We are all on a journey through life but do we truly know ourselves or are we just sleep walking throughout our days repeating the same thing over and over? Self-awareness of your own emotional state at any given point in time on your personal development journey is the game changer. As Socrates said “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”
When we become self-aware we can catch ourselves before we say or do something that could be potentially hurtful. How many people are in prison where they lashed out and hurt someone which started with a past trigger, but due to lack of self-awareness they couldn’t hold themselves back? We have all had occasions in our lives where a split decision choice made the difference between being kind and unkind.
I personally have put a lot of time into this area over the last few years with great eye opening aha moments but a few days ago my self-awareness was bypassed by my chimp brain to feed my ego. The results were hurtful words to another that were coming from my own past hurt. A deeper dive into my past inner child to see what triggered this will be worked on over the coming weeks and months. We all carry past hurts but we have to get to the source of the problem to stop future triggers surfacing.
In sport when someone hits us on the sly, without self-awareness when can instinctively strike back and end up on the side-line very quickly but with self-awareness and split second consciousness we can hold ourselves back from doing that… The right choice is always there with awareness.
We see it in business where a leader lacks self-awareness of emotional intelligence and staff will go about their days in fear of saying or doing something wrong. We are never going to get the best out of people in this environment. Having empathy, compassion and being self-aware towards colleagues, friends and family is always a better approach.
When we start to work on self-awareness we become aware of the potential that lays asleep inside of us that’s bursting to get out. We learn how to deal with emotions, and how burying them is only going to prolong the misery. We become aware of how stressed out we really were and how past conditioning of our everyday was our downfall.
How do we become more self-aware?
Mindfulness…
Be mindful of your strengths and weaknesses…
Consider how your actions affect others…
Keep an open mind…
Know your emotional triggers…
Take down the walls we have built around us…
Assess your self-talk…
Be open and honest…
We all want to wake up and be free of past self-limiting conditioning but the work has to be done on the self-first. Let me help you.
