How to Develop Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is having a conscious knowledge of your traits, beliefs, personality, thoughts, feelings, emotions, strengths and weaknesses.
It helps you to navigate the world around you with an overview of who you truly are, how you interact with others, and how you act in different situations. It’s a non-judgemental understanding of who you are as an individual.
So, why is it important to be self-aware? Having a strong sense of self-awareness is integral to understanding your own actions and identifying areas where adjustments can be made to better align your behaviour with your goals and your purpose.
In the realm of personal development and emotional intelligence, self-awareness is akin to a super power. But like any skill, it needs to be learned and developed.
How can you develop your own self-awareness?
The key to becoming more self-aware is taking the time to review and assess who you are. Not surface stuff like your family tree or your work history, we want to get really deep and specific to you. Here are some of the ways you can do this:
1. Psychometric testing. You know how much I love the Myers Briggs test! The MBTI is a great way to get a thorough overview of your personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. It is free to complete the questionnaire and was designed with the purpose of indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. It’s such a great starting point for personal growth and self-awareness; the results are incredibly interesting, and best of all, it gives you a great platform to build from!
2. Review and assess how you react in certain situations. Can you think of situations you handled really well? Consider that situation in its entirety. What did you do? Why did you do it?
What about situations you didn’t handle so well? Why do you think that was? What triggered you to react the way you did? Is your reaction a pattern that occurs in other situations too? What would have been a better way to handle the situation? How could you better handle similar situations in the future?
This exercise is an important step in understanding your decision making processes. To ensure that its also a productive one however, you need to be really honest with yourself here. Remember that you don’t have to share these thoughts with anyone else, so be as truthful as possible. Uncovering the underlying reasons for your behaviour is a huge accomplishment - even if you are only sharing the details with yourself. Be proud of your vulnerability!
3. Talk to a therapist or counsellor. Despite most of us having the natural instinct to talk through something like this with a friend or family member, I would recommend you seek out a therapist or a counsellor instead.
It’s much easier to chat about these things with someone impartial and who is trained to spot certain behaviours and patterns. A counsellor or therapist is also better equipped to help you work on future behaviour. When you ask a friend, you are putting a lot of pressure on your relationship. They may be reluctant to say anything that would hurt your feelings, and even if they are honest with you, it may be difficult to hear your flaws from a friend. You need to consider how that might affect your relationship.
However, friends can be really helpful in working through issues you are already aware of. Rather than asking your friend to point out insecurity/self-worth/confidence issues, you could say, ‘Hey, I’ve realised I need to work on my self-worth, especially at work. Do you recognise that in me? In what ways?’ You’ll have a much more comfortable conversation, and your friend will be able to speak a lot more freely knowing you’re already aware of this.
4. Write it out. Keeping a journal is a great way to get your thoughts out and discover little realisations about yourself. This works in a similar way to talking it out - it can give you more insight than just mulling it over in your head.
There is something about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard!) that just helps your thoughts flow. You can write out a daily journal or you can choose to write about specific events from your past or present. Both options are valuable.
As well as helping you to think through events as you write them down, you will also find that going back and reading over old entries will provide you with huge insight into your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
5. Be honest and methodical. Try to get to the root of traits and behaviours. Uncovering uncomfortable truths might not be the most fun you’ve ever had, but it will make life so much easier going forward - try to approach self-reflection from an impartial point of view.
If you can’t be honest with yourself about the ‘whys’ of self-awareness, you are limiting your potential for progress, or at the very least delaying it. The sooner you can dive in and get up-close and personal with the root causes of your behavioural patterns, the sooner you can understand and alter them.
6. Identify your thought patterns. Are you a black and white thinker? Do you tend to personalise situations? Or overgeneralise? Work out what your thought patterns are, and the best way to balance them out. Perspective is a large part of this. Having an empathetic approach to situations and considering other points of view will help you to figure out the best way to balance most situations.
Once you are aware of these thought patterns and habits it is easier to identify them when they take hold. You can then take a moment to rebalance your thinking and approach the situation from a better angle. It will take time to nail this one but it will get easier the more you do it!
7. Let your strengths shine. During childhood and adolescence we’re often taught to focus on improving our weak points and we inevitably ignore our strengths. While it’s important to strike a balance and work on your weak points, you should also let your strengths shine through.
Take on the athlete mentality as described by Scott Miker: ‘Professional athletes tend to focus on their strengths. They know their particular skill set and what they are good at. There tends to be clearly defined positions and roles that players gravitate to, many times spending their entire career in that role.’
Letting your natural talents lead you will teach you so much about yourself. This work doesn't have to be all about shadow traits. Learning what you are great at is as important as learning about areas for development.
8. Challenge your beliefs and question your opinions. James Altucher has a great exercise where he changes the punctuation at the end of a judgement to a question mark. So, ‘She should have done more!’ becomes ‘She should have done more?’, or ‘That was so unfair!’ changes to ‘That was so unfair?’
It’s a weird but fun exercise (James is the king of weird but fun thought experiments) that makes you consider your opinions from another perspective and think about things differently. It opens up a line of thought about why you think the things you do - another great tool for self-awareness.
Self-awareness is a great way to better understand your behaviour, your feelings and the part you play in relationships too - It really is an integral part of personal development and personal growth. Taking the time to consider your actions and the motivation behind them can be incredibly interesting, and the pay-off is a mindset and behaviours which align to help you achieve your goals and live your purpose.