5 Tips To Raise Your Self-Awareness

Higher self-awareness brings greater productivity.

One of the starting points to any kind of personal growth is knowing where you are at the beginning, so you know where and which direction to go for growth.

If you are ever lost inside a mall or are looking for a specific store in the enormous structure, the first thing you look for is the Mall Directory — usually at an entrance. On this map, there is usually a big red dot or an arrow that says “You are here”.

That’s self-awareness!

It is just the knowledge of knowing your place with respect to your surroundings, so you know which direction to proceed. This is true in that mall, and it is true in life!

How to get to know yourself then?

Here are 5 quick tips to learn more about yourself and develop greater self-awareness:

1. Journal

No! Not a Dear Diary!

Journaling is a way to make a manifest of yourself. Your likes and dislikes. The issues in your day to day life that trigger a reaction — emotional or physical. It is a way to make a note to self.

Writing down what you are looking forward to and why also brings out the real reason behind what you are doing. Sometimes we go through life almost on autopilot and don’t give a second thought to what decisions we make.

Anyone can make a crucial decision by giving enough thought. However, the thought process that determined how you made your most trivial, seemingly easy decisions is your most dominant; it is what defines how your individuality.

Journaling and getting your thoughts, beliefs, and — eventually — your identity onto a tangible piece of paper can do wonders to knowing what makes you work better. This will help raise your levels of empathy when working with other people.

2. Straight talk with people who know you best

Be careful with this one!

Asking someone what you need to change is not only awkward at first, but if you are not ready to hear the answer, it won’t be pleasant.

People who are closest to you and who know you best have seen you at your very best as well as at your very worst. They have seen you when you were vulnerable and they have seen you when you feel on top of the world. These individuals — usually a spouse, parent or sibling — have a perspective that you should want to learn from.

Some questions that can be asked are:

• In your opinion, what am I really good at?
• What do you think are my strengths?
• What are some things that you think I run away from?
• If I can change one thing about my behaviour what should it be?

Like I said earlier, be careful with this one. If you are not ready for the answer, don’t ask the question.

3. Let go of the past

Without this, it becomes impossible to discover who you are.

When we are dwelling in the comfortable sauna of the past, the steam clouds our vision of the future. It holds us back to our old way of thinking.

Becoming more aware of yourself means understanding what thoughts from the past have we been holding on. Self-awareness also means being open to understanding what changes to our thinking will get us to an even better future.

Stop being the prisoner of your past, become the architect of your future. — Robin Sharma

Make it intentional to not live in the past. Remember, yesterday ended last night!

4. Be authentic

How does being authentic result in more awareness and productivity?

Being true to yourself and being authentic puts you in a space where you are not concerned about other people’s opinions about you. You end up doing your best work because it is what you are most proud of. It wasn’t done because of someone else’s influence or fear.

Please keep in mind, that being authentic is different from being straight-up honest! Being authentic is not caring about other’s opinions about you. Being straight-up honest is not caring about others. That is a huge difference!

Authenticity will bring about a sense of empathy in everything you do. This will allow people to look at you and your work with respect because you have respected yourself and your work.

5. Focus on your strengths

You shouldn’t be focusing on your weakness anyway!

There are enough people on this planet that will put you down or point out your flaws. You don’t have to do it to yourself.

Keeping your strengths in focus allows you to do the things you are good at. If you stop doing things that you are weak in and only do those things that you are strong and good at, isn’t it logical that you will exponentially raise your game?

When you go through the journaling exercise suggested in #1 above, you will learn about what you are good at and what you are not. You will learn about these traits in #2 above as well. This gives you enough information to have a shortlist of things that are essentially your strengths.

You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice. — Bob Marley

These 5 tips will help you understand more about your individuality and personal choices. This will, in turn, allow you to be more creative, productive, empathetic, and more human! You will no longer go through the days making choices and decisions without thinking.

You will know when you are on the right track because you will begin to find peace about all the decisions you are making and the actions you are taking on a day to day basis. The awareness of self will increase your awareness of the surrounding.

Other articles by Shantanu Kulkarni