How do you develop self-awareness? Knowing yourself means self-knowledge and understanding yourself.
I notice a lot of questions on Social media that, what it boils down to form the questions that type of questions that I get is lack of self-awareness example what businesses should I invest in? how should I get started ?, what investment should I make ?, what part I should focus on? am I on the right path?
All these questions boil down to a lack of self-awareness. Not knowing Yourself so how do you actually develop self-awareness? I Believe there are two main ways to do it.
WHAT’S IN IT
Struggle
You could do it in a way where, when you have gone through a lot of hardship and a lot of struggle to learn about who you truly are.
You have heard about this before there are under stress people reveal the true color and the same thing I believe under stress. Also, you get to know more about yourself.
Personality type
So, knowing yourself in terms of your personality type and there are a lot of different personality cases out there, right even like strengths finder what are your strengths? What are you good at? What is your weakness, what are you not good at, what are you passionate about?
Once you have some basic understanding of your personality type and your strengths and weaknesses. When you have done enough things, you have a pretty good idea of focusing on that area. It’s like the question what sports do you play well?
You don’t know if you have not played a lot of sports you would not know are you good. are you tall, are you good at basketball, are you good at tennis, are you good at golf, your patience, are you good at ping pong like if you have not tried enough. things well how do you know what would you be good at?
It’s the same insert with self-awareness if you have not tried enough things then you really don’t know are you on the right path? Is this the right thing for me? Is it the right career for me?
Or is it the right vehicle for me. business is a vehicle for me because you have not tried enough things versus just hearing someone saying this and saying that if you should do this you should do that.
No, you have to understand something here just because it works for somebody does not mean it work for you it might work for you or not work for you but it starts with that self-awareness.
Learning from a mentor
When I had no self-awareness when sometimes in my career when I was younger that I was lost one fortunate thing that I have was being able to talk to my mentor then my mentor would give me a lot of directions and clarity and empower in the ability to take action
So, my mentor would tell me you should focus on this you shouldn’t focus on that gives me more awareness. Once I think about it I reflect and I ponder. Then I gave enough time naturally developed that self-awareness does make sense.
So, really skew hard knocks through time through an experience you would develop something if you also know how to ask yourself like good questions because you need to think about self-awareness it’s nothing more than internal communication and communicating with yourself.
5 ways of developing self-awareness
Listening sessions
This is simply where you let your mind wander to see where it goes and then observing how you feel. Even notice that some of your best thoughts happen when you’re in the shower or about to go to sleep well.
That is because your subconscious brain is always processing and drawing a connection between things and ideas in your everyday life but during the day we are so actively engaged in the things around us that we don’t have time to take notice.
It’s only then we stop for a second that gives our brains space to Bubble up these insights to the surface for me personally that’s my sower time or the walk that I take every day to kind of get away from my desk and just observe life from a bigger picture perspective or maybe for you that would be driving or doing mindless activities like chores around the house.
Whatever works for you to help disengage your brains and kind of just float around and think space and let your brain bubble up these insights to the surface.
Regardless of what works for you make sure to be scheduling time into your day every single day to let your subconscious teach you stuff and make sure to protect that time like you would are doctor’s appointment or an important meeting because personal growth is one of the best things you could possibly be invest
Treating your brain as a separate entity
What I mean by that is your conscious brain and subconscious brain are separate; they are each doing their own processing. you control your conscious brain. But, your subconscious brain is often doing its own thing to try to protect you and keep you alive.
It’s doing things to avoid risk and just make sure to keep you safe understanding this will allow you to look at your brain from a distance and not take everything is does personally you are someone who has a brain not someone who is their brain sees the difference
So, this allows you to kind of take a step back and examine yourself partially. So, you can see which parts are great and which parts need to be improved.
Without that sense of defensiveness that often comes when you look yourself with a critical eye because you see we all have so much junk up.
Here, we have all got our issues our insecurities our anxiety all these mental knots that we have to lovingly message out by helping our brains get this experience of going out of our comfort zone so we can gradually start to reshape these flawed beliefs about ourselves
Question your impulses
It’s important to question your initial assumption of what you should be doing with your life or how you should behave whenever you think you want something or think you should act in a certain way.
Double-check will and ask yourself again why you think that’s the case try to identify. It comes from a lot of what we take for granted in our thinking. Also from culture or parents expectation for how we have been raised.
Often times these societal pressures make their way into our thinking by understanding the root of where different things come from you can better identify why you act in certain ways if there certain parts of you that you don’t like you can start to understand how to fix it.
Listen to your friends
Surround yourself with friends that can be like a mirror for your friends that teach you about yourself both the good and the bad in a very loving way by paying attention to how other people see you. You can start to see past that layer of bias that comes when we try to observe our-self.
Examine your past
Take some time to think back to your past. There are deeper parts of our services that start to get covered up as they learn to conform to what we think.
Generally, people want us to be thinking back to who you were as a child may help to shed some light for you on your deeper needs or your natural tendencies to help you see who you were when you strip away that layer of who you think other people want you to be so in time as you build your self-awareness in these five ways
Conclusion
Basically, self-awareness is the ability to monitor our inner world really just being able to see yourself more clearly. It means understanding who we are on the inside and how we operate.
Self-awareness is the key to overcoming the parts of yourself that you don’t like and also becoming the version of yourself that you admire the crap out.
Also Read: Emotional Intelligence- Developing Strong “People Skills”