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How to gain greater Self-Awareness

We all strive to succeed in life. Whether that is professional success or success in other areas or our life. Certain personality traits have been linked to a greater likelihood of success (Di Fabio, Palazzeschi & Palazzeschi, 2009). This is independent of predispositions or “being talented”. In this three-part series I will try to offer help in developing three traits that are often acknowledged as influencing the likelihood of success. These three characteristics are: Self-awareness, Empowerment and Accountability.

Why is self-awareness such a powerful tool?

Self-awareness helps you to understand who you are and what others most likely think of you. As skills go, self-awareness is one of the most important “soft” skills to help you in social situations. Not only can knowing yourself help yourself, it also benefits your interactions with others, research has even shown that greater self awareness was linked to greater fairness (Whiteside & Barclay, 2016). 

Self-Awareness is one of the three important factors to success. It is the ability to understand what in our behaviour supports us in reaching our goals. It can make it possible for the individual to understand whether they are on track or if they have to adjust something in their behaviour, their environment and even their thoughts to get closer to what they would like to achieve.  Research has found that individuals who have greater self-awareness, find it easier to stay motivated (Altberts, Martijn & De Vries, 2011).

People who are self-aware tend to be better listeners. Have you ever felt that someone really listened to you? If you have, you’ve probably enjoyed this feeling. It feels great to feel heard. To sum up my less than complete list, self awareness is a powerful tool that helps you to navigate social situations smoothly, confidently and feel happier over time.

Some people have learned to be very self-aware. Some of those people have learned this due to averse or even traumatic childhood experiences. These circumstances made it necessary for them to observe their own behaviour from an outside perspective in order to get by. 

If you are lucky and you didn’t have to develop this skill due to necessity, you might still want to become more self-aware. Only few are aware that you can actively work to become more self-aware. Read on to learn about a few ways in which you can work towards greater self-awareness.

Reading and Writing to improve Self-Awareness

Let’s start with a simple technique that you can apply in order to become more self-aware: Read good fiction. When we read we start thinking along with the story. This can help to become more self-aware, because it helps to “learn” a more distanced perception of our own behaviour. By being able to “zoom out” and look at our own behaviour, our thoughts and our feelings from a distance, we can more easily observe patterns in which we interact with our surroundings. The same way that we shout at the person in a horror movie to not walk alone into the dimly lit cellar, we are able to see more indicators of what our behaviour will lead us to. Hopefully tho, it will not involve any axe-murderers in your case.

Once you have used fiction to understand yourself better, you can move on towards a more difficult activity. You could start writing your own fiction. Everyone who has ever tried to write a book or short story, will soon notice that it is a lot easier to write bad literature than to write good literature. This is partly due to the fact that in order to write good literature you need to be extremely aware of yourself and your surroundings. In order to write a believable character you need to understand what real people are made of. The goal of this exercise is not to become a bestselling author (or maybe it is, but that’s another story), the goal is to gain a better understanding of yourself through the medium of writing. This means that you should not beat yourself up for writing bad fiction at first (If you actually do end up writing a new bestseller, maybe mention me in your acknowledgements…).

What grinds your Gears?

One way to gain greater self-awareness is to look at how you react when you are experiencing strong emotions. Specifically, notice what annoys or infuriates you. When we understand what “ticks us off” we can gain a better understanding of ourselves. If, for example, it always annoys you when you have to wait for others or when individuals are unreliable, you can understand that reliability and punctuality are important values of yours. Your values are important parts of what makes you, you. Knowing what your values are will make it easy to see whether you are behaving according to them and increase your self-awareness. When you are living according to your values, you will automatically feel more connected to yourself.

Timeline of your Life

Have you ever been asked to introduce yourself during a job interview? If the question came unexpectedly, you might have struggled to describe yourself adequately. A similar exercise can be used in order to gain greater self-awareness. Write down the timeline of your life in a few sentences. Include both important professional and personal events that made you the person you are right now. Try to organize these statements in chronological order beginning with your birth. 

This exercise can give you a powerful overview of what shaped you. It might help to understand connections in your behaviour and your thoughts about the world that were previously invisible to you. This works because it is easier to “zoom out” of your perspective when you read the information black-on-white on a piece of paper or screen. Try it, you might be surprised how powerful this tool is.

Ask for Feedback

Feedback is often associated with negative feelings. Many of us hesitate to ask for feedback, because we are worried about receiving hurtful information. This is why it is important to be very careful from whom you ask it. Do you trust this person to have your best interest in mind? Are they direct and honest enough for it to be of value (read more about good feedback on this blog post about radical candor). Are you in the right state of mind? Do you feel secure enough to be accepting of what they are saying? These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself before you ask another person to give you an insight into what they think of you personally.

How do you do it?

Find a calm moment. These are not questions you want to answer when you are in a rush. Ask them if they would be willing to do this favour for you and give them time to think about it. Listen and take notes. Don’t interrupt them and let them finish. Don’t defend yourself if you hear things that might make you experience negative emotions. Instead, ask yourself why you feel negative about this information (look at the point “What grinds your Gears” earlier in the blog post). After this conversation look at your notes and see if you notice patterns or areas that you have not been previously aware of. Decide which ones you want to improve on and set up actionable ways in which you can start doing so. 

For example, if you have been told that you coming late to meetings and having to leave early for other meetings interrupts the flow of the group, think of ways in which you can schedule your appointments better so that you won’t have to rush from one engagement to the next (more time management tips can be found here).

Expose yourself to new Situations

Have you ever noticed that you learn a lot about other cultures while travelling, but that you learn even more about yourself in the process? That is due to the fact that our own characteristics and ways of thinking become more obvious when the surrounding environment changes. Just as you barely notice a piece of furniture when it has been in the same place in your home for a long time seems to “stick out” once it is suddenly in a different place, you become more aware of your personality traits, habits and characteristics when your environment changes. That does not mean that you have to travel far to learn about yourself. The key point is that you try out new activities and explore new environments. Whether that is trying a new hobby, a walk in a previously unknown area of the city you live in or going on a camping trip with yourself is up to you. Go somewhere or do something that is new to you. This way you will learn how you deal with change and how soon you adjust it. 

Just as you barely notice a piece of furniture when it has been in the same place in your home for a long time seems to “stick out” once it is suddenly in a different place, you become more aware of your personality traits, habits and characteristics when your environment changes.

Improving our self-awareness is just one of three known ways in which we can make success in any area of our lives more likely. These are some ideas, but definitely not all ways in which you can improve it. If you know any more ways in which you have become more self-aware, share them in the comments below. I will personally respond to any comment that will be left.

References:

Di Fabio, Annamaria, and Letizia Palazzeschi. “An in-Depth Look at Scholastic Success: Fluid Intelligence, Personality Traits or Emotional Intelligence?” Personality and individual differences 46.5 (2009): 581–585. Web.

Alberts, Hugo J.E.M, Carolien Martijn, and Nanne K de Vries. “Fighting Self-Control Failure:
Overcoming Ego Depletion by Increasing Self-Awareness.” Journal of experimental
social psychology 47.1 (2011): 58–62. Web.

Whiteside, David B, and Laurie J Barclay. “The Face of Fairness: Self-Awareness as a Means to Promote Fairness Among Managers with Low Empathy.” Journal of business ethics
137.4 (2016): 721–730. Web.

Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash