A Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Better Relationships - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Empathy, and Better Relationships

Self-awareness helps increase empathy which, in turn, helps people build better relationships. When you understand your own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors well, you’re better able to get along with others.

It’s easy to become so focused on our own experience that we forget that other people exist. In relationships, walking in someone else’s shoes is a great approach to really understanding other people and helps us build empathy for others. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s experience and point of view.

People who lack self-awareness often ask me why it is that someone does such and such or this and that. I suggest that we can figure out what people are going through and understand them much better if we just put ourselves in their situation. In this way, we can learn about them without projecting our own needs and opinions on them. Try a few of the following things to increase your empathic ability:

1. Listen actively without talking.
2. Put yourself in that person’s situation and imagine you are going through the same thing.
3. Ask questions that allow the person to tell you more about themselves instead of yes and no questions.
4. Keep in mind that what you are hearing isn’t about you; it’s about them.
5. Try to accept anything the person says as simply their reality rather than something you have to react to.

Try these a few times over a period of time. Empathy is about really understanding that there are other valid points of view in the world. Those perspectives may not be ours but they mean as much to that person as our worldview does to us. Once you can connect with someone else’s reality, you’re own your way to really understanding other people and showing them that you respect where they are coming from.

What will you do to develop self-awareness, increase your empathy, and enjoy better relationships?

Cheers,

Guy

How to Tell If Someone Is Self-Aware - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

How to Tell If Someone Is Self-Aware

How to tell if someone is self-aware? They do things like:

  • Behave with kindness and compassion.
  • Follow their dreams in life.
  • Are comfortable in their own skin.
  • Don’t feel a need to put other people down.
  • Feel great about themselves but not in an arrogant or fake way.
  • Get along well with others.
  • Put out good vibes.
  • Believe in themselves.
  • Understand their strengths and areas for improvement.
  • Live a life that reflects who they are deep inside.

People who possess self-awareness feel good about themselves and help others do the same; they’re genuinely happy and do things to make the world a better place; they’re the kind of people that build others up and do kind things for others. It all comes from their inner balance and well-being. What would you add to this list?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Making Your Life Count - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Making Your Life Count

Abraham Lincoln once said, “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” Self-awareness helps you make your life count because, when you understand your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you’re able to consciously pursue your dreams.

Life is what we make of it and I always strive to help people recognize what it is they want to do with their lives. In relationships we often settle for situations that repeat patterns established by our parents or approaches we learned from our friends.

I suggest to people. “Why not try something different if what you are doing is not working?” The reason I ask that question is that we often invest huge amounts of time and energy in situations that don’t make us feel great rather than doing some work to move in a different direction.

I’ve had many people tell me the meaning of life is finding one’s own balance point and living a life of fulfillment and peace. Successful people understand this concept because they are always striving to do the work necessary to work toward peace and balance.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and make your life count?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Means Understanding How Other People See You - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Means Understanding How Other People See You

A major part of self-awareness is understanding how other people see you. This means that you clearly comprehend how your thoughts and actions affect not only you but others as well. When you understand the impact you have on others you can make the appropriate changes so that you get better results. The key is to be yourself and allow others to do the same. Here are some signs that you possess the self-awareness necessary to understand how other people see you:

  • You’re not constantly in the middle of conflicts.
  • Other people seem to like you.
  • You build positive relationships.
  • You behave with kindness, empathy, and compassion.
  • You don’t do things to hurt others.
  • You don’t care about competition.
  • You don’t have a massive, unhealthy, out of control ego.
  • You do things that benefit others.
  • You behave selflessly, without expecting something in return.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Dating, and Online Romance - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Dating, and Online Romance

One proven way to find dates is to build self-awareness by working on yourself first and doing the things you love. Too often we spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find the perfect person or mold someone else into what we would like rather than first understanding who we are and what we are looking for. The people who prove to be the most successful in dating at a meaningful level are those who are self-aware and surround themselves with people and activities that they really enjoy.

When you work on yourself and do things you love you begin moving your life in a direction where you move amongst people who have interests like yours. Find what it is that really makes you happy and move in those circles. In that way, you increase your chances of meeting someone who actually shares your interests and philosophy.

Get yourself as healthy and self-aware as possible and you will attract the same. The better you feel about yourself the more it wards off the people who love misery. You attract what you project. When you are healthy you realize that you deserve to be treated well and you tend to attract people who are in a similar state of mind. When you are unhealthy, people see you coming and you will attract people who are willing to capitalize on your vulnerability or share their misery with you.

A thought on online romance: People frequently rely on the internet to connect with others but there is a lot to be said for giving up the safety and fantasy of sitting at a computer for the greater challenge of meeting people face to face. Enjoy getting out there in the real world and show people who you are in person and that you deserve a healthy, rewarding relationship.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and date more healthily?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Taking Action to Love Yourself - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Taking Action to Love Yourself

As you’ve probably guessed from experience, loving yourself is about building self-awareness, doing things that lead to positive outcomes, and continuously improving yourself. An additional action you can take to learn how to love yourself is to find out who you are.

Set aside some time, without interruptions, to find out who you are. Ask yourself some self-discovery questions. What is my passion in life? What are the things I do well? What are the areas I can improve? What is my part in creating great relationships?

The process of loving ourselves comes from increasing self-awareness, understanding who we are, and working through the things that block our ability to love ourselves. For example: If you have difficulty committing in a relationship it may stem from something inside you that blocks you from accepting or giving love. If you identify what is blocking you it suddenly gives you a lot of power to change what you are doing.

Self-love is about practicing positive behaviors and experiencing the joy that comes from learning about yourself. What will you do to develop self-awareness and learn to love yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Do Instead of Wish - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Do Instead of Wish

I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of people who lack self-awareness think wishing is the same as doing; they expect that if they just hope something happens, it will. Many people also live in a state of denial, where they pretend things are a certain way when they’re really not. There’s nothing wrong with wishing for wonderful things to happen, it’s just that results only come from living in reality and taking concrete action.

Part of self-awareness is having the ability to see how your actions in the present affect your future. Success rarely happens happens in life without ongoing, tangible efforts to make your wishes come true. I love providing life guidance for people who value self-awareness because they are already working on identifying who they are, where they want to go, and how they’re going to achieve their goals. They fulfill their aspirations by actually doing stuff.

The key to living a happy life is to have dreams and also take steps to make them come true. What will you do to develop self-awareness and actually do things instead of wishing they would happen?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy