded because they are able to examine, reflect upon, and even critique themselves. When you’re open-minded you do things like:

  • Examine yourself.
  • Welcome new points of view.
  • Change your mind.
  • See things from various perspectives.
  • Venture into the dark side as well as the light.
  • See each day as an opportunity to explore something.
  • Share your deeper self with the world.

If you’re closed-minded you do the opposite of these things and you live a very different kind of life. One of the reasons I love providing life guidance, workshops, and retreats for people who value self-awareness is that they are receptive to new and interesting ways of seeing things.

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Being Nice

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Self-awareness leads to being nice because the more comfortable you are with yourself the less you’ll get your stuff on other people. It’s really easy to get caught up with the things going on inside your head and acting out on others in an unconscious manner. Maybe you’ve seen a boss fly off the handle at someone or a significant other shout at her partner. These are examples of actions that aren’t self-aware because people are doing them automatically rather than with careful forethought.

Self-awareness means that you’ve taken the time to know yourself so well that you don’t do things unconsciously. You’re happy, balanced and able to treat yourself and others kindly. There’s a myth in our society that being nice is being weak when it’s actually a positive sign that someone is healthy and balanced. Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about the syrupy-sweet niceness of someone who really isn’t happy or is trying to manipulate others, I’m referring to the kind of niceness that comes from someone who feels genuinely and deeply great about themselves. What will you do to be authentically nice?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Treat Others Well - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Treat Others Well

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A big part of self-awareness is to be so happy with yourself that it influences your interactions with others positively. It means that you’re healthy, balanced and able to treat others well. When people are unhappy they tend to put their problems on others and interact in less than optimal ways. The better you feel about yourself, the better you’ll treat others and the more positive results you’ll experience.

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy