Awareness of Emotions

10 Ways Self-Awareness Can Improve Your Life - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

10 Ways Self-Awareness Can Improve Your Life

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

The whole point of getting to know yourself is to move past reacting unconsciously to whatever comes your way to being mindful of what you’re feeling, thinking, and doing. Here are ten ways self-awareness can improve your personal and professional life:

  1. You’re able to feel the entire range of your emotions and deal with them positively.
  2. You understand yourself well and are genuinely comfortable with who you are; not just pretending you are so you don’t look weak.
  3. You’ve worked out the negative issues from your childhood and formative years.
  4. You have a consistent pattern of thinking and behavior where all the areas of your life relate well to each other and aren’t in conflict.
  5. You do things that help make the world a better place, not just that benefit you and the people in your immediate social and professional circles.
  6. You’re able to empathize with other people; their joys, struggles, and day-to-day lives.
  7. You feel so good about yourself that other people aren’t a threat and you don’t have a need to compete with them or defeat them in any way.
  8. You build other people up instead of tearing them down.
  9. You feel like your life has a deeper meaning that comes from within you, not from the outside.
  10. You live life as the real you; following your dreams and doing what you really want to do in life.

When you possess self-awareness you’ll be actively working on issues like these at all times and continually discovering more about yourself. The goal is simple: Live a happy life, spread good vibes, and make the world a better place for as many people as possible. How has self-awareness improved your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the Tough Love Myth - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and the Tough Love Myth

/ / Self-Awareness / , , , , ,

When you have a high level of self-awareness you tend to stay away from treating other people harshly, as in the so-called “Tough Love” approach to parenting, leadership or any other interaction where you’re trying to correct someone else’s undesirable or out of control behavior. Tough Love is practiced by millions and looks like this:

  • Inability to empathize with the other person’s situation.
  • Unnecessarily harsh or punitive approach to correcting behavior.
  • Resorting to punishment as first option.
  • Not connecting meaningfully with the other person.
  • Lack of listening.
  • Lack of patience.
  • Short-term thinking versus a long-term strategy.
  • Relying on ultimatums.
  • Dictatorial, telling someone what to do from the outside.

The perplexing thing about Tough Love is that there are so many other, more positive, ways to treat people, for example:

  • Empathizing with the other person.
  • Finding other options besides harsh behavior or punishment.
  • Negotiation and collaboration before punishment.
  • Building positive relationships.
  • Listening often and actively.
  • Being patient.
  • Interacting with people to build healthy, long-term relationships.
  • Realizing that change is an ongoing process.
  • Trusting and encouraging people to come up with their own solutions.

It’s really easy to make someone’s life miserable by punishing them, but it takes much more imagination and skill to encourage them to gain the insight necessary to overcome an obstacle. When you possess self-awareness, you have a choice as to how you interact with others regardless of how difficult their behavior or situation is: You can be kind, empathic, and resourceful, or rigid and draconian. Which approach will you choose?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Being Happy

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

One of the most important reasons to increase your self-awareness is so you can be happy. There are a lot of people walking around who insist they’re happy but who really are hiding a lot of turmoil just under the surface. Being happy means that the various parts of your life are in balance rather than conflict or tension. It’s nearly impossible to feel genuine happiness if you have areas of your life that always remind you that all is not well.

A big part of self-awareness is working on your warts by taking an honest look at yourself. Heal the parts of you that create tension in your life and you’ll be able to feel joy like never before. It may be difficult or painful at first, but the long-term rewards are immense. What will you do to use self-awareness to be more happy?

Cheers,

Guy

10 Benefits of Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

10 Benefits of Self-Awareness

/ / Self-Awareness, Self-Consciousness / , , , , / 10 Comments

Self-awareness offers many benefits to help you live a happier, more fulfilling and genuine life:

  1. The ability to act consciously instead of reacting to people and events.
  2. The ability to genuinely love yourself.
  3. Being authentically happy rather than pretending you are.
  4. Greater depth of experience and enjoyment of life.
  5. The ability to redirect your negative thoughts and emphasize positive ones.
  6. Behaving positively instead of creating additional obstacles.
  7. Enjoying positive interpersonal relationships.
  8. Being the real you.
  9. Living courageously and without limits.
  10. The ability to make your dreams come true.

What would your life look like if you did all these ten things on a regular basis? Self-awareness is a powerful tool to help you live the life you’ve always wanted rather than settling for whatever comes your way. What will you do to live a more conscious life?

Cheers,

Guy

Advantages of Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Advantages of Self-Awareness

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

I’m often asked what are the advantages of self-awareness. It’s almost impossible to overestimate the impact self-awareness can have on someone’s life, here are some of the advantages I’ve noticed through years of working with people and organizations over the years:

  • An ability to understand one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions and manage them positively.
  • Understanding why other people think, feel, and act the way they do.
  • Ability to empathize and practice compassion toward others.
  • Identifying your strengths and areas for improvement.
  • Living your life more authentically because you understand who you really are deep inside.
  • Thinking and behaving more positively because you’ve worked through your stuff.
  • Being more open to new information, experiences, and change.
  • Choosing positive friends and significant others.
  • Being a better leader at work because you’re not working out your issues on others.
  • Feeling more balanced and together.
  • A sense of deeper understanding of yourself and your path in life.
  • A more meaningful and fulfilling life.

There’s no mystery to self-awareness, it’s simply a tool that helps you know so much about yourself that you literally become a happier, more effective human being which, in turn, positively affects you and the people around you. When you possess self-awareness you tap into a stream of consciousness and knowledge that helps you treat yourself and others better, as well as allowing you to make the world a better place. What would you add to this list?

Cheers,
Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Being Whole

/ / Self-Awareness / , , , , ,

One of the major benefits of increasing your self-awareness is that you get to live life whole, as in:

  • You know who you really are deep inside.
  • You honor your inner voice.
  • You follow your dreams.
  • The various parts of your personality are in harmony with each other.
  • Your actions are consistent with your thoughts.
  • You are actually happy and healthy inside, not just pretending in order to not show weakness or conform to what someone else is expecting.
  • You look inside for answers.
  • You trust that you’re the best guide for your life.
  • You deal well with your entire range of emotions.
  • No one part of your personality, thoughts, or actions dominates your life.
  • You believe there is such a thing as happiness.
  • You’re following your dreams, the real ones, not the ones you pretend are your dreams.
  • You surround yourself with interesting, healthy people.

Being whole means living a completely authentic life. It doesn’t require being perfect, just that you be yourself. What will you do to work on being whole?

Cheers,

Guy

Lack of Self-Awareness Is the Root of All Problems in the World - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Lack of Self-Awareness Is the Root of All Problems in the World

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

The root of all the problems in the world is people’s inability to deal with emotions. Individuals who have self-awareness are able to identify what they’re feeling, the emotion that drives it, and channel their actions in a positive direction, people who aren’t comfortable dealing with emotions often do things like:

  • Hurt themselves or others.
  • Lash out in anger.
  • Go numb because they don’t want to feel anything.
  • Watch as horrible things happen to others.
  • Seek revenge or retribution.
  • Wish awful things to happen to others.
  • Create roadblocks and make life difficult for others.
  • Become withdrawn or depressed.
  • Sabotage themselves or others.
  • Turn to drugs and alcohol to escape what they’re feeling.
  • Be aggressive toward others to protect their soft insides.
  • Refuse to connect meaningfully with others because it might expose them to feeling something.
  • Accept negative relationships as normal.
  • Accept violence and chaos as normal.
  • Live in fear.

It’s not that people want to do these things, it’s just that their families, friends, societies, and they themselves have grown to believe that this is the only available option. What they may not realize is that they don’t have to live this way, they can actually build self-awareness, get in touch with their emotions, and do things like:

  • Treat themselves and others well.
  • Focus on being joyful.
  • Actively work on experiencing what’s going on inside them.
  • Help other people.
  • Forgive.
  • Wish for good things to happen to others.
  • Make life easier for others.
  • Step out of their shell.
  • Do things to help themselves and others succeed.
  • Experience what’s inside themselves and seek counseling for anything that’s leading them in a negative direction.
  • Be caring toward others.
  • Let people into their lives and show their real selves.
  • Strive to build positive relationships.
  • See kindness and peace as normal.
  • Live with courage.

For every negative approach to dealing with emotions there is a positive counterpart. The key to creating a better world is for people to have the self-awareness to realize when they’re feeling something, identify the emotion beneath it, and deal with it in a positive way. As human beings, we’ve become very skilled at coping with emotions (and the way they make us feel) in profoundly negative ways. The irony is that we can move in a positive direction any time we choose and build a world that benefits everyone.

By the way, if you’re thinking that this type of approach is unrealistic or impossible, you’re behaving like the people in the first list. In order to create a more emotionally healthy world, it’s important to first acknowledge that something is askew and then take conscious steps to move down a different path.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and deal positively with your emotions?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy