“I am aware about that.” “Yeah, I know that.” “I have been through this before. This was Anna*, a client of mine, in her first couple of one-on-one coaching sessions with me, repeatedly told me in different always that she is a self-aware person.
Being self-aware is great and one of the first steps to your personal growth and development. And what are you doing with that awareness is even more important? What are you doing with being in “The Know”
Let’s take a closer look at the steps you can take once you are aware.
1. What Action Can I Take?
This is a powerful question you can ask yourself from time to time and when you are in “The know”. This helps you to put that awareness into taking some action. To motivate yourself, ask yourself what action can you take in the next 1 hour, in a day, in a week and so on.
If your goal is to participate in a triathlon in six months’ time, and you are aware that you need to train, what actions can you take, on a daily basis, to get the training kick started?
This can apply to any goal, skill or result that you need to achieve including being self-confident, authentic, able to influence and inspire others.
2. Why do I need to take the action ?
Taking action or not depends on how excited you are to achieve your goal. For example, If you are aware that your inner dialogue is stopping you from being an impactful communicator, you need to ask yourself why do you want to become an impactful communicator, what are the results you will achieve once you are an impactful communicator and how important are these results to you?
3. Why am I doing what I am doing ?
Connecting with your purpose helps you to achieve clarity in order to move forward. Your self-awareness will help you to set up structures in place so that you can take action towards the purpose you are motivated by.
4. What is your mindset?
Having a negative mindset accelerates your self-criticism without you being able to achieve the desired outcomes.
Use your self-awareness to determine what you did well when you made a shift in your perspective last time or when you overcame a challenge, what could you improve to get better results and what is stopping you from achieving your desired outcomes?
Visualize what will it be like if you achieve your desired goal. This visualization makes the goal powerful, positive and present and achievable.
Control your inner dialogue or self-talk towards accomplishing your development and growth.
5. What will happen if I don’t do anything with my awareness?
This is a great way to motivate yourself or push yourself to action. Reminding yourself of the consequences of not taking action is a great way to stop procrastinating.
Our brain is motivated to take action by perceived pain or pleasure.
Dr. Kringelbach suggests that this relationship between pain and pleasure would be evolutionarily efficient, because it was necessary to know whether or not to avoid or approach something for survival. According to Dr. Norman Doidge, the brain is limited in the sense that it tends to focus on the most used pathways.
6. What will happen if I take the action that I am aware about?
This is the pull factor and you gear your brain and drive yourself to the desired action. Use your awareness to achieve your desired goal. In all this, don’t forget to give credit to yourself in what you have accomplished.
Self-awareness includes:
↪️ recognizing our destructive thought patterns and taking action to work through them and overcome them
↪️ understanding our emotions – how we react to behaviors and events around us, what triggers the negative emotions and once you understand how can you manage the negative triggers
↪️ not only noticing our patterns of behaviors and actions but creating the necessary shift to overcome those that are disruptive
↪️ we are not in control of everything that happens around us but we are in control of our attitude and the mindset that we take to every situation.
↪️ that each of us have a choice and that we are responsible for our actions in our moment of choice.
If you want to be self-aware and keen on making a shift in your leadership and communication style, please connect with me.
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