Self-awareness is the conscious understanding of your personality, emotions, actions, likes, dislikes and more. It’s being aware of how you work from the inside out rather than the outside in.
When you understand your own feelings and motives, you start recognizing the same behaviors in others, which helps you develop empathy. For example, when you realize you’re standoffish in new situations because you feel uncomfortable and insecure around new people, you’re likely to give the new girl at work a break if she isn’t as friendly as you thought she’d be. You might even ask her to go to lunch or take her on a tour around the office to make her feel more at ease.
While there are many ways to become more self-aware, here is an easy to implement five step process:
- Pay attention to your thoughts and actions as well as how others react to what you say and do.
- Ask yourself questions about those thoughts and actions, like: Why do I feel this way? Do I really believe that, or did I pick it up along the way and accept it as my own belief? Is this fear and insecurity talking or is this request really insane?
- Revisit past situations that left you confused, scared, happy, or hurt and try to better understand what happened.
- Learn, take your new awareness and let it sink in, deep.
- Apply this practice every day.
The better you understand yourself, the better you can control your emotions and reactions leading to better verbal and non-verbal communication skills because you see things through a clear lens rather than a cloudy one. What happens next? BETTER RELATIONSHIPS!
Practice this daily and I promise you will see amazing results.
Thoughts? Questions? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear from you.
