The Secret to Developing Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Secret to Developing Self-Awareness

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Developing self-awareness means moving from living unconsciously to thinking, feeling and behaving intentionally. Countless people live their lives stuck in their comfort zones, repeating behaviors that don’t make them happy and not realizing they have other options. Here are five ideas to help you develop your self-awareness and improve the quality of your life:

  1. Be willing to look at yourself. You can’t live deliberately if you don’t take a look at and understand who you are as a person. Make it a habit to continuously assess what you do well and what areas need some strengthening.
  1. Examine your thoughts. Which of your thoughts help you succeed or make you happy? Which ones hold you back or keep you from living authentically? Evaluate how your thinking affects your life, keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t.
  1. Examine your emotions. Learn how to acknowledge and feel all of your emotions, not just the ones you’re comfortable with. Heal and bring closure to challenging issues or past hurts in your life. The more you learn how to feel and appropriately manage your emotions, the healthier and more balanced you’ll be.
  1. Examine your behaviors. There are things you currently do that yield excellent results and some that keep you from working on your dreams. Keep the behaviors that help you live meaningfully and let go of the ones that lead you off course.
  1. Be willing to make changes. It’s very difficult to grow in any way if you don’t believe change is possible or vital to your personal development. There is always something you can fine tune so you can become stronger and better able to live a fulfilling life.

Self-awareness matters because, when you understand yourself deeply, you’re able to live consciously instead of haphazardly. It’s the difference between stumbling through life repeating the same patterns and creating your own destiny. What will you do to keep developing your self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Respect

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Respect is a word that gets thrown around a lot by people who lack self-awareness but that isn’t always clearly defined. This leaves everyone guessing and doing different things that may or may not lead to respect. We sometimes ask for respect from others or we strive hard to be respectful in our relationships but we don’t always ask for it for ourselves. We may find ourselves in relationships where we give all the respect in the world and get little or none in return.

So what creates this uncertain, rocky landscape when it comes to respect? It’s often caused by lack of self-awareness and because people don’t really know what respect is. I simply define respect as loving yourself and others, and thinking and behaving kindly toward yourself and others.

The important thing is for you to define it in a way that works for you and that you can clearly communicate to others. We often do not receive respect because we do not tell people what we need and we don’t take action to educate them. We essentially give other people the power to treat us negatively and not respect us. These patterns keep repeating because we don’t know what else to do. As we begin our journey toward asking for respect it is helpful to define the term. In romance and relationships, respect may be defined as someone allowing us be who we are, to help us and encourage us to grow, to share our triumphs and disappointments, to listen to us and to make us feel great. So how do we find this elusive thing called respect?

A logical starting point in the quest to respect ourselves is increasing our self-awareness and figuring out what we want out of our relationships and how we want to be treated. If we don’t know what we want, then how can we expect others to fulfill our wishes? Think in terms of defining who you are as a person and what is important to you. The second step toward honoring ourselves is to ask for respect from others. This is accomplished by asking the significant people in our lives for what we need. It’s our job to educate others about how we would like to be treated. As you’ve probably noticed, people aren’t mind readers – we have to tell them what we want. Many of us believe that people will just automatically understand how to respect us but, for the most part, people treat us exactly like we show them how to. We get results based on what we put out. If you act like a doormat you will attract people who will treat you like one. If you act healthy and balanced you will attract that kind of people.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and respect yourself and others?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Possess Emotional Intelligence - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Possess Emotional Intelligence

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Emotional intelligence and self-aware leadership are intimately linked because leaders who are able to deal with and manage their (and other people’s) emotions get more work done with less effort and build healthier workplaces.

Many leaders and employees get nervous when the topic of emotions in the workplace comes up. Emotions are important in the workplace because they affect how we all function and relate to one another. Emotions matter because we aren’t robots, we’re human beings who have feelings whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

The mistake many leaders who lack self-awareness make is trying to ignore, redirect, or suppress their employees’ natural feelings. This creates workplaces where people aren’t sure how to express their emotions and where things can quickly go out of control.

The officially sanctioned workplace feelings are: anger, numbness and fake happiness. Beyond that, people quickly become uncomfortable. Here are some ideas to help leaders and employees develop their self-awareness and emotional intelligence; welcome all the emotions they experience; and deal with them openly and comfortably:

  • When someone has an emotion let it happen and be there for them without reacting negatively or defensively.
  • Listen to what people have to say when they’re feeling an emotion.
  • Avoid ignoring or pretending the emotion isn’t happening.
  • Stay away from saying things like, “Get over it,” “Everything’s OK,” or “Calm yourself down.” Phrases like these tell the person that their emotions don’t matter.
  • Move past the, “This isn’t appropriate in the workplace,” mentality to, “What can we learn from this situation and how can we validate people.”
  • Deal with emotions when they are manageable to avoid having to try to contain them when they’re out of control.
  • Institute a true open-door policy where people can talk with you about what they’re feeling without any fear of retaliation or punishment.
  • Work on your own ability to deal with any emotion that comes your way, including the ones you feel.
  • Set a positive example of how to express emotions appropriately.

The goal at work (and in life) is to view emotions as an indication that something is going on rather than a threat that has to be avoided at all costs. When you and your employees understand that emotions are a normal part of work life, you’ll all build a happier, more balanced workplace where people feel safe to express themselves honestly and openly.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be an emotionally intelligent leader?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Communication in Your Family - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Communication in Your Family

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Self-awareness can improve communication in your family because, when people understand their own and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, they are able to interact positively.

Families are interesting entities in that they can be a source both of great strength but also amazing frustration. The people I’ve worked with have taught me many things about families and I’d like to share a few so that you may find self-awareness, happiness, and balance in your family:

1. It’s OK to ask for what you need from your family.
2. It’s OK to speak up in your family.
3. It’s OK to challenge things you don’t agree with in your family.
4. It’s advisable to talk with family members with the same care and respect you would show to anyone else.
5. We should talk about our family’s challenges and do away with secrets.
6. It’s OK for families to talk about difficult things and try to find ways to function more effectively.
7. Families can change any time they want.
8. Families often benefit from having an uninvolved, outside person give them a fresh perspective on what’s going on and how to fix it.
9. We owe it to ourselves and our families to be as healthy as possible.
10. Why live in misery when we can work toward joy and balance?

Families often get stuck doing things a certain way because they don’t know about any other way to do things. It’s been my experience that there is always hope for happiness and reconciliation. All it takes is some courage and some work.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and improve the communication in your family?

Cheers,

Guy

12 Ways to Increase Your Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

12 Ways to Increase Your Self-Awareness

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Here are some practical ways to increase your self-awareness starting today:

  • Make a list of the things you do well.
  • Think about how you might use your natural talents to live authentically.
  • Make a list of the things you do that might benefit from some improvement.
  • Think about what you can do right now to become wiser and healthier.
  • Decide on one thing you want to improve about yourself and do one small task each day to work on making it happen.
  • Keep an open mind about learning new things and changing.
  • Treat yourself and others well.
  • Be completely honest with yourself about the things you do that lead in a positive direction and the ones that hold you back.
  • Learn how to be comfortable with all your feelings.
  • Work on healing your hurts.
  • Decide that you’re going to live consciously.
  • Listen to your inner voice.

You don’t have to do all these things at once, try doing one at a time until it feels natural and move on to the next. The idea is to get to know yourself really well and live a life that reflects who you are deep inside. What will you do to increase your self-awareness?

Cheers,
Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Promote Workplace Diversity - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Promote Workplace Diversity

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Self-aware leaders promote workplace diversity because they are in touch with their own and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. They’re comfortable with themselves and don’t feel threatened by differences, which allows them to be open-minded and build healthy, inclusive workplaces.

I get a lot of questions from my clients about what are some practical things they can do promote diversity and inclusion in their organizations. We often focus on policies and procedures but there is an additional element that profoundly affects our workplace environment, our own behavior.

Think about the power you have to practice self-awareness and make your organization a welcoming and safe place. You set the agenda and the tone that guides your entire organization just by setting an example.  Some points to consider include:

1.  Treat everyone with respect regardless of their age, race, culture, physical ability, appearance, education or religious background and without setting them up for failure or ridicule.

2.  Have non-punitive policies in place to deal with conflicts that arise from people having different points of view and backgrounds.

3.  Establish and ongoing, open and respectful dialogue on diversity.

4.  Create a workplace that is a forum for people to share opinions without attacks, retribution or denigration.

5.  Practice a zero tolerance policy for any behavior that belittles people.

6.  Design a workplace that rewards people who work well with others.

7.  Discourage cliques or other exclusive groups.

8.  Build a workplace where people speak to each other respectfully and listen to other points of view.

9.  Provide ongoing training opportunities focusing on diversity and inclusion from the top down, everyone required to attend.

10.  Include diversity and inclusion in the values statement or mission of the company and, more importantly, practice behaviors that reflect your commitment to diversity.

These ten items are the building blocks of diversity and inclusion. They are not difficult in and of themselves if you value them in your organization and practice them on a daily basis. When leaders commit to following these principles they show their workforce that diversity is a high priority at the company, not a painful and sporadic activity they have to suffer through.

These ideas can be implemented without creating chaos in your workplace. They simply require buy-in from leadership and ongoing training and support to build in accountability. Think about yourself for a moment and how many of these points you practice daily. To create a genuinely diverse workplace you and your employees will behave this way most of the time and it will eventually become your company culture.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote diversity in your workplace?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Reinventing Yourself after 50 - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Reinventing Yourself after 50

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A lot of people reach a certain age in their lives and think that they can’t learn anything new or change in any way. In actuality, you can increase self-awareness and become the real you at any point in life. Being open to change can greatly help you follow a path that brings you joy and fulfillment.

Here are some ideas on how to build self-awareness and reinvent yourself after age fifty:

  1. Visualize who you want to be based on who you truly are deep down inside, the real you.
  2. Make a list of five things you can do to become the person you really are.
  3. Choose one item and take one action to make it a reality.
  4. Measure your progress frequently and, if what you’re doing isn’t working, then choose another item from your list.
  5. Keep taking action until you see positive results.
  6. Start the process again.
  7. Celebrate your accomplishments.

You don’t have to stay stuck at any age because you can always dream and decide to take action to change your life. Reinventing yourself after fifty is possible as long as you’re willing to embark on the journey and stick with it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and reinvent yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy