Examples of Self-Awareness

The Beauty Arising from Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Beauty Arising from Self-Awareness

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When you lack self-awareness you’re more likely to live in a confusing, contradictory, uncertain world where things don’t make sense and beauty is less prevalent. Countless people live this way and pretend it’s normal rather than seeking a more fulfilling, balanced existence. You can choose to move toward inner and outer beauty or away from it, as in the following examples.

If you don’t possess self-awareness you:

  • Lack self-knowledge.
  • Live an inauthentic life.
  • Experience a lot of cognitive dissonance.
  • Have various parts of your mind not talking to each other.
  • Live unconsciously, reacting to your environment.
  • Are not in touch with your feelings.
  • Are superficially happy.
  • Miss much of the beauty in the world around you and inside you.

If you possess a high level of self-awareness you:

  • Understand yourself in a healthy way.
  • Live life based on your innate talents, passions and interests.
  • Think and behave in consistently positive ways.
  • Have the various parts of your mind in sync.
  • Live consciously, deliberately and mindfully.
  • Are in touch with your feelings.
  • Are deeply happy due to living meaningfully.
  • Live a life of inner and outer beauty.

Each day you have the ability to choose where your thoughts and actions will take you. Beauty is all around you as well as inside you, it’s up to you whether you access it. What will you do to celebrate the beauty in your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Your True Path - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Your True Path

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As you increase your self-awareness you’ll naturally follow your true path in life rather than:

  • Pretending you love doing something you don’t.
  • Justifying doing things you really don’t find meaningful.
  • Doing things solely for money.
  • Doing something because you sort of like it.
  • Doing something because you can.
  • Following other people’s visions.

The more deeply you know and understand yourself, the more you’ll:

  • Do things you genuinely love.
  • Do what you really want to do and find meaningful.
  • Worry less about money and more about fulfillment.
  • Do things because you’re passionate about them.
  • Do things because they’re your calling.
  • Follow your own inner compass.

The key to living an authentic and fulfilling life is to be the real you rather than pretending to be someone else. Take the time to discover who you are and let your authentic self guide your thoughts, feelings and actions. What will you do to follow your true path?

Cheers,

Guy

self-awareness consulting

Self-Awareness and Realizing Life Is Precious - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Realizing Life Is Precious

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Many individuals lack the self-awareness to realize how precious life is and wait until they’re on their deathbeds before they admit they would have liked to resolve certain issues in their lives or behave differently. People often live their lives unconsciously and feel, think, and behave unfavorably or unproductively. I would love for them to ask themselves: If life is precious,

  • Why would I ever hate someone?
  • Why would I spend one more moment living in fear?
  • Why would I let my past hold me back?
  • Why would I resist change?
  • Why would I not live every moment to its fullest capacity?
  • Why would I not pursue my dreams?
  • Why would I live my life based on my hurts?
  • Why would I not do everything in my power to treat myself and others well?
  • Why would I not live a deeply meaningful and enlightened life?

So many people never ask themselves these types of questions, they just exist unconsciously. Luckily, life doesn’t have to be a sequence of reactions to unforeseen events, you can decide to move it in any direction you wish. It’s possible to keep building your self-awareness so you can live courageously and authentically instead of doing stuff that gets in the way and takes you off your true path.

Self-aware people constantly strive to find out who they are deep inside and how they can make the world a better place. You only have one chance to enjoy your time on this planet. What will you do to develop self-awareness and make the most of your precious life?

Cheers,

Guy

Ways for Self-Aware Leaders to Celebrate Diversity - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Ways for Self-Aware Leaders to Celebrate Diversity

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Self-aware leaders frequently ask me how they can celebrate diversity in their organization. There’s no standardized formula, all it takes is some planning and goodwill. Try these ideas as you begin celebrating diversity in your workplace:

  1. Celebrate everyone. Don’t just focus on a certain group, pay attention to everyone in the workplace.
  2. Put diverse people in leadership positions. Nothing says that you care about diversity more than promoting diverse people to leadership positions.
  3. Set up an ongoing diversity discussion. You’ll show exceptional commitment to diversity if you have a program that allows people to regularly discuss how it affects them.
  4. Set an example. How you treat your employees and colleagues sets the tone for the organization.
  5. Include diversity in your values. Not only is is advisable to have a diversity policy but make it one of your core values as in, “We will value people from all backgrounds and experiences.”

Try these ideas and see how they affect your workplace. Companies that try these kind of approaches find that they create an atmosphere of greater trust and employees who feel valued. What will you do to develop self-awareness and celebrate diversity in your organization?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Empathy

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Self-awareness and empathy are closely linked together because they are both part of being a happy, healthy individual. Empathy is the ability to understand another being’s situation, to walk a mile in their shoes and attempt to comprehend what they are experiencing. As you build more self-awareness in life, you become more and more comfortable with who you are as a person and you create balance and security. The better you feel about yourself, the better you treat others.

Having empathy means that you feel confident enough in yourself to put your needs on the backburner for a while and think about how others see the world. It’s the ability to step outside your head and think about what someone else is going through before you think, say or do something. What will you do to practice more empathy in your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Don't Discipline Employees - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Don’t Discipline Employees

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Self-aware leaders don’t discipline employees because they understand that being punitive is a poor approach to elicit better performance from people. So why do so many leaders and organizations insist on disciplining everyone? Because they lack self-awareness and the knowledge to do something differently.

See if you recognize this pattern: An employee does something against the rules and sets in motion a complex series of consequences which may include a verbal warning, counseling, reprimanding, written warning, heartfelt lecture and so on up to termination or taking away their TV privileges.

While I understand that workplaces need a standardized, consistent way of dealing with behaviors that break the rules, I’ve found it helpful to encourage an alternate approach that treats employees like thinking, capable people instead of children. Here are 5 ideas to help you deal with negative employee behaviors before you even think about going to the HR manual:

1.  Ask the employee what happened and then listen without interrupting.

2.  Ask the employee to tell you what they did that worked well toward fixing the situation and listen to them. Then ask them what didn’t work as well and listen.

3.  Ask the employee to come up with three recommendations of what they would do to remedy the situation.

4.  Ask the employee to take action on the most important recommendation and give you a time limit by when they will do it. When they report back ask them what three other things they recommend doing and have them follow-through on the top one of that set of ideas and report back.

5.  Praise the employee for the corrections he or she has made.

The trap leaders who lack self-awareness fall into when disciplining employees is that they think they have to correct behaviors through external consequences or punishment rather than helping them learn positive behaviors. This overlooks the concept that employees are able to think for themselves and correct their own behavior.

When I talk with leaders about this approach I invariably get the question, “Well, what if the employee has no clue what to do?” My answer is, you won’t find out until you give them an opportunity to do it. Leaders are so used to running to the rule book that they forget that there are many other ways of resolving all kinds of workplace challenges. The key to this approach is practicing it until people get really good at it. This leads to employees who are able to think critically and problem-solve their own situations.

What will you do to develop self-awareness, stop disciplining employees, and start involving them in improving their own behaviors?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Making the World a Better Place - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Making the World a Better Place

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Self-awareness is a vital component of making the world a better place because when people understand themselves well and possess inner peace and balance they tend to interact positively and compassionately with others. Here are some ways that self-awareness helps build a better world:

  • You’re willing to take an honest, candid look at who you are and improve the areas that need attention so you can interact positively with others.
  • You’re open to change and different ideas.
  • Working through your unresolved issues makes you less likely to put them on others.
  • Feeling balanced and at peace within yourself makes you less susceptible to influences that lead in a negative direction.
  • When you feel great about yourself in a healthy way you don’t have to dominate or subjugate others.
  • When you know yourself deep inside you don’t have to look to outside entities to give you meaning because you do it for yourself.
  • You live with compassion because you realize that everyone has challenges to overcome and we are all interconnected and interdependent.
  • You take care of yourself and others.
  • You live consciously and mindfully instead of reacting to your environment.
  • Feeling healthy inside greatly reduces fear and increases your ability to think and act courageously.
  • When you’re balanced and fulfilled you’re more likely to have empathy toward others.
  • You share your positive attributes with the world.

Making the world a better place means finding ways for people to be happy about who they are instead of working out their issues on each other. Self-awareness is an essential tool because it helps people find the peace and balance necessary to connect meaningfully with themselves and others. How will you make the world a better place for yourself and as many other people as possible?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy