Today’s message is all about why it’s so important to constantly cultivate self-awareness in your life!
The more I deal with people on a daily basis, the more I see just how important it is to develop the the subtle skill/art of self-awareness. There are so many ways to define “self-awareness”, but today I want to focus on two aspects.
First, you can look at self-awareness as the recognition of your own emotional state at any given point in time. It is also the ability to look at our your words and actions from a perspective outside of yourself; to see yourself as others see you. The problem is, we almost always tend to think we’re self-aware when we’re not really. Far too often, we are wholly unaware of the emotional state we are currently in, and the degree to which that state influences our behaviour and thought process.
I believe you can draw a direct link between your ability to manage your emotional state, and your ability to manage every other element of your life. In the past, lack of self-awareness might have been written off as a benign human quirk, but as our world becomes increasingly complex, the need for self-awareness is growing to paramount importance. Self-awareness is becoming the most vital skill we need to cultivate in order to navigate our future challenges.
Again, this is such a broad topic, but for time sake, I want to close off with one piece of advice. To be self-aware, you need to be curious about yourself. You need to be willing to ask the hard questions like:
- Why am I the way I am?
- What drives my behaviours?
- What drives specific emotional reactions of mine?
- Why do I get offended when (insert occasion here)?
- What are my unconscious biases and where do they come from?
- What are my emotional triggers and why do they set me off?
The bottom line for me is, the more you introspect in your life, and the more curious you are about what drives you and why, and the more action you’re willing to take on these notes, the happier you will become.
But only YOU can ask yourself these hard questions, and only YOU can do the work. But as I’ve come to learn, you pay now or you pay later. The only question is, how much will the lesson cost you?
Mark
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