4 Tips to Improve Your Self Awareness

How well do you know yourself? How deeply do you understand your motivations? Improving your self-awareness helps you learn more about yourself and what you’re capable of. There are some great ways you can work on your self-awareness, but what you do then is entirely up to you.

Why does self-awareness matter?

Self-awareness is about being aware and confident of who you are and recognizing your emotions and feelings. It can relate to knowing your own values, beliefs, personal preferences and tendencies.

You know how famous people always say, “Stay true to yourself”? This is really important advice, but it’s not easy to stay true to yourself if you don’t know who you are. By becoming self-aware and understanding your strengths and limitations, you open up opportunities that just aren’t available otherwise.

Controlling your thoughts allows you to manifest more of the positive things you want in your life. You’re also able to have more honest and genuine relationships because the people that you’re attracted to will be attracted to you for who you actually are.

Self-awareness is a vital first step in taking control of your life, creating what you want, and mastering your future. Where you choose to focus your energy, emotions, personality, and reactions determines where you will end up in life.

4 Tips to Improve Your Self Awareness

1. Create a daily habit of self-reflection

The first step in self-awareness is to listen to yourself. What’s going on in your mind? Is it a series of negative thoughts that make you feel unworthy, depressed or angry? Or are you always looking on the bright side?

Become aware of the words you speak. When you talk to others are you complaining about what you lack in life, how you feel sick and tired or how someone hurt you in some way? These are all negative thoughts and when you put emotion behind them you will attract more of that energy into your life.

Learn to recognize this negative talk and switch gears to something more positive. Talk about the good things happening in your life. The great relationship you have, the unexpected compliment or the excitement you felt when you accomplished a goal. Like attracts like. And when you focus your thoughts on positive emotions you will manifest more things into your life that match that vibration.

While you develop self-awareness, your own personal thoughts and interpretations will begin to change. This change in mental state will also alter your emotions and increase your emotional intelligence, which is an important factor in achieving overall success.

It’s important to reflect on your words and actions throughout your day. Reflection takes many forms. Some keep a journal, some pray, and others take a long walk or jog. Others use daily meditation as a mindful habit. By centering into yourself, you’re able to focus your attention on what's really important and develop an inner sense of well-being.

2. Meditate

Meditation lets you become more awake and more purposeful about your thoughts and actions. It teaches you how to respond, rather than react, to situations in your life. Meditation can really help you to focus on being more self-aware. When you meditate, you are in a calm and pleasant state of mind, where you can really focus on being present. This may be through your breathing or just by visualizing while you are meditating.

Once you’re starting your meditation session, you can start to practice becoming aware of any thoughts and feelings you have. You could also ask yourself questions during your meditation or reflect on things you have done that have affected your feelings or behaviors.

Meditation helps you zero in on your thoughts and images as they appear to you. You focus on an awareness of the present moment. You start with a single central point, such as your breath. Then you expand to include thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when you meditate:

• Find a quiet place with few distractions. Sit in a chair or on the floor.
• Be aware of your breathing and focus on the sensation of air moving in and out of your body as you breathe. Feel your belly rise and fall and the air enter your nostrils and leave your mouth.
• Watch every thought come and go. When thoughts come up, don't hold them back. Simply note them and return to your breathing.
• As the time comes to a close, sit for 1 or 2 minutes, becoming aware of where you are. Get up slowly.

For best results, try to meditate every day for 20 to 30 minutes.

Through meditating, you can develop a clearer understanding of yourself and your emotions, making it easier to develop your self-awareness.

3. Get Feedback From Others

We all have traits that others see, but we are unable to see in ourselves. We call these "blind spots." Do you see yourself as others see you? If not, you can address these blind spots by receiving honest feedback from people you trust.

Receiving feedback is hard. So, focus on psychological triggers that might block your learning. As Harvard’s Sheila Heen argued in “Thanks for The Feedback”, there are three main triggers that prevent our learning: relationship triggers, identity triggers, and truth triggers. If you feel defensive, think back to why you do. Often, we can explain it using these triggers.

Ask friends to bring it to your attention when you are doing something that you know you want to change. For example, if you know you tend to “one-up” people when they are telling stories, have your friends discreetly let you know that is happening so you can learn to stop.

In addition to consulting friends and family, use a more formal process at work to get some feedback. If your company does not provide a structured way to do this, try to implement one. Provided it is constructive and well done, having an option for formalized feedback allows us to self-reflect on our own strengths and weaknesses.

4. Tune into your feelings

This can be hard if you’re not the kind of person who likes to think too deeply about your feelings. Your feelings are spontaneous and emotional responses to the things you experience. Like your senses, they give you good information about what’s going on around you.

When you learn to become self-aware of your feelings you will begin to create magic in your life. The secret and power of self-awareness is that you do not create reality by what you think but by what you feel. Everything is a vibrational frequency and you attract those things that you’re in vibrational resonance with.

Your vibration is your feeling. It’s your feelings that attract your experiences. The more you experience the feeling of having what you want, the more you will have it. Higher vibrations and feelings are the medium by which your desires will manifest faster. The more positive feelings you can experience about yourself and your desires, the easier and faster you’ll experience your desires spontaneously manifesting into your world.

Emotions help you create reality. When you believe in something, love and cherish it, you can create it more quickly. You have the power to manifest anything your heart desires! If there is anything you want to create more of, focus thought on it.

Whatever you turn your attention to, you will create. What we give out, we get back. The energy you give out are the results you get. Imagine what your life would be like if your mind could always be focused on thoughts that were filled with joy, peace, love, abundance and feeling successful! Whenever you feel good, you are in vibrational harmony with your desires.

Becoming self-aware and creating an intentional life won’t happen in a day. But as you release old ways of thinking and focus on creating a new habitual way of living you will become more authentic, self-aware and conscious of living a life of intention that creates the life that you deserve.