Self awareness is perhaps the single most essential characteristic for leaders. Without it, leaders may appear arrogant or out of touch with others.
Self awareness is a lifelong journey that takes patience and commitment to develop. But its worth the effort as it brings many rewards such as patience, empathy, assertiveness and more.
1. Practice Quiet Time
Being self-aware requires practicing silence time regularly. Spending alone time without distractions to understand yourself allows you to make better decisions and live the life you envision for yourself.
Quiet time activities include meditation, prayer, journaling or Bible reading. To make this routine and consistent in your routine, pick a specific time and place every day for your quiet time activity – starting small such as 5 or 10 minutes daily until you become more acquainted with this practice is best!
If it is difficult for you to maintain a regular daily routine, one way of staying on track and consistent journaling may be using a journal sheet with prompts or questions for answering. You could also utilize a prayer guide in order to keep yourself focused on the Lord and what He desires for your spiritual growth – the goal being spending quality time with the Lord each day so you can hear His voice in your heart.
2. Practice Meditation
Meditation can help you quiet your thoughts and focus on yourself and what’s happening around you, offering a great tool for self-awareness by helping you be present without worrying about past or future events. Meditation also offers insights into your emotions that influence interactions with others.
One way to increase self-awareness is by engaging in new experiences, like taking a cooking class or trying out a new hobby, says Craig. Engaging in such experiences allows you to observe how your behaviors and thoughts change when exposed to unfamiliar circumstances; furthermore, this exercise allows for patience training as it gives time for reflection before reacting quickly – for instance instead of immediately criticizing an employee when making mistakes, you have time to reflect and devise more appropriate reactions instead.
Self-awareness can be increased through regular reflection. This could take many forms, from journaling or creating goal lists and prioritization lists, to using tools like Fellow’s Streams so you can track how far you’ve come.
3. Learn to Open Your Mind
Self awareness is an invaluable skill that takes practice to perfect. To be self-aware, you need to reflect on yourself and understand what motivates you. Journaling can be an excellent way to tap into those parts of yourself that might otherwise remain unseen by conscious mind; there are numerous methods for journaling such as writing one line a day for a set time period or using guided journals with prompts that facilitate reflection.
Learning to open up your mind can also help you become more compassionate towards others. For instance, self-awareness can help you recognize when someone makes you angry by showing how insecurities or fears may be driving your behavior and thus enable a more productive and gentle response from you.
Being self-aware can also help you be an effective leader. For example, when making mistakes at work, being aware of yourself will allow you to realize where your behavior could have been improved and apologize in an honest and genuine manner – helping build trust between team members while encouraging employees to accept responsibility for their own errors, which increases productivity overall.
4. Learn to Listen
As soon as you become conscious of how people view you, you can make adjustments that improve their perception. For example, an intuitive empath may benefit from prioritizing eye contact and attentive posture in their communication style to increase understanding.
Similarly, if you tend to react quickly during stressful situations, learning patience and kindness may help. By becoming self-aware, this knowledge may enable you to accept colleagues who behave differently from yourself without taking their differences personally.
But there are resources out there to help increase self-awareness. Take the VIA Strengths assessment and discover your personal traits; or participate in a journaling exercise designed to increase self-knowledge.
Commit to developing self-awareness on a consistent basis and be open to criticism and feedback. For instance, if someone criticizes your behavior and you get defensive in response, recognize that your reaction could be due to misinterpreting their intentions if they genuinely aim to help your leadership progress. By increasing self-awareness you’ll increase confidence across all aspects of leadership.
5. Learn to Let Go
Self-aware people possessing high levels of self awareness know how to let go of thoughts and emotions that no longer serve them, which is key for finding happiness and inner peace. Furthermore, this helps gain clarity as to what really matters to you in life.
Learning to let go is a fantastic way to enhance your own development and actively shape your life. Letting go is at the core of emotional detachment – something which we provide advice and tips about here on this site as well as in our book Emotional Detachment for Happier Lives and elsewhere.
If you find it hard to open up and release negative thoughts, ask someone for assistance from friends or family. Or use tools such as meditation or yoga to focus your mind and reduce anxiety – this will make reflecting easier for you.
As you reflect, consider both qualities you would like to develop further and those which are working well for you. For instance, if you tend to become defensive when someone criticizes your work, perhaps reconsider how you communicate with others and work on accepting criticism more gracefully while remaining calm under pressure.
6. Learn to Accept Feedback
Although it is wise to learn from past errors, accepting criticism can also help. Remember the compliments given you and take note of any positive traits others have noticed in you as well as negative remarks made about them. Ask a trusted friend to film you engaging with various scenarios including speaking with friends, interacting with authority figures, giving presentations or giving talks then watch back the video to assess ways you could enhance your skillsets.
Reflecting regularly on experiences and emotions is the cornerstone of self-awareness. Use journaling or just sit quietly and reflect upon each day’s events to develop awareness of yourself. Explore what values and goals exist within yourself, how well they were accomplished against these criteria, as well as changes that could be implemented moving forward.
If you find yourself becoming angry at another, it is essential to evaluate why. If the cause lies within a lack of creativity, for instance, then perhaps exploring different creative outlets would help alleviate your emotions.
Self-reflection can help you avoid making hasty decisions that could come back to haunt you later. This type of self-awareness training can especially prove useful for leaders as they face challenging situations where their temper or emotions may lead them down an unpleasant path; cultivating self-awareness helps maintain calmness during these situations and sets an excellent example for team members.
7. Learn to Be Honest
Honesty is essential in developing self-awareness. Being honest helps avoid lies and other destructive behavior while improving relationships with others.
One way of practicing honesty is by reflecting on past mistakes and successes. Though difficult, this reflection can help you learn from them. You can also increase self-awareness by asking others for feedback on yourself; listen without being judgmental and don’t take criticism personally.
Journaling can also help you practice honesty by helping you reflect on your thoughts, emotions and actions. Set an alarm reminder each month on your calendar so you have time set aside just for journaling about values and goals for life.
Finally, to improve your honesty you should practice being open with others. Being honest helps build trust between friends, partners and colleagues as well as increasing self-confidence and clarity of thought. Being honest helps avoid conflict while building healthy relationships based on mutual respect – so if honesty becomes an issue it’s wise to consult a therapist or other mental health provider for assistance.
