Are you experiencing situations or areas in your life that you don’t seem to comprehend? Or do you have habits and personality traits that you don’t seem to recognize? Well, maybe, you need to consider practicing more self-awareness techniques that might give you the answers you need. Exercising self-awareness is one of the most challenging habits to master.
When you are conscious and self-aware, you are in a better position to improve your strong points and manage your flaws. Every day, try to devise new ways to discover self-awareness through courses, books, and seminars.
Although most people believe that they are self-aware, genuine self-awareness is a rare quality to find. Research confirms that when we observe ourselves honestly, we become self-assured and more resourceful. It is unlikely that we will fall into destructive habits of deceit, idleness, or unproductivity. The simple approach is to take predictive index cognitive assessment to identify your cognitive ability and intelligence. `
Unfortunately, positive change that comes from self-awareness is not always automatic. It is a disorganized and confusing journey, and therefore, every leader must know what motivates them, especially in the decision-making process.
In simple terms, self-awareness is the ability to examine your activities, beliefs, or sentiments to align with inner principles. There is a lot of interest in this subject because knowledge on self-awareness will enable you to achieve more in your career, transform into a better leader, improve associations with colleagues and family and control your emotions.
We now know that, for any business venture to succeed, leaders must master the art of self-awareness in three of the following ways.
Test and know yourself better
The first step is to gauge and know both your strengths and weaknesses, and you can make use of various online tests that assess your character. These tests include personality tests have become very popular in recent years due to their many benefits.
However, the tests mentioned are not 100 percent accurate, they only help to facilitate self-reflection, indicating better physical and emotional health. If you develop deliberate self-awareness practice, you can achieve your goals, re-evaluate your value system, and align your priorities.
Watch yourself and learn.
Self-reflection could be one way to determine your strengths. Form habits that help you analyze your decisions. Accomplish result analysis by taking note of the critical decisions that you make, whenever you face a challenge, note down the expected result and review it after some time. Compare your decision with the actual outcome. Make a habit of this exercise to bring out your real strength. This type of examination can be either qualitative or quantitative.
Be aware of others too.
Self-awareness is critical when working or interacting with others as it helps you discover and bring out people’s hidden talents and gifting. Make a deliberate effort to know people you interact with regularly to be in a better place to know their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing strengths and weaknesses of others is an advantage especially if you are a leader as this will ensure success and productivity in your team. It will also make working relationships enjoyable.
In a conducive working environment, having the right workforce will open your eyes to the realization of self-discovery of what you do well and what others do better. Self-discovery will, in turn, enhance efficiency, which will result in increased productivity and growth.
There are two major groupings of self-awareness.
The self-awareness that is within you, i.e., internal. Internal self-awareness is the ability to know your values, talents, passions, and aspirations, including your thoughts and behaviors. In retrospect, internal self-awareness includes being aware of your strengths and weaknesses, avoid what you suck at, and concentrate on your strengths.
The second group is the external self-awareness. External self-awareness involves how other people perceive you. Your awareness of other people will make you have compassion. You will be a more effective leader if you are aware of how your employees view you. Empathizing with their situations will create better working relationships.
You may be sure that you need to be more self-aware, but how do you achieve it?
There are online self-awareness tests that you can take though they are not clinically or scientifically proven. Furthermore, deliberate taking a personality test, but please note that the outcome might contradict your perception of yourself.
The other simple yet effective way is to apply feedback analysis to your decision-making process outlined above. Make a habit of re-evaluating your decision-making processes to keep yourself motivated and more self-aware.
Alternatively, ensure that you are aware of your abilities and faults. Confirm the outcome with a trusted friend or colleague to give you honest feedback.
Overtime, include other methods that can help you know and understand yourself better, such as creating time to meditate, read, or pray. These activities are beneficial to understand and appreciate yourself.
Once in a while, switch of the TV, turn off your phone, take time off work, and concentrate on yourself. The outcome might surprise you since you will be more productive, more pleasant to be around, and less anxious.
Benefits of self-awareness
- You can decrease stress and improve your overall health by identifying tasks that you don’t enjoy or situations that trigger anxiety.
- Whenever possible, engage in tasks that you enjoy. Deliberate on outsourcing activities that least excite you. That way, you will find true happiness from being more productive.
- Purpose to have more meaningful relationships with colleagues and family by intentionally keeping emotions under control.
- Improve your leadership skills by understanding how different temperaments react in different situations.
- In all circumstances, always learn to be content. Be grateful in times of plenty and hopeful in times of lack. That way, you will always have peace despite the circumstances around you.
- Be aware of your abilities by working harder to sharpen them, and likewise be mindful of your shortcomings as this will save you from frustrations.
We can, therefore, conclude that self-awareness is essential in managing self-control. Learn to attend to others as a way of understanding them without judging them. Practice more listening than talking, and you will be surprised at how effective your lead.
Lastly, you must seek feedback from both your employees and family members. It is not possible to attain full self-awareness without honest feedback from those around you. Honest feedback will enable you to deal with the weaknesses you may have.