Self Awareness is the ability to know yourself and your values. It is the ability to be able to realise what it is that drives you, and engage in personal reflection in order to allow you to progress.
Becoming self aware is an essential step towards maximising your potential, and it allows you to engage in activities and relationships that are in line with the values you hold. Knowing yourself, and understanding yourself are the key to allow you to identify areas of strength, and areas for possible improvement.
One way of developing self awareness is to consider the personality traits that you hold and exhibit often. It is useful to think about what types of feelings and behaviours you believe to define you, and to reflect upon the accuracy of these beliefs in relation to how others see you.
This week I completed an exercise in feedback and self reflection, in order to demonstrate the value of taking the time to take stock of who you are. I presented a talk to an audience looking to help develop entrepreneurial spirit in the North East of England, and wanted to highlight the value in asking other people for feedback in relation to defining your pathway and goals.
I spent five minutes at the beginning of the week thinking about how I would introduce and describe myself to the audience in my presentation, in order to give an accurate representation and understanding of who I am. These are the words I came up with:
I then asked friends on Facebook to describe me in one word, and this is what they returned:
Many of the words I chose for myself do fit with how others see me - my reflections of hardworking and determined both carried through and were fed back by others. Likewise passionate was mentioned within both my personal reflection and within the feedback, and receiving so many positive comments, definitely suggested my reflection of feeling loved was an accurate one :)
Gaining feedback from others offered many more positive descriptions that I would have offered for myself. This will be true for most other people too - it often takes somebody on the outside looking in, for you to realise just how brilliant you are. From past experience of working with clients, many people feel uncomfortable, or even embarrassed when asked to talk about themselves in a positive manner. It is an effective tool then, to ask for feedback from others, to compliment your reflective process, and this is the concept I highlighted within my talk.
Try and take a few minutes to think about 5 words that you would use to describe yourself. Then ask five people you know to describe you in one word. Compare your findings and consider the idea that you might be being harder on yourself than you really need to be. Think about the positive aspects to your character, and think about how you can use those positives to drive you forward, whether it be taking a strength and using it within business, or simply realising a positive personality trait, and using it to enhance your personal well-being.
Learning to appraise yourself positively is just one aspect in the journey towards self awareness, and such an important one at that. If you can practice self love, and feel confident with recognising your positive qualities and describing them to others, you can see benefits in self esteem, confidence well-being, and more positive relationships as a result.
Thanks,
Niyc xx
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