Why is self-awareness important? Seeing yourself as you truly are is crucial to personal growth. Once you can see the truth, you can more fully develop your natural talents and use your passions to find greater success and fulfillment.
As Lao Tzu says, “Knowing others is wisdom; knowing yourself is Enlightenment.”
Why Self-Awareness is Difficult
It’s easy to find fault with others and pinpoint what they’re doing wrong, but finding fault with yourself can be challenging.
Instead of admitting your mistakes, trying and escaping by making excuses and justifying your actions is tempting. Or you may ignore these errors by distracting yourself with pleasurable activities or doing something good for someone to feel better about yourself.
Alternatively, you might depend on recognition and admiration from others in order to mask your faults. By doing so, your mind learns to motivate you by external praise rather than by the greater rewards inherent in living a lifestyle in congruence with your values and natural abilities.
Even though it might be challenging to find out the truth, discovering yourself can help you determine self-defeating behaviors like these so you can move toward behaviors that help you.
Be Aware of Your Motivations
Knowing your motives may not always be easy, but it’s essential if you want to become self-aware. When you say something to someone, ask yourself why you said it. Even better, ask this question before you say it.
For instance, imagine your colleagues discussing their struggles with work-life balance, and you have a well-organized daily routine that allows you to excel at both. The temptation to chime in and share your efficiency might arise. But pause for a moment and ask yourself why you want to contribute to the conversation. Is it because you want to showcase your better handle on time management?
If you choose to share your insights without reflection, it could strain your relationships with your colleagues. They might perceive your comments as a form of bragging and feel inadequate in comparison.
Without self-awareness and reflection, such unhelpful dynamics can persist. This scenario is just one instance; there are likely other scenarios with similar dynamics.
Be Aware of Your Intentions
On a slightly different note than knowing your motivations, knowing your intentions is essential. Your objectives can set off a chain of events, negative or positive, depending on what your aim is.
Think about two keywords – Intention and Impact. You may have the intention of being confident, but when you show up as overconfident, the impact is you may seem arrogant. You may have the intention of being highly independent, and the impact on others is they see you are unable to build a team.
In becoming self-aware, you can delve into your intentions and modify them to have the impact you anticipate.
Be aware of Your Patterns
We all operate on specific patterns created from our past experiences. We keep acting in the same ways, often without realizing it. With self-awareness, you can recognize your patterns, keep the ones that help you, and then form new patterns that better contribute to your goals.
Consider the example of someone with a procrastination pattern when faced with challenging tasks at work. They might have developed this pattern over the years as a way to avoid stress or discomfort. Without self-awareness, they may continue to work on why they do it.
However, with self-awareness, this individual can recognize their pattern of procrastination. They can then assess whether this pattern is helping or hindering their career goals. Suppose they find that procrastination is holding them back. In that case,
they can work on forming new habits and practices, such as time management techniques or breaking tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, to improve their productivity and contribute to their professional growth.
Trying these strategies will lead you on a path of self-awareness that can unlock your potential and bring you great fulfillment throughout your life. As you uncover new behaviors and patterns, you can ask yourself if they’re what you want. Through self-awareness, you can have the life you aspire to.
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