Personal Awareness

Self-Awareness and Keeping New Year's Resolutions - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Keeping New Year’s Resolutions

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Many people who lack self-awareness make resolutions at the beginning of the new year but have difficulty keeping up the momentum and enthusiasm they initially experience. So how can you make sure you fulfill your new year’s resolutions? Here are some helpful tips to get you started:

1. Pick a manageable goal. You can always pick another if you achieve one.
2. Pick only one thing you want to change. Don’t try to do everything at once.
3. Pick a goal that you are very likely to follow through on. This leads to success.
4. Find an outside person to help you reinforce your goal.
5. Develop a plan and stick to it.
6. Take one step then keep walking.
7. Practice, practice, practice. The act of doing things over time creates change.

The trick to keeping resolutions is to make them manageable and take action each day to make them a reality. Pick any goal you wish and then work on making it come true by doing one small thing each day.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and keep your new year’s resolutions?

Cheers,

Guy

You Decide What Self-Awareness Is - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

You Decide What Self-Awareness Is

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Self-awareness is whatever you decide you want it to be based on what’s important to you and how you want to grow. It’s often the process of identifying areas in your life that you want to improve and taking action to make things happen. Self-awareness is most challenging when you’re uncomfortable in some way and genuinely motivated to change your thoughts or behaviors. You have to be ready to address the issue and willing to work on it until you generate positive results.

It’s advisable to approach self-awareness as an ongoing process rather than a quick fix. Deeper change requires long-term commitment and effort but it doesn’t have to be complicated. All you have to do is be willing to take a look at yourself, warts and all. The process of getting to know who you really are is what eventually leads to happiness and fulfillment. A great way to get the process started is to picture what your ideal life would be and pursue one small thing each day to achieve your dreams. If you have emotions, thoughts, or behaviors that get in the way, be willing to examine them and work on shifting them in a positive direction. Self-awareness isn’t something that occurs overnight, it’s a journey of self-discovery where you make all the decisions about where you want to go.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Dating Good People - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Dating Good People

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When I consult for clients I often get questions about finding great men or women to date. People who lack self-awareness often find themselves dating the same general type of person over and over and getting the same results. The good news is that you don’t have to settle, you have an amazing ability to move your dating life in any direction you choose by following some basic steps. Here are a few examples:

1. Build up your self-awareness and find out who you are before you date. This will give you a better idea and more self-esteem to pick more healthy people to date.

2. Understand that people who date you should be supportive, kind, helpful, attentive and should always make you feel that who you are as a person is important.

3. Excitement doesn’t always equal a good person to date. Danger and mystery can be enticing but often turn into very large problems that hurt you.

4. Nobody you date, under any circumstance, should take away your self-esteem or put down your self-awareness.

5. You should never give up your identity to please or accommodate someone you’re dating.

6. You benefit from learning to live alone first and then incorporating someone else into your life. The healthier you are, the better choices you’ll make in the dating arena.

Try considering these points as you date people. Dating should be fun and it ideally lifts you up and makes you feel great. Take some time to think about who you are as a person and work hard on making yourself the best person possible. Remember that vibrant, healthy people see creeps coming down the road and steer clear.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and date good people?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Healthy Interactions - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Healthy Interactions

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Self-awareness helps you have healthy interactions with others because, when you’re comfortable with yourself, you’re able to set your personal issues aside and get along with people no matter what the situation.

Have you ever been around someone who always has to win or be in a dominant position? Have you worked with a boss who works out her personal stuff on her employees? Perhaps you’ve endured friends or family members who make everyone miserable or have a tantrum if things don’t go their way. Maybe you know someone who emotionally blackmails others to get what he wants.

These types of behaviors happen all the time and are symptoms of lack of self-awareness. They occur because people don’t feel good about themselves and don’t understand why they think and behave the way they do. When people are deeply in touch with who they are and are happy and balanced they tend to behave more kindly toward others. They have healthy boundaries and empathy for others because they understand that other people also have needs.

Interacting positively with others is a valuable skill to learn because it helps you live a genuinely happy life. It’s the difference between the boss who tramples all over his co-workers and employees and barks orders all day versus the boss who listens calmly and communicates respectfully. One of them is happier and more balanced. You get to choose how you interact with others. You can either let your stuff get all over everyone around you or you can honor who they are and treat them wonderfully.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and promote healthy interactions?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Your Leadership Style

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Your level of self-awareness often predicts your leadership style. Many well-meaning leaders actively resist concepts like delegating, praising people or resolving situations without resorting to punishment because it doesn’t enter their minds that those are real options. Self-awareness helps you choose how you behave rather than doing what you’ve always done. Here are some ideas to help you practice conscious leadership in your professional or personal life:

  • Choose behaviors that lead in a positive direction.
  • Choose behaviors that help everyone win.
  • Choose behaviors that promote equality and balance.
  • Choose behaviors that help you and others learn and grow.
  • Choose behaviors that help create a happier work or personal life.
  • Choose behaviors that treat people with care and compassion.

You get to decide what kind of leadership you practice and you’ll generate results based on your thoughts and behaviors. For example: If you don’t believe in praise then it won’t be very important in your workplace and you’ll get the corresponding results. When you feel healthy and balanced inside, you’ll tend to choose leadership behaviors that yield desirable results and treat people well along the way. What will you do to practice a leadership style that leads in a positive direction?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Avoid Tough Love - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Avoid Tough Love

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“Tough love” is a horrible concept because it contaminates and corrupts the whole idea of love. A huge part of self-awareness is self-love and the ability to love others. When you are self-aware, you have the courage to work through your toughest issues and you eventually arrive at a place of peace, calm, hope, and love, not some awful scenario of violence and harshness.

The term “tough love” completely destroys the empathy, kindness, healing, softness, and caring that comes with real love. I wish that the people who use the term “tough love” would switch to some more accurate definition such as, “Trying to help someone by imposing punitive and harsh measures for what we say is there own good.”

The problem with “tough love” is that it perpetuates the same hurt and pain that likely created the issue in the first place. Let’s take a teenager acting out as an example: The teen is behaving a certain way (barring medical or psychological issues) because of their experiences in life. I have yet to meet a person who is acting negatively who comes from a wonderfully functional home. When we impose harsh measures on that person to try to correct their behavior, we’re not loving them, we’re hurting them more, which usually leads to more negative behaviors whether internal or external.

What if we decided to build self-awareness and actually love people instead of getting tough with them? I don’t know about you, but I’ve consistently noticed that people prefer to be treated kindly rather than punitively. So many teen (and adult) problems would go away if people would take time each day to simply listen to the person without interruptions or judgments, and commit to doing it long-term.

Punishment only adds hurt to hurt. I firmly believe we should get rid of this whole toughness thing and replace it with self-awareness, empathy, and real love. People often fight me when I suggest that we can care for people, hug them, listen to them, show them they really matter, and let go of the need to control and dominate them. That’s how far we’ve sunk, we can’t even imagine a world where we treat each other with love.

I propose we establish a new pattern of love and unconditional regard instead of inflicting more pain. The only way we’ll ever heal one person, or the world, is to believe and act from a place of true love. Yes, it will take considerable time and effort to make the change, but everything worthwhile requires commitment.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and get away from tough love?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Not Limit Your Leadership Success - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Not Limit Your Leadership Success

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When I consult for leaders it’s often apparent that they have varying visions of what constitutes leadership. There are those who lack self-awareness and believe leadership is giving orders or getting things done single-handedly, while others believe in teamwork and delegating. There’s no right or wrong approach to leadership, but different actions lead to different results. Here are four things I’ve noticed tend to limit leaders’ success:

  1. They can only do it their way. Leaders come in with one vision or one methodology that they follow regardless of outcome.  This approach limits their ability to find new and more effective ways of doing things as well as using their employees’ input.
  2. They don’t use our employees’ talents. People who come in with a single-minded vision often forget that they’re sitting on a potential gold mine of talent and ideas. When leaders only use their own ideas and perspectives they limit their chances to do even more with the help of their employees.
  3. They don’t praise. Many leaders simply give directives and then wait for things to be done to their satisfaction. The key here is that they focus only on getting things done rather than encouraging and praising employees along the way.
  4. They don’t plan efficiently. Leaders often go in with plenty of good intentions but spend all their time putting out fires. This reactive approach to leadership ensures they will only focus on the latest emergency limits their ability to organize our workplace.

These practices aren’t evil but they are representative of many of our workplaces. Leaders who address the issues we’ve talked about here not only find they increase their chances of success but they also enjoy their jobs more. What will you do to develop self-awareness and increase your leadership success?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy