Examples of Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Reducing Negative Thoughts - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Reducing Negative Thoughts

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Self-awareness can help you reduce negative thoughts because, when you understand yourself well, you are able to focus your thinking in a positive direction. Negative thoughts can keep you from being the person you really want to be. Here are some examples of negative thoughts guaranteed to hold you back:

  • I can’t do this.
  • I’m not good enough.
  • I’ll never succeed.
  • I’m a loser.
  • My parents, siblings, friends, teachers, co-workers, and acquaintances were right about me.
  • I’ll never amount to anything.
  • My dreams don’t matter.
  • I’ll never be who I really want to be.
  • That’s impossible.
  • People like me can’t do those types of things.
  • I’ll continue doing what we’ve always done.
  • You can’t change.
  • Life is hard.
  • I always have bad luck.
  • I guess I’ll settle for this.
  • I prefer to be safe and comfortable.
  • Something bad is going to happen.
  • I’ll look stupid.

Imagine what your life will look like if you say things like these to yourself. As you increase your self-awareness, your thoughts will become more positive because you’ll be working toward being the real you, not these statements that tear you down. As you think more clearly and positively, you’ll be better able to take positive action to improve your life. The key to success is to think in ways that lead in a positive direction and help you be the real you.

What will you do to increase your self-awareness and reduce your negative thoughts?

Cheers,

Guy

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

11 Advantages of Possessing Self-Awareness

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There are many advantages to possessing self-awareness including:

  • A deeper knowledge of who you are.
  • A clearer understanding of why you think, feel and act the way you do.
  • The ability to build more meaningful relationships at work and in your personal life.
  • You can live life as the real you.
  • The ability to read other people and understand where they’re coming from.
  • You can interact with others without getting your stuff all over them.
  • You realize that not everything is about you.
  • You create less conflict.
  • You spread positive vibes because you’re happy with yourself.
  • You have the opportunity to work on your hurts and genuinely like yourself.
  • You have a big picture view of who you are and how you interact with the people around you and the events in your life.

When you’re thinking about the advantages of self-awareness, it’s important to realize that you get to decide how you think, feel and behave in life. If you understand yourself well, you’ll be much more likely to let go of the stuff that doesn’t work and live a life of joy and fulfillment. How will you start building self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

How Self-Aware Business People Communicate - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

How Self-Aware Business People Communicate

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Your communication style tells other businesses a lot about your level of self-awareness, your professionalism and what they can expect when they deal with you. A theme that frequently arises when I consult for leaders is how to communicate in a manner that invites other companies to want to do business with us. The following tips will help you put your best foot forward and communicate confidently:

  1. Listen actively. It’s amazing what you learn when you’re not talking.
  2. Say it briefly. Go with the approach that less is more in communication.
  3. Keep it professional. Business communication is not the appropriate time to vent about personal problems or delve into people’s private lives.
  4. Keep your temper in check. If you fly off the handle it not only shuts down communication but also reduces the likelihood that the other company will give you an opportunity in the future.
  5. Remind yourself that communication glitches aren’t a personal slight against you, they are just part of doing business.
  6. Practice excellent conflict resolution skills. Brainstorm with the other person to get some ideas on how to deal with the issue at hand and agree on a solution that works for both of you.
  7. Train everyone, starting with top leadership, on how to communicate effectively.

Other businesses judge us in much the same way our clients do. How we communicate says a lot to the outside world about the way we conduct business. Keep these tips in mind as you interact with other companies and you’ll be on your way to increasing your success exponentially.

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

Regards,

Guy

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

15 Benefits of Developing Self-Awareness

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Here are fifteen benefits of developing self-awareness:

  1. You heal the hurts from your past.
  2. You’re in touch with your emotions, are able to feel them, and can use them to move in a positive direction. You’re also comfortable with other people’s emotions.
  3. You understand your strengths and areas for improvement.
  4. You treat yourself and others with kindness, empathy, and compassion.
  5. You do things to make the world a better place.
  6. You focus on the deeper things in life rather than living superficially.
  7. You get to know the real you and live your life accordingly.
  8. You let go of the need for power and control and focus instead on being the best person you can be without dominating others or having to win.
  9. People like you at home and at work.
  10. You don’t have the constant internal conflict of saying one thing and doing another.
  11. You’re generally happy and balanced, even in difficult situations.
  12. You understand why you feel, think, and do things.
  13. You learn and grow each day.
  14. You become a nice person.
  15. You enjoy life.

When you develop self-awareness you have a wonderful opportunity to move beyond all the garbage that creates conflict, chaos, confusion, and misery in your life and focus instead on living a kind, joyful, deeply introspective and fulfilling existence. When you’re fully self-aware, you no longer live day to day, reacting to everything, you get to be the real you and do what you really love in life.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Building Better Workplace Relationships - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness, Team Building, and Building Better Workplace Relationships

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You can’t build great teams if you don’t possess self-awareness and the knowledge to promote successful relationships. Even some of the most well-intentioned leaders who really care for their employees have difficulty building great workplace relationships because they don’t know how.

I’m a big supporter of clarity in workplace relationships, where everyone involved understands what’s going on in the relationship. It does away with assumptions, secrets, guesses, misunderstandings and frustration because every person is on the same page.

How do you increase clarity? You work on increasing your self-awareness and gathering more information. The next time you encounter conflict in any workplace relationship practice the following ideas to really understand what’s going on:

1. Each person talks without interruptions about how they see the situation.

2. Each person listens carefully without judging, rebutting or giving advice.

3. Each person asks open-ended questions to clarify what is going on.

4. The people work together and develop a plan to proceed.

Dialogue is very important to achieving clarity. Make sure to practice listening skills and ask questions that allow people to share their perspectives in a safe environment. Open ended questions are questions that don’t lead to a yes or no answer and allow each person to meaningfully explain their point of view.

This is a style of interaction that doesn’t require confrontation, it focuses on people listening to each other and sharing their points of view. Try it sometime to gain clarity on what’s going on in your workplace relationships. What will you do to improve your self-awareness, team building, and workplace relationships?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Means Looking Inside Yourself - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Means Looking Inside Yourself

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Self-awareness means looking inside yourself rather than relying on outside influences, entities, or events to make you happy in life. Countless people spend inordinate amounts of time living based on what some outside person or entity tells them to do, or reacting to whatever circumstance they find themselves in, rather than charting a course based on who they are deep inside and what they find meaningful and fulfilling. The key to being truly happy in life is being able to look inside yourself and:

  • Define who you really are.
  • Discover your true inner voice.
  • Determine what you really want to do in life.
  • Figure out what you need to do to live authentically.

When you do these things you’ll live life based on what’s inside you rather than always reacting to outside people and situations. It’s up to you whether you live life consciously or passively. What will you do to look inside yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness Quotes

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Here are a few quotes about self-awareness from some wise people:

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
Abraham Maslow

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love not what you are, but what you may become.
Cervantes

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
Aldous Huxley

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung

You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
Beryl Markham

In the last decade or so, science has discovered a tremendous amount about the role emotions play in our lives. Researchers have found that even more than IQ, your emotional awareness and abilities to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in all walks of life, including family relationships.
John Gottman

You’re cordially invited to browse this site to learn more about self-awareness.

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy