Tips To Help You Increase Your Self-Awareness

If you want to be successful in your life, work, and relationships, then your level of self-awareness matters! When self-awareness is missing, it leads to a host of issues that keep you from being the effective leader or individual you want to be!

A Key Ingredient

Cooking and baking are tasks that bring me joy! Scones, coffee cake, and pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, are just a few of my family’s favorite breakfast choices. As our family has grown, new dietary restrictions have forced me to get creative in the kitchen. Over the years I’ve prepared baked goodies with wheat, spelt, and even gluten free!

I’ve swapped out the pumpkin for applesauce in the muffins. When making the scones or coffee cake, I’ve used regular milk, buttermilk, oat milk, almond milk, sour cream, and dairy free yogurt.

I’ve even experimented with the fat by using butter, dairy free butter, olive oil, and avocado oil.

Depending on who will be indulging, I’ve alternated between almonds, walnuts, pecans or left the nuts out altogether!

My family refers to me as the queen of substitutions. The one ingredient I don’t mess with: the baking powder!

Skipping the baking powder is disastrous because it produces dense, flat, unappealing baked goods! I know – I’ve had few fails where I accidentally left it out.

In some situations, you can replace the backing power with baking soda as long as you also use an acidic ingredient like lemon juice or buttermilk, which alters the flavor. And you should know that using the same amount of baking soda won’t end well! It’s four times more powerful!

Self-Awareness Is Like Baking Powder!

Self-Awareness is a key ingredient if you want to excel personally and professionally. Without self-awareness, your efforts will fall flat.

Self-Awareness – What is it?

Miriam Webster describes self-awareness as an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality.

Dictionary.com describes it as “Conscious knowledge or one’s own character, motives, and desires.”

Debbie Ford defines self-awareness this way: The ability to take an honest look at your life without attachment to it being right or wrong.

There’s a lot wrapped up in the idea of self-awareness including paying attention to your…

• Perceptions
• Emotions
• Physical Sensations
• Observations and the details you hone in on
• Habits and patterns
• Behaviors
• Thoughts
• Gut feelings
• Reactions
• Desires
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Impact on others

Self-awareness is being 100% honest with yourself. Taking the time and making the space to tune into you, all of you, and notice the good, the bad, and the ugly about yourself.

Some have been raised to tune in, but many have not. Like anything new, it takes practice that’s well worth the effort!

Why Does Self-Awareness Matter?

Without the ability to tune into yourself, you are more or less operating in the dark, which is a real disadvantage. If you aren’t able to tune into yourself, it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to tune into others.

Your ability to relate to others in healthy ways hinges on your level of self-awareness. And relating well is a necessary skill in life and work.

Lacking Self-Awareness?

Wondering if you have the self-awareness needed to navigate life, work, and relationships successfully? Here are a few indicators that it’s time to boost your self-awareness:

• Being in denial – focusing on the story you tell yourself about yourself rather than the reality of you.
• The inability to identify and/or understand emotions.
• Ignoring or suppressing your emotions.
• Being defensive and/or overreacting to criticism or feedback.
• Having emotional outbursts.
• Making excuses.
• Bullying.
• Micromanaging.
• Making poor decisions.
• Feeling overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or angry.
• Difficulty empathizing and/or seeing different perspectives.
• Struggling to trust others.
• Relationship problems.
• Addiction.
• Unable to focus or concentrate.
• Drama keeps finding you.
• Overestimating your capabilities.
• Trouble communicating effectively.
• Having a victim mentality.

What Prevents Self-Awareness?

It’s simple! The assumption that you are self-aware along with a resistance to taking an objective look at your life. Curious what’s behind the resistance?

Internally

Often what blocks self-awareness is you – your fears, the desire to avoid feelings and/or pain, not wanting to feel out of control or venture into the unknown. For you it might be limiting beliefs, doubts, not knowing what you want, feeling unworthy.

Externally

When you don’t have a firm grasp on who you are or your worth, receiving criticism, feedback, or facing challenging circumstances, all feel like threats. And it’s more challenging to be open to greater awareness about yourself when you are in protective mode.

Greater self-awareness translates into more favorable interactions with others and it increases the chances of success in whatever you do. That’s a powerful incentive to proactively develop greater self-awareness.

So How Do You Develop Self-Awareness?

1. Recognize the Importance

If you don’t value self-awareness and understand how critical it is, you won’t be motivated to diligently pursue it.

2. Be Open

Knowing the importance of self-awareness is good, but if you aren’t open to doing what’s necessary to cultivating it, you won’t do it!

3. Slow Down!

Connecting with yourself takes time! If you are perpetually doing, there isn’t space to be. You need blocks of time to explore how you are feeling, what strengths and/or weaknesses you have noticed, or how your personality is impacting your behavior. Of course, there’s more to explore and you are continuously growing and changing, so there’s something new to notice all the time!

A few big questions to ponder is what’s got you perpetually in motion? What might you be avoiding?

It’s an unfamiliar feeling to slow down for many. Maybe it feels that way for you. Remember, anything new takes practice and in time it feels more normal.

4. Take Action!

In order to boost your self-awareness at some point you have to take action. Here are some practical ways to expand your self-awareness so that you can “rise” to the next level in your life and work:

Journaling

It’s often surprising what surfaces when you allow your thoughts to spill out onto the page! The beauty of journaling is that it’s free and it takes very little to get started. It allows you to connect to your feelings, desires, thoughts, and more!

Explore Your Feelings

What if you took just a few minutes each day to ask yourself. “How am I feeling?” It takes practice to put words to your feelings, but once you know what you are feeling, then you are able to make better decisions.

It’s not about allowing your feelings to dictate your decisions, but rather responding to them in a healthy way. When your feelings are left ignored, they build and often leak out in in appropriate ways.

 A few other options to help you connect to your emotions…

• • • Take The 30-Day Feelings Challenge. You may even want to track the feelings that trigger strong reactions to help you unravel what’s at the root.
    • Read Brene Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart.
    • Familiarize yourself with a Feeling Wheel like this or this.

Identify your Strengths (and growth areas)

A free assessment comes with every copy of the book Now, Discover Your Strengths, but it costs nothing to ask the people around you what they view as your strengths. When you ask 10-20 people you will start to see some themes.

Understand Your Personality

There are all sorts of personality assessments available and they each offer valuable information. I prefer a DISC assessment as it’s an easy framework to apply not only to yourself, but to help you understand others in the moment too.

Understand Your Thinking Preferences

Take an HBDI assessment to learn more about how your thinking impacts the way you work, communicate, lead, etc.. Contact me here to let me know you are ready!

Ask For feedback

That may sound bold or scary, but getting an outside perspective on YOU is quite enlightening! The more you ask for feedback, the easier it gets.

Identify Your Fear Monster & More

Being aware of your Fear Monster is life changing, especially when coupled with identifying your desires, and who God created you to be. Without that awareness, you’ll continue to encounter all sorts of negative experiences without really understanding the dynamic at play.

Consider Your habits

What habits are helping and which habits are hindering you?  Need a little insight into how to improve your habits? Download my free e-book 12 Habits That Will Transform Your Leadership.

Work With A Coach!

You might not think of partnering with a coach as a way to increase your self-awareness, but in reality, it’s a fantastic way to see yourself in a fresh light and arrive at new insights about yourself that you might not get to on your own! Even better, those new perspectives are stepping stones to exciting and positive changes that are sure to serve you well both personally and professionally. Don’t be fooled! The most successful leaders, professionals and entrepreneurs enlist the help of a coach! I dare you to give it a try!

Are you missing self-awareness, a key ingredient?

What would expand your self-awareness?