Self-awareness is the degree to which you know yourself, the ins and the outs of your being.
Letting people make choices for us
How self-aware are you? Do you know what you like or do you let other people make your decisions enabling you to live a passive life? Why are you hiding? Are you scared of yourself?
Sometimes I believe we can be so scared to be ourselves that we end up being someone else. It can be passive things such as asking your friends their opinions before you make a decision. And making their choice instead of what you originally wanted to do. That seems subtle but when you catch it makes a world of difference.
You’re allowing people to project their interests and values on you without recognizing yours. It seems easier to live another person’s life until you wake up many years later and realize you haven’t lived your life. That’s if you even wake up, deception is a strong force.
Stop hiding behind someone else’s life and finally do something for you.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs
Tuning in with yourself
Alone time is crucial to self-awareness regardless of personality type. But we’re afraid to be alone with ourselves because we’re afraid of what we’ll find,
The goal is to be so in tune with yourselves that we can feel deeply. It could look like being in tune with our minds, bodies, spirits, and heart.
We continue to enter deeper stages of self-awareness. There’s no end of the self-awareness journey: we keep going through identity transitions. Trust in the process, you’ll keep discovering more and more of yourself.
“Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.” – Lawrence Bossidy
Choose You
Make yourself a priority. At the end of the day, you’re your longest commitment. – Unknown
You only start living life when you know what you want or at least have an idea of what you want to do.
Self-awareness helps you filter your life, filter people, and content. It dictates your interactions and that’s a good thing, you don’t want to waste your time doing things that are just not for you. Listen to yourself and you can go from there.
To listen to yourself you have quiet out the noise. Some relationships and interactions are noise. A lot of social media is noise. Find yourself and then you can find your tribe.
Always make yourself a priority. Self-awareness is trust in yourself to direct your life. You trust yourself to make that life-changing decision. Some decisions will affect you tremendously if you make them without being self-aware.
Ask Questions
“The quality of your life is measured by the quality of your questions” – Khe Hy
The easiest way to develop self-awareness is to ask yourself questions. When you feel something or start thinking about something. Ask yourself:
- Why am I thinking about this?
- Where does this feeling come from?
- Why is this so important to me?
- What void am I trying to fill by doing this?
- Who is influencing me to think this way?
Journalling is an amazing tool for answering these questions and developing self-awareness.
Taking the time to get to know yourself is essential. Because most people won’t understand or will misdiagnose why you do things. As long as YOU know who cares? – Abiola
Self-awareness is the answer and critical to your growth.
