Awareness of Emotions

Self-Awareness Helps You Stop Reacting to Everything - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Stop Reacting to Everything

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Many people who lack self-awareness spend their lives reacting to perceived slights and conflicts. They have learned somewhere that the way you deal with anything is to jump into reactive mode and get mad at people. You’ve probably met someone like this: They see someone across the room and immediately assume that that person is talking about them, so they jump into a rage, get sad or shut down.

Reacting based on assumptions or our inner dialogue is one of the major behaviors that keeps people from connecting with one another. If we spend our time assuming that someone is trying to hurt us we live a very specific kind of life that is based on ongoing hurt and conflict. People live this way for a variety of reasons but mainly because they learned it at a young age and don’t know any other way of doing things, that and a lack of self-awareness. The good news is that you get to choose what kind of life you live starting right now. Here are some tips so that you can move from reactive to calm:

1. Assume people aren’t talking about you.
2. Assume that people aren’t trying to hurt you.
3. Live a life that helps you bring joy to others.
4. Seek professional help to work through why you react to others.
5. Learn to identify the feelings that come up inside you and calm them down.
6. Try not to pre-judge people’s motivations.
7. Have an alternate plan for how you will react positively.
8. Listen to people until they are finished talking; then act.
9. Practice patience.
10. Focus first on building your self-awareness and growing as a person.

There’s nothing wrong with experiencing emotions unless they limit our ability to interact positively with others. Try working on the steps we’ve mentioned and you’ll be on your way to seeing the world in a different light. What will you do to develop self-awareness and stop reacting to everything?

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

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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 Helps People Be Less Broken - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps People Be Less Broken

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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

Self-Awareness, Success, and Gratitude - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Success, and Gratitude

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Self-awareness, success, and gratitude are interconnected because you can’t do everything on your own in the world, you need the help of other people. Perhaps you’ve met someone who insists that he (or she) is successful solely because of his own efforts, which conveniently ignores things like:

  • The countless people around him who assisted.
  • The people who made it easier to be successful.
  • The systems in place that allowed him to be successful.
  • The physical infrastructure in place that increased the likelihood of success.
  • The laws in place that allowed for success.
  • The available body of knowledge, often developed by others, so that not every step along the way would have to be invented from scratch.
  • The favorable, chance occurrences that helped along the way.

People who possess a high level of self-awareness understand that, while they play a large part in being successful in their lives, they also rely on an extensive and interdependent system to support their efforts.

The key to living a healthy, self-aware life is to realize that being successful includes being grateful for all the positive support you’ve received over the years from many sources and giving back precisely because it could not have happened without the many people and fortuitous conditions involved. What will you do to express your gratitude for your success?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Workshops

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

Self-Awareness and Fear

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Many people live in fear rather than actively working on increasing their self-awareness so they can live more courageously and happily. When you know yourself deep inside you have the power to resolve the issues that scare you rather than repeating them unconsciously. Here are some of the signs of living in fear:

  • Afraid of new experiences.
  • Fear of people who are perceived as different.
  • Resistance to new ideas or change.
  • Strict adherence to routines.
  • Mistrust of anyone not in one’s inner circle.
  • Constant feeling of lack of safety.
  • Uncomfortable with uncertainty.
  • Lashing out toward people and things perceived as threats.
  • Reluctance to acknowledge or heal inner hurts.

People don’t do these things because they feel happy and balanced inside, they perpetuate them because they don’t know what else to do. Thankfully, there are ways to alleviate fear and they all start with the person’s willingness to change direction. Eliminating fear is a gradual process where the person in question deliberately decides to move in a positive direction and replace the old thoughts, feelings and actions with new ones that aren’t based on anxiety or alarm. What will you do to not live in fear?

Cheers,

Guy

self-awareness consulting

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

Self-Awareness and Hope

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Self-awareness gives you hope because you’re able to live proactively and consciously rather than enduring whatever comes your way. If you don’t know yourself very well you might see the world as a vast, unknown, scary entity that has total control over you, which might lead you to say things like:

  • Life is hard and it will always be.
  • I have no opportunities.
  • I can only rely on myself.
  • Things will never change.

Fortunately, you have a lot of control over your thoughts, feelings and behaviors and you can view even the most difficult situations from whatever perspective you choose. For example, you could convert the statements above to ones that indicate you understand how much power you have:

  • Life may be hard at times but I can decide to move forward positively.
  • I’m going to look for the opportunities in this situation.
  • I know I can rely on myself but I can also connect with others.
  • I can make change happen.

Each of these sets of examples represents a different worldview: One is based on the assumption that the world is harsh and negative and the other suggests that you can affect your environment even if things are difficult. When you understand yourself really well, you shift from living passively to choosing how you experience the world. What will you do to increase your hopefulness through self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Thinking of Others - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Thinking of Others

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One of the most difficult tasks for human beings is being able to think of others. It takes a significant amount of self-awareness and lack of ego to consider the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others.

Why even worry about others? We don’t live alone in this world, there are billions of other souls we impact both directly and indirectly through our thoughts and actions. Do something negative and it ripples not only inside you, but through the cosmos. Do something positive and the effects build a better world.

Paradoxically, thinking of others allows us to become more well-rounded, balanced human beings. When we treat others with kindness and compassion, we become more caring toward ourselves.

People who are actively building self-awareness often find that they are able to think beyond themselves to the plight of humanity. As they become more and more happy with who they are, they are better able to understand and feel what others are going through.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and think of others?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy