Self-Awareness and Your Leadership Style - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Your Leadership Style

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / ,

Your level of self-awareness often predicts your leadership style. Many well-meaning leaders actively resist concepts like delegating, praising people or resolving situations without resorting to punishment because it doesn’t enter their minds that those are real options. Self-awareness helps you choose how you behave rather than doing what you’ve always done. Here are some ideas to help you practice conscious leadership in your professional or personal life:

  • Choose behaviors that lead in a positive direction.
  • Choose behaviors that help everyone win.
  • Choose behaviors that promote equality and balance.
  • Choose behaviors that help you and others learn and grow.
  • Choose behaviors that help create a happier work or personal life.
  • Choose behaviors that treat people with care and compassion.

You get to decide what kind of leadership you practice and you’ll generate results based on your thoughts and behaviors. For example: If you don’t believe in praise then it won’t be very important in your workplace and you’ll get the corresponding results. When you feel healthy and balanced inside, you’ll tend to choose leadership behaviors that yield desirable results and treat people well along the way. What will you do to practice a leadership style that leads in a positive direction?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Avoid Tough Love - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Avoid Tough Love

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

“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 Helps You Not Limit Your Leadership Success - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Not Limit Your Leadership Success

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / , , ,

When I consult for leaders it’s often apparent that they have varying visions of what constitutes leadership. There are those who lack self-awareness and believe leadership is giving orders or getting things done single-handedly, while others believe in teamwork and delegating. There’s no right or wrong approach to leadership, but different actions lead to different results. Here are four things I’ve noticed tend to limit leaders’ success:

  1. They can only do it their way. Leaders come in with one vision or one methodology that they follow regardless of outcome.  This approach limits their ability to find new and more effective ways of doing things as well as using their employees’ input.
  2. They don’t use our employees’ talents. People who come in with a single-minded vision often forget that they’re sitting on a potential gold mine of talent and ideas. When leaders only use their own ideas and perspectives they limit their chances to do even more with the help of their employees.
  3. They don’t praise. Many leaders simply give directives and then wait for things to be done to their satisfaction. The key here is that they focus only on getting things done rather than encouraging and praising employees along the way.
  4. They don’t plan efficiently. Leaders often go in with plenty of good intentions but spend all their time putting out fires. This reactive approach to leadership ensures they will only focus on the latest emergency limits their ability to organize our workplace.

These practices aren’t evil but they are representative of many of our workplaces. Leaders who address the issues we’ve talked about here not only find they increase their chances of success but they also enjoy their jobs more. What will you do to develop self-awareness and increase your leadership success?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and What Kind of Person You Are - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and What Kind of Person You Are

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

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-Awareness and Fixing Your Relationship Problems - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Fixing Your Relationship Problems

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness / , , ,

A lot of people who lack self-awareness try to fix their relationship problems on their own rather seeking help. They may ask for advice from friends or family but with limited success because people can only offer help based on what they know and, even if they mean well, they usually don’t really know how to fix a relationship problem. Most people end up not asking for help at all because they think their only options are to take care of things themselves or get bad advice from others.

The good news is that there are resources available to you to fix relationship problems. The stigma associated with looking for outside help is going away and people are more open to getting help from an impartial, outside person. The benefit of getting outside help is that the person does not have any interest in the outcome other than helping you find solutions that work for you. Therapy is an excellent way to work out issues but there are also alternatives such as coaching when you don’t require mental health related services. I always recommend that if people have a mental health issue they benefit from seeing mental health professionals. For issues related to our functioning in relationships a coach can often be helpful.

When I consult for people we don’t go into mental health issues or dwell in the past. It is not because these things aren’t important but rather because self-awareness consulting deals with the here and now and what you can do to improve it in the future. I literally help you change the way you do things now and do them in a way that works for you. You make all the decisions with guidance and support.

I work with people to help them figure out a new way of doing things. Self-awareness consulting is helpful for people who just need a supportive outside person who can motivate them to move in the direction they choose. It’s like having a friend listen to you who is actually qualified to help you resolve your problems.

If you have been looking for a way to deal with relationship issues or problems perhaps coaching is a good option for you. A self-awareness consultant helps you get what you want out of your relationships by clearing away that obstacles and helping you design your new path to happiness. Feel free to contact me at the link below if you have any questions about how my consulting can help you transform your relationships.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and fix your relationship problems?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Decide How to Live Their Lives - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Decide How to Live Their Lives

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

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 - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps People Be Less Broken

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

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

The Self-Awareness Guy