Work Environment and Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness and Finding Balance at Work - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Finding Balance at Work

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I was talking to a very accomplished person who lacks self-awareness and was feeling overwhelmed by everything going on in his work life. After I asked him to take some time to think about what was going well and what might need improvement in his life, he realized that he had been juggling a great deal of different challenges in the workplace and hadn’t taken time to think about the things that gave him balance.

We become so engrossed in working at a rapid pace that we forget that we can enjoy our efforts more if we pause occasionally to build self-awareness, relax, recharge, and reflect. Take some time in your day to do nothing. Look at the sky, take a walk, draw a picture, meditate, listen to music or do anything else you enjoy that requires no goals or deadlines. Work becomes more enjoyable when you take time to regain our balance and do it on a regular basis.

Balance helps you maintain a generally positive course and helps you be a more effective leader because you are functioning from a place of calm and reflection. It is this middle road where you can find grounding and greater peace rather than the standard rat race. You will always experience highs and lows but, if we nurture the middle, we will always have a place to seek refuge.

What will you do to develop self-awareness and find more balance at work?

Cheers,

Guy

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

Self-Awareness Begins with Self-Reflection

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True self-awareness begins with self-reflection, the process of examining and understanding what you think, feel and do. A lot of people are able to recognize that they think or do something but are unable to consciously change or modify it. Self-reflection means that you do the following:

  • Be willing to take a candid look at yourself.
  • Recognize your strengths.
  • Identify your areas for improvement.
  • Learn how to experience your full range of emotions.
  • Find ways to identify and heal your deepest hurts.
  • Stop doing things that don’t work.
  • Think, feel and behave consciously and positively.
  • Move from being reactive to proactive.
  • Be willing to learn, grow and change.
  • Be open to new experiences.

There’s a big difference between saying you’re self-aware and actually knowing who you really are. Genuine self-awareness requires constant, ongoing reflection, exploration, and an openness to new perspectives and ideas. What will you do to start your journey of self-reflection?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware People Keep Moving Forward - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware People Keep Moving Forward

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The only way to make anything happen in your life is to build up your self-awareness and keep moving forward. Many people give up on their dreams because things get difficult or don’t work out the way they thought they would. They don’t realize that they’ll always encounter some type of roadblock, things rarely unfold exactly like we wish they would. The key to success is to keep going instead of staying stuck.

When you possess self-awareness, you’re able to take a candid look at yourself and realize that you have the ability to move in the direction of your dreams. A positive approach that works for me is to just take small steps each day toward something I want to achieve. Each day I build my body of work and my connections to other people who appreciate what I do. It’s a gradual, low-stress, ongoing process that builds over time.

What do you do to keep moving forward?

Cheers,

Guy

The Unlimited Opportunities Self-Awareness Offers - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

The Unlimited Opportunities Self-Awareness Offers

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Self-awareness offers you unlimited opportunities to create whatever kind of life you want. The more you understand yourself, the more you’ll be open to new and exciting ways of thinking and behaving rather than getting stuck looking at things from only one perspective. For example: If you’re having trouble finding a job, you can keep doing what you’ve always done or ask yourself questions like:

  • What do I really want to do in life?
  • What would bring me great meaning?
  • Who am I deep inside.
  • What floats my boat?
  • How can I share the real me with the world?
  • Who can I connect with as I begin my journey?
  • What kind of people care about the real me?
  • What is one thing I can do today to create an opportunity?

The wonderful thing about being human is that you don’t have to settle for the crumbs that come your way, you can deliberately work on shaping how you think and behave in relation to your environment. What will you do to create unlimited opportunities for yourself?

Cheers,
Guy

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

Selective Self-Awareness

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The path to self-awareness is populated by many individuals who claim to know and understand themselves but do things like:

  • Treat people poorly.
  • Work out their personal issues on others.
  • Don’t understand why they think, feel and behave the way they do.
  • Are mesmerized or infatuated by the concept of self-awareness but reluctant to take a deeper look at themselves.
  • Are stuck thinking and behaving the way they always have.
  • Live life unconsciously.
  • Are healthy in one part of their lives but profoundly damaged in others.
  • The various parts of their personality don’t interact well.
  • The have unhealed hurts and unresolved issues but conveniently ignore them.

When you possess genuine self-awareness you understand yourself on a deeper level and live a life of balance and compassion because you know your strengths and areas for improvement and are constantly working on being the most balanced and healthy you possible. You’re whole overall, not just in bits and pieces. What will you do to move past selective self-awareness?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Awareness and Making Things More Difficult for Others - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Awareness and Making Things More Difficult for Others

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One of the characteristics of someone who lacks self-awareness is making things more difficult for others. When you don’t know yourself well, you can’t pull back far enough to realize how your behavior affects other people so you might do things like:

  • Treat people poorly.
  • Behave without empathy.
  • Think the whole world should bend to your point of view.
  • Frequently create situations that damage other people.
  • Do things that make others work harder.
  • Create a pattern of negative interactions and relationships.
  • Complicate things to gain power or control.
  • Make unrealistic demands.
  • Act as a gatekeeper.
  • Fail to take responsibility for your actions.

The antidote to these behaviors is to get to know yourself on a deeper level and become genuinely comfortable with who you are. The happier you are, the less stress you’ll create for others because you won’t be working out your personal issues on them. What will you do to make things less difficult for others?

Cheers,

Guy

Self-Aware Leadership and Creating a Strategic Plan - On Developing Self-Awareness and Being Self-Aware

Self-Aware Leadership and Creating a Strategic Plan

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Self-aware leaders are well-equipped to create a strategic plan because they don’t allow their own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to get in the way of creating a path forward that helps their organization thrive.

When I consult with leaders and organizations they tell me about the gigantic strategic plans that sit on their bookshelves. While those plans include reams of valuable information and input, they collect dust because they are too complex for anyone to use as a reference.

I’m a strong advocate of being self-aware enough to get out of the way and keep things simple in order to live a happier life, so I thought I’d share my basic approach to strategic planning. Strategic planning doesn’t have to be a chore. If you think about it, a strategic plan is really just a document that describes what you want to do and how you’ll do it.

Use the following ideas to create a concise document that guides your organization and that people aren’t afraid to reference.

  1. What’s your mission? Write a one sentence mission statement. Keep it simple and speak from the heart. Think in terms of what it is you really want your company to stand for. Stay away from jargon and business speak and focus on a meaningful, basic idea of what your organization does.
  2. What are the things you do well? Make a brief list of the things your organization does well so that you know what you have to work with moving forward.
  3. What would you like to strengthen? Create a brief list of the areas where you need a little help.
  4. Where would you like to go? Write down three to five things you’d like your organization to accomplish. These should be deeply meaningful to your organization and reflect your mission.
  5. Who will do what and by when? Decide who will take on each part of where you want to go. This step is much more successful if people assign themselves the tasks. Create a date for completion of each task.

When you work on these five steps you will end up with a living, breathing document that is intentionally concise and open to re-interpretation and change. The whole idea of strategic planning is to give you a framework or foundation you can build on. You can always add more detail or specific tasks but you can’t do it if you don’t build a firm footing first.

Try these steps with a key group of individuals and you’ll be on your way to creating an easy strategic plan that encourages dynamic movement instead of confusion and heartburn. What will you do to develop self-awareness and create a usable strategic plan?

Cheers,

Guy

The Self-Awareness Guy