A Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Dealing with Complex Issues - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Dealing with Complex Issues

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

A big part of practicing self-awareness is being able to examine the complexities in the world through thinking critically and considering issues from more than one perspective.

It’s easy to look at everything from one point of view, you just make a quick decision based on what you’ve always thought, but I prefer living in a world where things don’t always have an immediate answer.

A lot of people are afraid of dealing with complex issues like death or self-awareness, but it’s in those types of difficult topics that we discover the meaning of life. It’s simpler to subsist avoiding the deeper issues in life but we stay stuck at that level, which doesn’t lead to great meaning or fulfillment. I’ve found it far more productive to welcome ambiguity and discomfort and use them to learn and grow.

Life is full of complicated, uncomfortable, difficult situations, but you’ll be better able to deal with them if you understand who you really are at your core and are willing to use self-awareness to move forward positively.

What will you do to become more self-aware and deal with complex issues?

Cheers,

Guy

12 Examples of Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

12 Examples of Self-Awareness

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Here are twelve examples of self-awareness:

  • You’re in touch with your feelings and comfortable with them.
  • You know who you are deep inside.
  • You’re not afraid to examine and work on resolving the difficult issues in your life.
  • You consistently work on improving your understanding of yourself.
  • You treat yourself and others kindly.
  • You’re living your dreams.
  • You behave consciously and mindfully.
  • You heal your hurts.
  • You feel like your life is genuinely meaningful and fulfilling.
  • You understand that self-awareness is an ongoing process.
  • You contribute positive things to the world that benefit as many people as possible.
  • You live authentically.

Self-awareness is a state of being where you deeply understand yourself and live based on who you really are deep inside. Each of the examples I’ve mentioned here are things you can work on starting today in order to help you live a happy life. All you have to do is decide to work on one of them and keep going until you’re good at it, then move on to the next item. Over time, you’ll develop your self-awareness.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Find Your Purpose and Passion in Life - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Find Your Purpose and Passion in Life

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

Self-awareness can help you find your purpose and passion in life because, when you are in touch with your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you can look deep inside yourself and discover the path that is most meaningful to you.

Here are some ideas on how to find your purpose and passion in life:

  • Decide that you’re going to think for yourself and make your own decisions about what you do in life.
  • Get professional help to heal your inner hurts so you can focus on the wonderful things about you.
  • Start the process of discovering who you are by looking deep inside. Ask yourself, “If I could do anything I wanted to in life, with no restrictions and without worrying about finances or what people and society tell me I should do, what would it be?” Be completely honest with yourself, be courageous. Don’t consider anything but what you truly want to do in life, what really speaks to you at your core or in your heart. Make sure that your answer is something having to do with your path in life, avoid things that force you to give up your power to someone or something else or that you do out of some sense of external duty or obligation. This is solely about you and what you genuinely want to do.
  • Write down the idea you come up with, this is your purpose and passion.
  • Take one small action to make your idea a reality.
  • Continue taking small actions until you have achieved your dream.

A big part of self-awareness is understanding that all that matters in life is being yourself, the real you, the person who lives deep in your heart and who has the courage to live intentionally and consciously.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and find your purpose and passion in life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Know What Emotional Intelligence Is - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Know What Emotional Intelligence Is

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What is emotional intelligence? You know that feeling you get inside when you encounter an emotion and you’re able to experience it fully without falling apart? That’s what it is. Self-aware people know what emotional intelligence is because they are in touch with what’s going on inside themselves and how it affects what they do each day.

You are a human being that has emotions. In an ideal world, you would deal with or manage your emotions so that they always lead in a positive direction, but that doesn’t always happen because you likely haven’t been taught what to do when you or others feel things that are scary or uncomfortable.

You were raised in a certain way and move in circles that tell you what role emotions should have on your life. The problem is that the information you get about how to feel things may be fatally flawed.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and effectively deal with or manage your emotions when they arise, and do the same for others. It means you’re an emotionally stable person who isn’t afraid of feeling things or interacting with people when they’re experiencing their own emotions.

As you continue your journey through life you’ll find that it will benefit you greatly to learn how to manage your emotions in a positive way. What will you do to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Are Okay with Making Mistakes - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Are Okay with Making Mistakes

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Self-aware leaders are willing to make mistakes because they realize that every error is an opportunity to learn, grow, and continue to build self-awareness.

Perhaps you’ve encountered a leadership situation where you ask an employee about some task or project that didn’t go too well and he (or she) quickly shirks responsibility. This type of behavior is common in many workplaces because we design them that way. We create work environments where it’s not acceptable to make mistakes and where people will do anything to avoid the consequences.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some ideas to help leaders and employees increase self-awareness and accept responsibility for their actions:

  • Realize that people make mistakes.
  • Allow people to make mistakes without being punished or reprimanded.
  • Use mistakes as an opportunity for people to evaluate what they did correctly and what they would change in the future.
  • Encourage people to come up with their own solutions on how they would avoid repeating the same behaviors in the future.
  • Make it acceptable for people to admit that something went wrong without being mocked by leadership or co-workers.
  • Implement an authentic open-door policy where people can come in and talk with you about what’s going well and what needs attention without fear of retribution.
  • Avoid talking down to people or reprimanding them in front of others. Try having a calm conversation where you listen to what happened instead of clobbering the person publicly or privately.
  • Leadership sets a positive example by taking responsibility when things don’t go as planned and working hard to find positive solutions.

One of the major reasons people avoid responsibility is that they think they’ll look dumb or incompetent or that they’ll be punished in some way. If your company culture is set up to hurt or shame people then they’ll naturally avoid accepting responsibility for their actions. On the other hand, if you promote a philosophy where people are encouraged to learn from their mistakes, they’ll be more open to evaluating and improving their behavior. The underlying idea is to move away from a punitive culture to one where people are allowed to learn from their mistakes.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and help people, including you, accept responsibility for their actions?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Developing Emotional Intelligence

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Self-awareness is key to developing emotional intelligence because, when you understand yourself and others well, you are better able to deal with any internal or external emotion.

The process of developing emotional intelligence is not as mysterious or scary as you might have been led to believe. The vast majority of human beings have the capacity to feel emotions and use them to improve their lives.

Being able to effectively deal with and manage your emotions will help you feel happier and more balanced, solve problems, get along with others, and improve your quality of life.

Here are some ideas to help you develop your self-awareness and emotional intelligence:

  • Realize that emotions are a normal part of life and that even the uncomfortable ones can benefit you.
  • Understand that emotions aren’t positive or negative, they are all potentially beneficial.
  • Learn to identify and name the emotion you are feeling inside at any particular moment.
  • Do something that is positive with the emotion. For example: If you feel sad about something, you can use those feelings to learn and grow and take action in way that will be beneficial to you and others.
  • Keep practicing feeling your emotions and using them in a positive way until you feel comfortable with any emotion that arises.
  • Once you are comfortable with your own emotions, start applying these ideas to other people’s: Identify and empathize what what they’re feeling and be there for them to take positive action.

Developing emotional intelligence is the process of learning to identify and feel your emotions, use them positively, and relate to other people’s emotions as well. The idea is to be able to feel what’s going on inside you and use it to improve your life, and doing the same thing with other people’s emotions.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and emotional intelligence?

Cheers,

Guy

Do You Have the Self-Awareness to Communicate Effectively? - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Do You Have the Self-Awareness to Communicate Effectively?

/ / Self-Awareness in Leadership / , , ,

Countless leaders lack the self-awareness to communicate effectively, instead creating workplaces where people do everything but exchange information positively.

A dynamic I’ve seen repeatedly over the years in many workplaces is when something goes wrong or a difficult situation comes up and people stop communicating. This can take the form of not talking to someone because a problem has arisen or ignoring people when things get difficult. The results of this type of behavior are less than stellar when dealing with co-workers or clients.

When you decide not to communicate it leads to making the situation worse because you don’t deal with the issue at hand and both sides are left to make assumptions and create a one-sided view of what’s going on. It’s the opposite of effective communication because there is no exchange of information or ideas.

So what causes this behavior and what can you do about it? Many leaders and employees who lack self-awareness mean well but behave this way because they have not learned how to deal with difficult communication situations. They get uncomfortable or shut down when something is too hard to deal with. Others get angry or hurt and, since they don’t yet have the skills to open the lines of communication, the problem simply gets worse. Here are some tips to help you communicate even in the most challenging situations.

1.  Realize that the situation is not personal.

2.  Let go of any need to win, be right or save face.

3.  Listen to what the other person has to say without rebutting or arguing.

4.  Work with the other person to find a mutually acceptable solution.

5.  Keep calm and look for ways to be accommodating and helpful.

6.  Be as open and transparent as possible.

7.  Work on your own emotional response to difficult situations.

8.  Take an effective communication class.

9.  Train all your employees so that communicate well.

10. Stop pretending that silence fixes things.

Try these ideas and you’ll get much better results than if you shut the communication down.  Workplaces are plagued by the damage that comes from well-meaning people shutting down the lines of communication.  What starts out as an attempt to avoid confrontation ends up creating one.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and communicate effectively?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy