Self-awareness and simply being self-aware is one of those skills that is an absolute must for anybody in self-improvement. To be self-aware you are in contact with your self, your life and the world around you and have a distinct and direct plan for your future.
Not only do you have aims and a plan for your future, but you also know exactly how you’ll succeed at completing it through your behavior and interaction in the world that you’re aware of.
The Journeys of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is a journey, although some level of it will be found in any self-developer. It forms a journey in two ways:
1) An external journey of your outer actions of knowledge and communication.
2) An internal journey of spiritual ideas and physiological thoughts and beliefs.
Being self-aware is a skill and trait found to some extent in any self-developer and so will surely be found to some level in you visiting this site to! But by raising your level of self-awareness you can reap the benefits to yourself in a variety of ways including a increased confidence in yourself, an ability to make more accurate decisions and an improvement in your ability to communicate and influence others.
Below are some ways to improve and increase your levels of being self-aware.
How To Become More Self-Aware
1) Pick up a self-discovery book
To help you, my one recommendation is to read all the self-development books that you can get your hands on, and learn from them (that includes doing the exercises!) You view and read our reviews of our recommended books here.
2) Think and study how you communicate
Does your body language always reflect your emotions? Do you listen enough to others? Is your vocabulary positive and pro-active? Communicating with others, whether it’s influencing, keeping the peace or instructing others, is important in all aspects of life so it’s important to be aware of how we react to situations and people.
3) Set yourself communication goals
Identify your weaknesses and try to improve a different quality each week. e.g. making eye contact, and then add a new one each week e.g. making eye contact and not interrupting.
4) Ask for feedback
I’ve always struggled with this, but it’s extremely important to be confident enough to ask others where you are strong and weak. In your communication, your work, your skills. Being aware of this can help us to improve things that we would not have spotted, but always ensure that it is coming from someone who will be honest and who you can trust. Honest and useful feedback from others will make you realize and recognize and become more self-aware.
5) Look at your life, your idols and your dreams
Study them and be able to answer questions about who you want to be and what you want to achieve within your lifetime. If you know where you are going and what you value in life then you’ll achieve more. It’s also a good idea to record your personal journey in a notebook.
6) Know what makes you tick
In times of great pressure ensure you keep aware of your emotions and identify the signs that you are becoming stressed. Are there any trends? Can you avoid being in these kinds of situations? If not, how can you control these emotions? It could be as simple as taking a deep breath or leaving the room, but taking that small time out of your day could be the most useful time of all; by understanding what makes you tick, what you do and don’t like, you can try to avoid inner negativity… which leads us nicely onto our second part; ‘Positivity’
Now Become More Self-Aware
I am forever improving and acting on my own self-awareness and you should do so to; it’s a huge part of self-development. I hope you’ve enjoyed the tips and feel a little more clued up for the task ahead of you. Go out there and strive, develop and succeed, but most of all be self-aware!
