Personal Awareness

10 Tips to Lead with Increased Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

10 Tips to Lead with Increased Self-Awareness

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I consult for a wide range of leaders and organizations and I’m often surprised by the number of individuals who lack self-awareness and lead as if they’ve never considered someone else’s point of view. Some even get into the same types of arguments and interactions that they experienced in their families growing up, which doesn’t tend to lead to amazing results.

Have you ever worked with someone who tried to resolve every problem the same way and ended up fixing nothing and making everyone unhappy? It happens all the time and we call that type of leader a bad boss. Here are some practical things you can do to increase self-awareness and make your leadership skills even stronger:

  1. Figure out and define what you do well and do those things in the workplace.
  2. Identify areas where you could use some help and find people to help you.
  3. Ask your employees where you need some help and listen to their advice.
  4. Be willing to ask for help rather than pretend you know everything.
  5. Be open to information, ideas and perspectives other than your own.
  6. Be willing to change your behavior patterns to improve your workplace.
  7. Admit mistakes rather than covering stuff up to avoid losing face.
  8. Accept change and use it as a catalyst to do new and exciting things.
  9. Delegate and give people the opportunity to grow.
  10. Practice kind behaviors toward everyone at work.

If you practice all ten of these things you already understand what kind of workplace it creates: An environment where employees actually like you and are willing to do more and better work because they’re not miserable. Behaving positively in the workplace leads to better results for you and everyone else.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and lead more effectively?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Signs of Self-Awareness

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness / , , , , ,

I’m often asked whether one can tell when someone has self-awareness. When you’re working on understanding yourself well you might be doing some of the following things:

  • Becoming the most effective you possible.
  • Functioning well in life.
  • Achieving what you want.
  • Finding happiness and balance.
  • Letting go of negative behaviors.
  • Being comfortable with who you are.
  • Resolving personal issues.
  • Enjoying your career.
  • Loving yourself and others.
  • Living consciously.
  • Being proactive rather than reactive.

Many people let life happen to them because they feel they can’t change or develop in any way. The good news is that anyone can move in any direction as long as he or she is willing to put in the effort to make things happen. You decide what happens in your life and whether you believe in using self-awareness as a tool to help you grow and succeed.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Managing Emotions - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Managing Emotions

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Need help managing emotions? You’re not alone. It can be difficult to deal with your own emotions, or other people’s, and it can deeply affect your and their quality of life. Thankfully, increasing self-awareness helps you manage emotions because, when you understand yourself and others better, you’re able to more effectively deal with what you and they are feeling.

Managing emotions begins with building up your self-awareness in order to increase your emotional intelligence. Here are some tips to help you get started:

  • There are four basic emotions: Happiness, Anger, Sadness, and Fear. Learn how to identify each of these when they are happening inside you. Ask yourself, “What is this feeling?” and pick one of the four. Keep practicing until you get good at recognizing what you’re feeling.
  • Once you know what emotion you’re experiencing, you can begin managing or dealing with it. To do this, take five deep breaths and give yourself five minutes to just feel the emotion. It may be difficult to do this at first but, over time, you’ll become more comfortable with any emotion that arises, even the unpleasant ones that you’ve been trying to avoid.
  • Realize that emotions are a normal part of life and you can use them to improve yourself. There are no bad emotions, each one is simply telling you what’s going on inside. When you stop seeing emotions as threats, you can act on them in a calm and balanced way. For example: If you’re scared about a new change in your life, take five deep breaths and five minutes to feel the emotion. Once you’ve done that calmly, take some time to plan a positive path forward. Think of one step you can take to improve your situation and, when you’re done with that one, try another.
  • Keep practicing. Nobody is great at managing their emotions the first time they try. It takes a lot of conscious effort to get to the point where you are able to feel your emotions and use them in a positive way. Don’t give up, if you keep working on experiencing your emotions, you’ll eventually become an expert at it.

Managing emotions is simply the act of recognizing what’s going on inside you, making sure not to react negatively, and then finding positive steps you can take to move your life forward. Anyone can do it, but it requires work and commitment.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and manage your emotions?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and the Definition of Emotional Intelligence - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and the Definition of Emotional Intelligence

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Self-awareness leads to emotional intelligence because people who understand themselves well are able to cope positively with whatever they’re feeling at a particular moment.

Here is an emotional intelligence definition I’ve developed over years of working with people: The ability to accurately identify and feel the emotions inside you and deal with or manage them in such a way that you live a happy, balanced life.

Emotional intelligence also refers to the ability to deal with other people’s emotions in a positive, supportive way. It means that you can handle what other people are feeling without falling apart or letting it affect you negatively.

When you are self-aware and emotionally healthy, you are able to deal with any emotion that arises inside you. You are able to name it (happiness, fear, anger, or sadness) and use it to become a more fully-functioning human being. You don’t run away from your emotions or live in fear that you can’t handle them.

The reason emotional intelligence is important is because it can make the difference between living a wonderful life and an endlessly difficult one. If you understand and are comfortable with what you feel deep inside, you’ll be able to live your life to its fullest.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence?

Cheers,

Guy

The Secret to Developing Self-Awareness - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Secret to Developing Self-Awareness

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Developing self-awareness means moving from living unconsciously to thinking, feeling and behaving intentionally. Countless people live their lives stuck in their comfort zones, repeating behaviors that don’t make them happy and not realizing they have other options. Here are five ideas to help you develop your self-awareness and improve the quality of your life:

  1. Be willing to look at yourself. You can’t live deliberately if you don’t take a look at and understand who you are as a person. Make it a habit to continuously assess what you do well and what areas need some strengthening.
  1. Examine your thoughts. Which of your thoughts help you succeed or make you happy? Which ones hold you back or keep you from living authentically? Evaluate how your thinking affects your life, keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t.
  1. Examine your emotions. Learn how to acknowledge and feel all of your emotions, not just the ones you’re comfortable with. Heal and bring closure to challenging issues or past hurts in your life. The more you learn how to feel and appropriately manage your emotions, the healthier and more balanced you’ll be.
  1. Examine your behaviors. There are things you currently do that yield excellent results and some that keep you from working on your dreams. Keep the behaviors that help you live meaningfully and let go of the ones that lead you off course.
  1. Be willing to make changes. It’s very difficult to grow in any way if you don’t believe change is possible or vital to your personal development. There is always something you can fine tune so you can become stronger and better able to live a fulfilling life.

Self-awareness matters because, when you understand yourself deeply, you’re able to live consciously instead of haphazardly. It’s the difference between stumbling through life repeating the same patterns and creating your own destiny. What will you do to keep developing your self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Respect

/ / Self and Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness / , , ,

Respect is a word that gets thrown around a lot by people who lack self-awareness but that isn’t always clearly defined. This leaves everyone guessing and doing different things that may or may not lead to respect. We sometimes ask for respect from others or we strive hard to be respectful in our relationships but we don’t always ask for it for ourselves. We may find ourselves in relationships where we give all the respect in the world and get little or none in return.

So what creates this uncertain, rocky landscape when it comes to respect? It’s often caused by lack of self-awareness and because people don’t really know what respect is. I simply define respect as loving yourself and others, and thinking and behaving kindly toward yourself and others.

The important thing is for you to define it in a way that works for you and that you can clearly communicate to others. We often do not receive respect because we do not tell people what we need and we don’t take action to educate them. We essentially give other people the power to treat us negatively and not respect us. These patterns keep repeating because we don’t know what else to do. As we begin our journey toward asking for respect it is helpful to define the term. In romance and relationships, respect may be defined as someone allowing us be who we are, to help us and encourage us to grow, to share our triumphs and disappointments, to listen to us and to make us feel great. So how do we find this elusive thing called respect?

A logical starting point in the quest to respect ourselves is increasing our self-awareness and figuring out what we want out of our relationships and how we want to be treated. If we don’t know what we want, then how can we expect others to fulfill our wishes? Think in terms of defining who you are as a person and what is important to you. The second step toward honoring ourselves is to ask for respect from others. This is accomplished by asking the significant people in our lives for what we need. It’s our job to educate others about how we would like to be treated. As you’ve probably noticed, people aren’t mind readers – we have to tell them what we want. Many of us believe that people will just automatically understand how to respect us but, for the most part, people treat us exactly like we show them how to. We get results based on what we put out. If you act like a doormat you will attract people who will treat you like one. If you act healthy and balanced you will attract that kind of people.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and respect yourself and others?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leaders Possess Emotional Intelligence - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leaders Possess Emotional Intelligence

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Emotional intelligence and self-aware leadership are intimately linked because leaders who are able to deal with and manage their (and other people’s) emotions get more work done with less effort and build healthier workplaces.

Many leaders and employees get nervous when the topic of emotions in the workplace comes up. Emotions are important in the workplace because they affect how we all function and relate to one another. Emotions matter because we aren’t robots, we’re human beings who have feelings whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

The mistake many leaders who lack self-awareness make is trying to ignore, redirect, or suppress their employees’ natural feelings. This creates workplaces where people aren’t sure how to express their emotions and where things can quickly go out of control.

The officially sanctioned workplace feelings are: anger, numbness and fake happiness. Beyond that, people quickly become uncomfortable. Here are some ideas to help leaders and employees develop their self-awareness and emotional intelligence; welcome all the emotions they experience; and deal with them openly and comfortably:

  • When someone has an emotion let it happen and be there for them without reacting negatively or defensively.
  • Listen to what people have to say when they’re feeling an emotion.
  • Avoid ignoring or pretending the emotion isn’t happening.
  • Stay away from saying things like, “Get over it,” “Everything’s OK,” or “Calm yourself down.” Phrases like these tell the person that their emotions don’t matter.
  • Move past the, “This isn’t appropriate in the workplace,” mentality to, “What can we learn from this situation and how can we validate people.”
  • Deal with emotions when they are manageable to avoid having to try to contain them when they’re out of control.
  • Institute a true open-door policy where people can talk with you about what they’re feeling without any fear of retaliation or punishment.
  • Work on your own ability to deal with any emotion that comes your way, including the ones you feel.
  • Set a positive example of how to express emotions appropriately.

The goal at work (and in life) is to view emotions as an indication that something is going on rather than a threat that has to be avoided at all costs. When you and your employees understand that emotions are a normal part of work life, you’ll all build a happier, more balanced workplace where people feel safe to express themselves honestly and openly.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be an emotionally intelligent leader?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy