Being more self-aware helps to better understand and embrace who you are, giving you more clarity. The leads to being more confident and creative, making better decisions, having stronger relationships and communicating better. This results in greater personal satisfaction, where you internally become so much stronger and developed and your externals follow but not the primary driver. It’s the foundation for transforming yourself for the better and it focuses on understanding your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. In essence, it's just about questioning yourself, not to ridicule or tear down or doubt yourself but really to get a better sense of why you do the certain things that you do or how you interpret what's going on.
It's where you become your own mentor where you gain a different perspective and giving yourself feedback. Sometimes this comes out of just the want to better yourself and sometimes just comes out of pure curiosity. Either way what you're doing is you're taking yourself out of the first-person point of view away from the action and taking the overhead view to see things beyond what is right in front of you.
This is part of where some of that clarity is gained because you can see beyond what's coming at you or what you're having to react to. This can be hard at times because it means that you're stepping outside yourself. But a helpful thing to do is to use that third person point of view where instead of saying I feel disappointed or I'm feeling very excited you can say you feel disappointed, or you feel excited and then from there you slowly start to step outside yourself and can start to question without really becoming defensive.
Internal and external self-awareness
Self-awareness can be broken down into two categories, internal and external. The internals are your thoughts, your feelings, your values, your passions, your aspirations, your strengths your weaknesses. The externals are how others view you and research has shown that people who know how others see them are more skilled at showing empathy and taking others’ perspectives.
Leaders who see themselves as the people that they lead, tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more connected and satisfied with them, and there is a greater level of trust. This gives the sense that they are part of the people that they lead, which just bodes well for overall morale. This is part of being on a level playing field that makes us feel that we're equal and not that our worth is based on a certain hierarchy that's in place.
Most of us are self-aware to a point and that point is where we find that personal satisfaction so the more self-aware that we are in a sense the greater we feel about ourselves. Greater self-awareness allows you to handle greater amounts of stress, challenges, struggles and effectively being able to handle and overcome them. A big thing is knowing what motivates you, what really inspires you. This gives you a driving force for pursuing certain things.
Within the internal self-awareness it can be further broken down into two types which are the introspectors and the aware. The introspectors are clear on who they are but don't really challenge their own views or search for those blind spots. It’s being comfortable in who you are and that’s it, which is a good starting point. Essentially, they'll forego getting feedback from others and this can stunt their relationships and the successes that they might have. Those mistakes that they make they learn from them mostly through self-reflection and there could be a want to avoid reliving some of the bad experiences which limits the progress they’ll make.
But those that are aware they know who they are what they want to accomplish and are going to get other people's feedback to catch those blind spots that can really help them out. What this really does is getting two forces to come together to make them better because they’re using their own internals of what they know about themselves but also getting another person who sees what they do well and those areas that they can improve on and how to do it. This allows for significant growth. It gets them more comfortable with the not so pretty things about themselves.
Within the external self-awareness, it also can be broken down into two categories, the seekers and the pleasers. The seekers don't yet know who they are, what they stand for or how others see them. This leads to them feeling stuck or frustrated with themselves or the situation that they're in. Just think when you're searching for somethings and you don't know what that is. Obviously, this feels like you're just lost, not knowing what but it also could be exciting because of the opportunity that is right in front of you. Generally, this happens the younger we are, and it takes a little bit of time to figure that out.
For those that are lucky enough to have somebody point that out to them about just knowing what it is that you're aiming for helps to have greater satisfaction. The other external self-awareness are the pleasers which are focused on how they appear to others, and they could be overlooking what really matters to them. With enough time they'll make a lot more choices that are not in the best interest for themselves because they are giving their best to satisfy others.
Aim for balanced self-awareness
The two types of categories, internal and external it might seem like one is better than the other but if you kind of take a deeper dive into it it's important to have a balance within the two both internal and external. If you just look at the internal and being highly aware it can be a detriment because of looking for too much feedback from others that can cloud your thoughts because of so much information in many different ways that stretches you thin. You could be on the right track of working well with others but in trying to get a lot of feedback it can derail you from what you are already doing excelling in. It’s just enough information that you can use while sticking to your values and listening to yourself.
For the external it might seem like you don't want to be a seeker or a pleaser, but you need a little bit of both. The seeker is going to help you not be so caught up in what others think but not so blind that you don’t care about other people’s opinion. Some of us might have that thinking of I really don't care what other people think of me, I am who I am, and they can either love me or hate me.
And that's OK to have, it's just in a way pleasing the right people so the people that you do have in your corner whether it's your parents your friends’, partnerships at the professional setting you can avoid making enemies out of them because they're ultimately can help you reach new heights. There is only so much you can do on your own and if you burn bridges with them, you’ll find yourself isolated. You got to make sure you are in good standing with them.
Be proactive in seeking valuable feedback
Look to your family members, your friends, your team members for their thoughts about what you do well, where you can make better improvements because they’ll see many of the blindspots you are unaware of. Let them know up front that you want honest feedback because having yes people around is a disservice as it inflates the ego. It is better off not asking someone if all they are going to be is a yes person. Whatever you say is right and that is going to set you up for a rude awakening.
If you just look at elite athletes, they all had a coach or mentor that were a significant part of them reaching new heights. Yes, they probably had enormous talent but that alone is only going to get you so far. Micheal Jordan early on in his career experienced individual success but it was the head coach Phil Jackson that helped facilitate taking the team to a new level by having Michael distribute the ball more so other players could capitalize on opportunities. Early on, even when Michael had the individual success, teams that faced him had the game plan of having multiple on Michael to slow him down. If you did slow him down it meant greater odds of beating them but with the new approach of distributing the ball more, slowing down Micheal did not always lead to greater odds of beating them.
The importance of having a good amount of self-awareness where you're not so extremely heightened that you're being pulled in so many different directions but not so completely oblivious to what's going on inside and all around you will be key to your success. This is that delicate act of finding that right space that works for you. For everyone it's going to be a little bit different maybe for others it is about silencing much of that outside noise and for others it's going to be getting a little bit more feedback to get you outside your comfort zone so you're not making the same mistakes over again.
With the right balance of internal and external self-awareness it’s going to help manage the ego from getting too big, where you keep it in check. This is where some of that self-doubt is good to have because that self-doubt can cause you to question things. Maybe it might be in a negative manner but also as a way to make sure that you thought things through or that you've prepared yourself enough.
More experience can lead someone to overestimate themselves because of that sense of I've already had success before so why shouldn't I expect the same thing going forward. This can go the same way for the more power that a person has it could lead to one feeling invincible or again overestimating themselves. It's important to have that proper balance of obviously what you think of yourself but what others think of you and balancing the two. Just like the saying goes, things are never as good or as bad as they seem, they're right in the middle. By knowing yourself and getting feedback from others you can do the same.
In cases where someone is less experienced or has less power this can benefit them because that self-doubt that they might have can be turned into a lot of questions that can lead one to finding answers and eventually this leads to being more prepared. When we take on something new it grabs our attention it can feel scary because we want to avoid making a mistake and this can cause us to slow things down. We'll refocus on the basics to get a better understanding and it makes us pay attention to all the details.
Final thoughts
When you become more self-aware, you're taking a proactive approach to where your life is going. It naturally fits in to growing and developing well. You identify things about yourself, what you stand for and what you are pursuing that builds momentum towards progress that uplifts you. Continue that by searching what else can I do to improve myself, my craft, my situation and this fuels that curiosity, that pushes the boundaries and makes the process fulfilling. It shifts the focus from win or lose, right or wrong to learning, to gaining value that makes you lose track of the score, of the external validation and more about satisfying that internal hunger.
Putting yourself out there is naturally going to be uncomfortable, hard and painful but that is evidence of your high ambition to be better so use that to get you through the ugliness. Just like anything else, the more you practice something you eventually get acclimated to it. When you are self-reflecting or seeking feedback from others that you trust you’ll hear things that will be off putting but the more that you can just listen and avoid explaining why you do things or coming up with a rebuttal the better you can process valuable information. Make being more self-aware a habit because it will improve how you experience life.
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