Self-Awareness Examples

Self-Aware People Work on Healing Their Hurts

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When you don’t heal your psychological hurts you live a life avoiding, accommodating, and tiptoeing around how you feel inside while never getting to the core of what’s really going on or developing self-awareness.

Unfortunately, people’s pain doesn’t only affect them, it spreads to others and creates all kinds of undesirable situations at home or at work. When people don’t heal their own hurts, they create discomfort in living rooms and board rooms and the consequences include:

  • Toxic families.
  • Broken marriages.
  • Damaged kids.
  • People who don’t like themselves or others.
  • Chronic conflict.
  • Unresolved issues.
  • Workplaces where people treat each other horribly.
  • Gossip.
  • Organizations that promote negative behaviors.
  • Ongoing retribution.
  • Punitive, controlling or capricious leadership.
  • Hurting others to cover for your hurts.
  • Insecurity and ego.
  • Lack of empathy.

Do any of these sound familiar? They happen all the time but, fortunately, you can interrupt these types of situations by increasing your self-awareness: Understand why you do things and how to move in a more positive direction.

The process of healing your hurts isn’t easy but it dramatically increases your quality of life and, by extension, the lives of everyone around you as well as well-being of the world. The way to get started is to acknowledge you have a hurt and then tend to it consciously and deliberately until it goes away.

What will you do to build self-awareness and start healing your hurts?

Cheers,

Guy

Are You Living a Self-Aware, Creative Life?

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Self-awareness and creativity go hand in hand because, when you understand your own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, you are able to draw upon them to think unconventionally and inventively.

Creativity is one of the most effective ways to overcome any challenges in our lives. Moving in a different direction is often a matter of thinking creatively and doing something differently. Here’s what some smart people say about creativity:

Albert Einstein:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Arthur Koestler:

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Beatrix Potter:

Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.

Being self-aware and creative is wonderful because you get to experience life to its fullest; with passion, courage, and always open to new ways of seeing things. You also get to explore exciting possibilities you might not have encountered if you were stuck being unimaginative. What will you do to develop self-awareness and enjoy a creative life?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Dealing with Complex Issues

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A big part of practicing self-awareness is being able to examine the complexities in the world through thinking critically and considering issues from more than one perspective.

It’s easy to look at everything from one point of view, you just make a quick decision based on what you’ve always thought, but I prefer living in a world where things don’t always have an immediate answer.

A lot of people are afraid of dealing with complex issues like death or self-awareness, but it’s in those types of difficult topics that we discover the meaning of life. It’s simpler to subsist avoiding the deeper issues in life but we stay stuck at that level, which doesn’t lead to great meaning or fulfillment. I’ve found it far more productive to welcome ambiguity and discomfort and use them to learn and grow.

Life is full of complicated, uncomfortable, difficult situations, but you’ll be better able to deal with them if you understand who you really are at your core and are willing to use self-awareness to move forward positively.

What will you do to become more self-aware and deal with complex issues?

Cheers,

Guy

Insecure People Lack Self-Awareness

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Insecure people lack self-awareness and are often afraid of other human beings, new situations, and different ideas. Self-aware individuals are comfortable with diversity and change and are able to get along with a wide range of people.

Insecurity chips away at our self-esteem and keeps us stuck feeling poorly about ourselves. It can even affect our relationships because it inserts and unhealthy element into the relationship. Insecurity can be defined as when someone feels that they are not worthwhile. People feel insecure when they are scared, feel threatened or feel like they are not important.

Some people withdraw when they are insecure, others lash out. Regardless of how we behave, insecurity is about having a how we feel about ourselves. So what can we do to feel better about ourselves? Think of the following ideas to increase your self-awareness and self confidence, and reduce your insecurity:

Characteristics of Secure People
Aren’t threatened by others.
Listen well and don’t require attention by talking.
Don’t require attention all the time.
Are comfortable with other people’s success.
Don’t feel they have to win.
Don’t put other people down to make themselves feel better.

Characteristics of Insecure People
Threatened by others.
Talk a lot to get attention.
Need to be the center of attention.
Jealous of others’ success.
Competitive, always need to win.
Put people down to feel better.

Think of yourself, where do you fall on these two extremes? If you see yourself on the insecure side, don’t worry, all you have to do is increase some of the positive traits. Even very insecure people can feel better about themselves by doing things that allow them to build self-awareness and experience their own success.

I suggest to my clients that they find out something they like to do and pursue it. Learn from the successes and challenges in life and you will learn how to feel great about yourself. Feeling secure takes some practice but the rewards are amazing.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and feel less insecure?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Getting Help to Fix Your Relationship Problems

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Self-awareness helps you resolve your relationship problems because, when you understand how you and other people’s emotions, thoughts, and actions affect the situation at hand, you’re actually able to do something about it.

Many people who have relationship problems think that they can fix them themselves or get help from friends and family. The difficulty with this approach is that not everyone is qualified to help us find the answers we want. They may mean well and love us very much but they may not have a clue on how to actually fix a problem. Ask yourself the following questions next time you are looking for someone to help you with your relationship problems:

  • Does this person have a track record of expert relationship problem solving?
  • Does this person listen unconditionally without giving advice?
  • Does this person help you come up with your own answers?
  • Is this person too close to the situation or not objective enough?
  • Does the person have anything to gain from a specific outcome?
  • Has this person had any training in fixing relationships?
  • Does this person use self-awareness as a tool to improve relationships?

These basic questions highlight the importance of getting help that will not only make you feel better or supported but, additionally, to find help that helps you create the results you want. The advice you get from others may be kind and supportive but does the problem go away?

Clients often tell me that it is difficult to seek outside help. We are often taught that we need to fix things ourselves or should not trust anyone outside of friends and family. The good news is that a supportive consultant has the skills and experience to help you move in any direction you choose.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and fix your relationship problems?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Seeing the Big Picture

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A lot of people think that working on their self-awareness is a selfish pursuit but they may be missing the point. When you deeply understand why you think or act the way you do, you move from being someone who lives unconsciously to someone who understands the implications surrounding their thoughts and behaviors. For example: If you get mad at friends or family all the time, you’re behaving in a way that is specific and limited, whereas if you take the time to think about what you’re doing and how you can move in a positive direction, you increase your ability to see things from a wider perspective.

You can choose to live life based only on what you think, feel and do in the moment but you’ll be much happier and fulfilled if you pause and think about all the other options available to you. What will you do to use your self-awareness to see the big picture?

Take care

Guy

Self-Awareness Helps Get Rid of Bigotry

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Bigotry is about as far away from self-awareness as you can get. It means living a closed, scared, reactive life that doesn’t do anybody any good, including the person being a bigot. I thought I’d write on this difficult subject because I really care about people being able to love themselves and others. There is a lot of hurt in our world and there are countless valuable individuals who are literally living in fear, pain, and rage instead of enjoying their time on this earth. I hope this article will help someone out there feel better about himself or herself and decide to live a life of joy. To start off, here are fifteen ways to tell you’re a bigot:

  1. You can’t stand when someone disagrees with your beliefs or views.
  2. You get angry or violent toward people who aren’t like you.
  3. You live constantly angry at other people.
  4. You have difficulty being vulnerable around other people and are trying to keep them from seeing the real you and hurting you.
  5. You hate people who are different from you.
  6. You prejudge people before you get to know them.
  7. You hate people because of any number of things including how they look, talk, dress, worship (or not), or any other number of reasons.
  8. Only your opinions matter.
  9. You have difficulty accepting everyone.
  10. You feel powerless inside and act super tough to cover for it, or try to take away other people’s power.
  11. You feel threatened by others.
  12. You have seen people give you a scared look when you tell them about your views.
  13. You believe in striking first before they strike at you.
  14. Conflict seems to find you.
  15. You don’t ever really feel happy inside, even if you say you are.

The reason this subject means so much to me is that I’ve personally seen so many wonderful people give their lives away to hate and toxicity. They go from being human beings full of potential to angry creatures who hurt others. The good news about bigotry is that it’s not a lifelong commitment, you can choose to move in a more positive direction at any time by doing things like:

  • Building self-awareness by understanding where your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors come.
  • Healing the hurts from your childhood.
  • Living a life of love and compassion.
  • Getting to know as many different kinds of people as possible and enjoying everything they have to offer.
  • Realizing how great life is when you’re free of fear or hate.
  • Understanding how much you matter and how important it is for you to find what makes you happy deep inside instead of living a life where you’re constantly getting angry at outside things.
  • Having the courage to go see a therapist to help you along the way.
  • Surrounding yourself with people who are soft, kind, compassionate, caring, accepting, and who will value the new you.
  • Taking action to do nice things for others every day.
  • Resolving to help build a better world for everyone.
  • Doing the things you really love in life.
  • Discovering the real you and celebrating yourself.

Look at both these lists and honestly ask yourself which one might feel better. In my experience, its the path of love and kindness that always leads to better results. It will take a lot of work to shift your old emotions, thoughts, and behaviors but the reward is that you’ll get to live a life of self-awareness, peace, and happiness. I wish you all the best on your journey, I know you can do it.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and move past bigotry?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy