Personal Awareness

How to Start Building Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

How to Start Building Self-Awareness

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A great way to start building self-awareness is to decide to do it. People often don’t realize that it takes deliberate and ongoing (lifelong) effort to achieve self-awareness. You don’t just wake up one day and decide you know yourself perfectly, you commit to learning about yourself throughout your journey. Here are some ideas to help you start your self-discovery process:

  • Make a list of your strengths.
  • Make a list of your areas for improvement.
  • Brainstorm some ideas of what you’d like to work on to become more self-aware.
  • Pick one brainstorm item to start working on.
  • Do one small thing to work on your brainstorm item.
  • See how things go. Make adjustments if necessary.
  • Pick another item to work on.
  • Repeat.

Increasing self-awareness requires dedication and deliberate, ongoing action. You get to know yourself by constantly working on becoming a healthier, happier, more balanced person. Where will you start?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Your Dream Life - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Your Dream Life

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Self-awareness can help your dream life come true because, when you understand your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you’re able to formulate a plan and take action to make things happen.

Our dreams are a reflection of who we really are. I’m not talking about the dreams where you are riding a horse through the shopping mall, these are the dreams about what you really want to do with your life. These dreams come from a genuine place inside you and reflect your true self. Perhaps they link you to when you were a child and wished you would be an actor or when you graduated from high school and anticipated being a great mathematician.

Then life gets in the way, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can literally use your self-awareness to tap into your dreams at any time and give them the prominent place in your life that they deserve. Ask yourself the following questions as you connect with what you really want to do with your life:

1. If money or subsistence were of no concern, what would I do with my life above all else?

2. What am I really good at that brings me joy and I could do forever?

3. What career path would bring me true joy in life?

4. What can I do for hours without thinking about time?

The answers to these questions will help you start steering your life toward what you really want to do. You call the shots and get to decide in what direction you move. You choose whether you follow the path toward your dreams or follow an alternate course. I wish you great success in your journey.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and live your dream life?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Leadership

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Self-awareness and leadership are two things that should never be without each other. Countless innocent people suffer the consequences of working for leaders who are not self-aware and who do things like:

  • Work out their personal issues on employees.
  • Get into power struggles due to control issues.
  • Have unhealthy, overbearing egos.
  • Micromanage.
  • Create constant conflict.
  • Impose their will at all costs.
  • Not listen to anyone’s opinion or ideas.
  • Play favorites or allow cliques.
  • Treat people rudely.
  • Only know how to express anger and fake happiness.
  • Create a workplace of fear.

The whole point of being a self-aware leader is that you are in touch with your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to such a degree that you’re able to create a kind, caring, efficient workplace where everyone matters. A leader with self-awareness is likely to:

  • Be healthy emotionally and not get his or her stuff on others.
  • Not have a need to control or dominate.
  • Have a healthy sense of self and respect others’ individuality as well.
  • Let people do what they do well.
  • Have positive interactions with employees.
  • Let other people be part of the decision-making process.
  • Listen actively in all settings.
  • Bring people together.
  • Treat people with kindness and compassion.
  • Comfortable dealing with a wide range of emotions.
  • Create a workplace of courage.

In my experience training leaders, I’ve found that most of them do things from the first list. The irony is that our workplaces don’t have to be dysfunctional and toxic. The whole point of self-aware leadership is to encourage people to be balanced, and comfortable with themselves. The way you do it is to have ongoing training in place that helps leaders take an honest look at themselves and become healthier by learning and practicing the skills from the second list.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Your Conscience - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Your Conscience

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Your level of self-awareness is deeply connected to your conscience because you can never escape the psychological toll that behaving negatively takes on your life. For example: If your job requires that you do things that hurt people, you can’t run from it or pretend it’s not happening, it affects you regardless of how hard you try to ignore or justify it. The same applies to thinking or behaving negatively in your personal life: If you damage others, you impact the quality of your own life. Some people try to compensate for negative thoughts or behaviors by giving to worthwhile causes or doing kind things for their immediate family or friends, but the relief is temporary at best.

A more fulfilling and rewarding approach is to consciously do things that lead in a positive direction like behaving kindly toward others, practicing compassion, or helping people thrive. When faced with a choice, select the option that does the most good for as many people as possible and do nice things without expecting any personal gain. Self-awareness means that you’ve taken the time to be so comfortable with yourself that you give freely and treat others wonderfully. What will you do to develop a healthy conscience?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Self-Reflection

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My consulting clients frequently ask me how to figure out other people. Oftentimes the key to our happiness does not rest on other people but within us. Self-awareness leads to self-reflection, which is a skill that benefits you by helping you understand your needs so that you can take care of them. It’s a great skill to learn because it helps you comprehend who you are and feel good about yourself.

Take a moment today to reflect on who you are as a person. You can start by taking an inventory of the achievements you are most proud of and those you wish you could improve. Ask yourself some questions like the following:

1. What am I most proud of?
2. What skills do I possess?
3. Where do I see myself in 6 months, 1 year, 5 years?
4. What are the challenges I face?
5. What will I do to overcome the challenges?

Thinking about yourself isn’t selfish, it’s self-aware and actually a great way to begin healing your wounds and building yourself up. Try beginning the process today and you will start to notice that it feels great to focus on yourself and your future.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and practice self-reflection?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Soft Skills Training - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Soft Skills Training

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Many well-meaning leaders and organizations that lack self-awareness have high hopes for soft skills training and are perplexed when it fails. This phenomenon happens because they think three hours of soft skills training can change their entire workplace. They optimistically hire someone to facilitate a workshop or two and expect their leaders and employees will behave differently overnight. The missing ingredients are time and commitment.

People who lack self-awareness forget that it takes considerable time and effort for soft skills (such as team building, effective communication, leadership or diversity) to take root in an organization. Think of how long it took you to learn the behaviors you currently practice. It takes time to teach people new skills and many leaders and organizations overlook the following concepts for training success:

  1. Decide that this training is as important as any other part of your operation and commit to a long-term program.
  2. Designate a set time and place for the training.
  3. Implement your training from the top down, involve the highest level of leadership from the very beginning.
  4. Focus on training that helps people learn positive workplace behaviors.
  5. Pay a professional to develop and facilitate a training program based on your specific workplace.
  6. Attendance isn’t optional and is part of people’s work duties.
  7. Give employees the time and support needed to learn and practice new skills in the classroom and on the job.
  8. Make the training an integral part of your company culture.
  9. Measure the impact of the training as you move forward and make adjustments as needed.
  10. Train people so they can train others in the organization.

Try these ideas and you’ll find your training yields better results. The success of soft skills training depends on how committed an organization’s leadership is to making it happen. What will you do to develop self-awareness and help your soft skills training succeed?

Cheers,

Guy

It Takes Self-Awareness to Look at Yourself - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

It Takes Self-Awareness to Look at Yourself

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There are many individuals who construct idealized versions of themselves to avoid having to look at how they really think and behave and the results they’re getting. It takes self-awareness to look at yourself, admit that something isn’t working and change direction. Here are some questions to ask yourself to stop fighting the facts and live based on what’s actually going on in your life and what you’re capable of doing:

  • What do I do in my life that causes me discomfort?
  • What can I do to let go of the things that cause me discomfort?
  • What would I change about myself to feel more comfortable?
  • What can I do to focus on my own behaviors rather than what other people do?
  • What patterns in my life would I change so I could be happier?
  • What am I willing to do to move in a positive direction?
  • What’s my plan for letting go of the thoughts and behaviors that don’t help me?
  • What will I do to be the same person privately and publicly?
  • What will I do to live authentically?

No amount of fighting the facts can change the reality of how you behave and the results you get in life. Take some time to answer questions like the ones I’ve suggested here and get to know yourself on a deeper level so you can live authentically and happily. Life is much more rewarding when you take a good look at yourself and follow your true path.

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy