Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Really Loving Yourself - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Really Loving Yourself

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A lot of people who lack self-awareness loudly proclaim that they respect and love themselves and then get trampled mercilessly by every person who comes into their lives. They also go from one broken heart to another wondering why it keeps happening to them. They never seem to heal or resolve their inner issues. Many people who don’t possess self-awareness navigate the waters of relationships focusing almost entirely on other people’s needs. They invest huge amounts of time and energy into making someone else happy or worrying about how they’re doing while ignoring the most important person in the room, themselves.

Why is it we go through such elaborate efforts to mold our lives around someone else only to find ourselves losing our self-identity and wishing for better relationships?

Somewhere along the way we lose sight of the importance of caring for ourselves. Being self-aware enough to take care of ourselves first is a critically important step in creating fulfilling relationships in our lives but we don’t do it consistently. We benefit from tending to our own needs first so we can be in great shape to attract positive, vibrant people into our lives and share great relationships. So how do we do that? The good news is that there are many straightforward things we can do, starting today, to take care of ourselves and begin the process of respecting and loving ourselves.

You can consciously become healthy and happy by healing your inner hurts, practicing self-love, and behaving in positive ways. Loving yourself requires getting to know who you are deep down inside and understanding how to tend to your own needs and treat yourself well. Only after you’re genuinely healthy and enjoy your own company can you invite other people in.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and really love yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Means Telling Yourself the Truth - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Means Telling Yourself the Truth

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A major element of self-awareness is telling yourself the truth about what’s going on in your life. When you do this you’re able to figure out what’s going well and what needs attention. Being truthful doesn’t mean beating yourself up, it’s just the act of acknowledging the areas you want to strengthen.

A lot of people spend their entire lives lying to themselves and doing things that don’t reflect who they really are deep inside. This leads to pain and misery for the person doing it and the people around him or her. Here are some signs you’re telling yourself the truth:

  • You know who you really are deep down inside.
  • Your words match your actions.
  • You follow your dreams.
  • You deal well with your emotions.
  • You’re not afraid of looking at the difficult issues in your upbringing and life in general.
  • You heal the parts of you that are damaged.
  • You make life easier for yourself and those around you.
  • You don’t lie about who you really are.

Cheers,

Guy

15 Characteristics of Self-Aware, Happy People - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

15 Characteristics of Self-Aware, Happy People

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Being happy isn’t some unattainable abstract concept, you can consciously work on it until it becomes an integral part of your personal development. The challenge for many people is to increase their self-awareness, look at the things that keep them from feeling joy, and replace them with new ways of thinking and behaving that help them move in a positive direction. Here are fifteen characteristics of self-aware, happy people:

  1. Absence of irrational or excessive fear.
  2. Integration of different parts of their minds.
  3. Ability to behave with empathy and compassion.
  4. Help themselves and others succeed.
  5. Balance and integration between personal and professional lives.
  6. Laugh often and enjoy the lighter side of life.
  7. Able to consider more than one perspective.
  8. Welcome change.
  9. Continually build self-awareness.
  10. Behave joyfully and consistently in all areas of their lives.
  11. Work every day on being happy.
  12. Understand that happiness doesn’t mean endless pleasure.
  13. Actively work on healing their own hurts.
  14. Find meaning inside themselves.
  15. Live a life that reflects who they really are deep inside.

If you already practice thinking and behaving in these ways you know the sense of deep balance and fulfillment they bring. If you don’t, then you have an amazing opportunity to begin working on whichever area needs attention in your life. Being happy isn’t about what you say or how you appear on the outside, it’s about your actual thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and be genuinely happy?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Facts

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Self-awareness and facts compliment each other because you can’t live authentically unless you’re willing to look at who you really are and what you actually do in life. People run into all kinds of trouble when they ignore what’s really happening inside and around them. It’s very difficult to pretend you’re someone you’re not and deny how you think and behave. Here are some signs that you may be ignoring the facts:

  • You think in ways that are based on fiction rather than verifiable reality.
  • You have an image of yourself that doesn’t match your actions.
  • When you try to fact check your thoughts and beliefs, you have difficulty finding empirical evidence to back them up.
  • Your facts are based on fears or hurts you possess deep inside.
  • Your facts cover up who you really are.
  • The image you show the world is not the real you.
  • You don’t do any work to become healthier or more balanced.
  • You have various areas of your inner life in conflict with each other.
  • You have to justify and rationalize your actions to yourself and others.
  • You feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled inside.

Just reading this list is exhausting and deflating because it’s the opposite of self-awareness, fulfillment, joy, peace, and enlightenment. Thankfully, you can take a candid look at yourself any time you choose and move in a more positive direction by examining the actual results of your thoughts and behaviors. What will you do to pay attention to the facts in your life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps You Take Action to Succeed - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Helps You Take Action to Succeed

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Self-awareness helps you take action to succeed because, when you understand yourself and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you are better able to grasp what you need to do to make your dreams come true.

The only thing that separates those who succeed from those who don’t is follow through. Many of us can envision doing something but we don’t take any steps to actually do it. I work with my clients to help them understand that they really can do anything they want. Think about the following steps next time you wish you could do something and use them to motivate yourself to do them:

1. What do you want to do? This is your goal.
2. What can you do today to move toward your goal? This gets you moving.
3. What will you do within one month to keep doing things.
4. Keep doing it.

It’s difficult to complete or succeed in any endeavor if you don’t work on building self-awareness and actually start doing things. Once you begin taking action the only thing you have to worry about it how to keep going. You will naturally run into roadblocks and challenges. You will learn a lot about yourself based on how you keep yourself motivated.

Once you realize that you don’t have to give up your hopes and dreams and that you can really do something about transforming your life, you can begin enjoying the fruits of your labor. What will you do to develop self-awareness and take action to succeed?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

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Self-awareness and emotional intelligence are closely linked and when you have one, you’re likely to have the other. Let’s define the two, look at how they compliment each other, and how they can help you live a happier life.

The Definition of Self-Awareness

The ability to get to know yourself so well that you understand and are able to control how you feel, think, and behave in order to move your life in a positive, deeply meaningful direction with an intimate knowledge of who you really are deep inside.

The Definition of Emotional Intelligence

The ability to recognize, experience, understand, and modulate your own and others’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

As you can see, these two concepts have a lot in common because they both refer to the ability to know yourself well enough to live a happy life instead of doing stuff that aggravates you and others. I’ve worked with a lot of people over the years to help them increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence, here are some of the things they look at in order to grow and succeed:

  • Healing the unresolved, painful, or hurtful issues from their childhoods.
  • Taking an honest look at what they’re doing that doesn’t work.
  • Learning and practicing new, positive thoughts and behaviors.
  • Realizing emotions are positive and learning how to feel them.
  • Discovering who they really are deep inside and doing the things they love.
  • Living life authentically, from their hearts.
  • Practicing love, kindness, compassion, caring, both toward themselves and others.
  • Doing the hard work necessary to become healthy, including going to therapy for as long as it takes.
  • Having the courage to live life as their real selves.

Self-aware people possess emotional intelligence and vice versa. There is no mystery behind either concept, they just require work and a dedication to learn how to deal with emotions, thoughts, and actions. The end result of developing both is that you get to enjoy a wonderful life being the real, healthy you.

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness Leads to Believing in Yourself - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness Leads to Believing in Yourself

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When you possess self-awareness, you trust yourself to be your own guide through life. So many people put all their energy into believing in someone else or some abstract entity that they spend their entire lives neglecting their own inner voices.

The key to living a profoundly meaningful life is to stop looking outside for answers and turn inward instead. You have every answer you need inside you right at this very moment. They may sometimes be hidden somewhere in the recesses of your mind, but they’re in there, and all you have to do is be willing to put in the effort to find them.

Believing in yourself means that you take an honest, candid look at the person you are, keep what’s positive and change what isn’t. This process requires considerable courage because you have to look at the issues you normally try to avoid. Fortunately, after you do the hard work and build up your self-awareness, you’ll be rewarded with being able to let go of the things that hold you back and live authentically.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and believe in yourself?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy