By Vikram Kakri and Satish kakri
As a first step, it is necessary to know yourself. How do we do that? Identify your strengths and know your weaknesses clearly. It’s better to prepare a document giving details, why you say, what you say. This will give you a reasonable understanding of your personality as for now. P People usually say that self awareness is the key to success in life. That means all know the fact, but we do not follow it. This is due to lack of understanding of Self Awareness.
Before knowing anything else, you need to know yourself first. You need to know your weaknesses, strengths, beliefs and desires in life. Keeping in touch with your emotions means, you have to be self-aware.
Being self-aware and understanding how you are perceived by others are important components of personal growth and developing your potential. Some might ask, what is the importance of self-awareness? Well, self-awareness will help you improve yourself, establish your own identity and will help you have a harmonious relationship.
The most important characteristic of a leader is self-awareness, the ability to monitor one’s own emotions and reactions. Learning how to be aware of yourself might not be easy, but if you can master this skill, it will help you become a much more effective leader. Many of us are not fond of spending much time on self-reflection. And even though personal feedback is presented, people are not always open to it because honest feedback isn’t always flattering. Thus, many people indeed have low level of self-awareness.
However, self-awareness can help you identify opportunities for professional development and personal growth. If you want to improve your self-awareness and develop your potential, I listed down 12 tips that might help you.
- How strengths are helping you and how weaknesses are pulling
you back?
Knowing your strengths and coping with your weaknesses, will help you improve self-awareness. Each of us has strengths and weaknesses that compose of who we are and this will help you shape how to reach your goals. Your weaknesses hold you back from achieving many great things while your strengths are something that comes very easily for you to take. You should take ownership in assessing yourself because it is for your own personal development. We should know to we are using our strengths. For example, we may have Intelligence and Knowledge to find out solution to the challenge we are facing, but if we apply our mind, if we do not spend time required to contemplate on the challenge; we are only wasting our potential. According to me, the strengths need to be fully utilized. Then you should try your best to enhance your strengths. If you follow these simple steps these then success of being self aware is not far away. - Similarly you check out problems which are caused by your weaknesses. I will ask you some some questions; Have you suffered due to weaknesses in the past or not? If you have suffered then what did you do to tackle the problem? If you did not tackle the problem then why did you not do it? The moment you start asking these questions you are bound to realize what big mistake you are making and how important Self Awareness is for humans. Asking these questions day in and day out will surely compel you to practice Self Awareness
- Feedback is a free aid which should not be wasted
Feedback is necessary for the development as everyone do not know there weaknesses. People usually feel shy to accept there weaknesses. It is there misconceptions. I feel that taking feedback from people is not at all wrong .the people who give you genuine criticism are actualy your friends and there opinion must be respected.
This might not be easy, especially if you are close minded and defensive to people who give critiques to you. Remember that without correction, your weaknesses would limit how far you could take yourself. Asking feedback can be as hurtful as it can be empowering. Although no one enjoys it, but we should try to view criticism as a useful feedback to improve ourselves. It will help you learn more about the traits that you need to develop, personally and professionally.
- Develop intuitive decision making skills
Decision making is generally difficult. It even more difficult for people who are not self aware. If we continue to take decisions without over – pondering, we will develop intuitive skills, which is also known as deciding by the gut feeling.
Intuition plays a significant role in developing your self-awareness. This can be the source of significant errors in the course of decision making. Your intuition will help you navigate faster yet, this can also be misled if too many of your facts are wrong. Moreover, this will help you even more, this is an effective way to feed your subconscious mind.
- identify what makes you emotionally weak.
Self awareness teaches many things regarding your emotional self. Identifying what exactly emotionally triggers you can be challenging but getting to know and understanding it, can help you improve yourself. The key to cope with it, is to catch yourself reacting when your emotions are triggered. As long as you noticed that you are emotionally reacting, you just have to shift your emotional state in order to think through it.
5.Accept your boundaries
Everyone has some limitations. It is true for physical work. It is also true for your mental efforts.
Keeping your boundaries firmly will help you maintain the integrity of
your goals and the work you put in it. Setting your boundaries and
sustaining it, is a skill. However, it is a skill that many people don’t
learn. Recognizing it means knowing and understanding your limits.
Also, it takes courage and support but is a skill you can master that
will help you develop yourself.
- Discipline has no equal.
The importance of discipline can never be exaggerated.In every area of your life, you need to practice self-discipline. It is a trait that provides you with the enduring focus necessary for you. If you want to control your desires and impulses to stay focused on what you think needs to get done to successfully achieve that goal, you need to practice self-discipline. This will also help you develop your potential and improve yourself awareness, since self-discipline help you form habits to attain your goals in life.
- Prejudice has no place in life.
One of the most difficult things to practice is to keep an open mind. Understanding someone’s point of view even if you disagree can change and free your mind. Change the way you think and don’t get stuck in a mindset that makes you frustrated or helpless. This is one of the best tools in order to simplify life. Try to comprehend every situation on your path and it will help you improve your self-awareness and develop own potential. - 8. stretch yourself to explore new ideas
Exploring new things will teach you a thing about yourself. This is all about stepping out of your comfort zone and trying to do something you’ve never done before. Unfamiliar things will help you respond in different ways that you never thought is possible. Travelling alone is also another way to discover things about yourself. - 9. Enthusiasm is the food for motivation
Whatever has to be done, is always your choice. Sometimes you might feel heavy as you rise and it is hard to get going. Keep in mind the importance of enthusiasm. Feeling less motivated too often is Motivating yourself and viewing life in a positive side will help you develop your potential and self awareness. In addition, awareness of your psychological needs can increase your motivation by helping you understand and seek out the reward that you desire. - 10. contemplate and talk to yourself every morning.
Meditation is a practice of improving your moment-by-moment awareness. Meditation usually begins with appreciating of, focusing on, inhaling and exhaling. However, this doesn’t need to be formal or ritualistic. Just simply find a few seconds to focus on your breathing , often before sleep. Also, meditation can be helpful if you ask yourself set of questions like “what can I do to change?”, “what am I trying to achieve?”, or “How am I going to cope with my fears?”
Being self-aware and understanding how you are perceived by others are important components of personal growth and developing your potential. Some might ask, what is the importance of self-awareness? Well, self-awareness will help you improve yourself, establish your own identity and will help you have a harmonious relationship.
