Self-awareness for better stress management

Let me start with a clear statement: for the majority people, effective stress management is not possible without having self-awareness.

What do I mean by self-awareness?

According to Daniel Goleman, the ‘father’ of emotional intelligence, self-awareness can be defined as:

‘knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions.’?

As a student of self-awareness for many years, I have come up with my own definition for it. And my definition is:

‘being aware of one’s own emotional and cognitive programming and having the capability to observe it and to make decisions based upon it’.

Self-awareness is the foundational piece of emotional intelligence. It allows us to build a clear understanding of why we do what we do, why we believe what we believe and why we think what we think. It enables us to notice our mindset and to observe it with more objectivity. And this allows us to change our mindset.

If you have tried removing the usual stress triggers at work and if you have tried the usual stress-management strategies (sleep, sport, nutrition…) but you are still suffering, chances are high that your mindset is standing in the way.

Our mindset is who we are and we tend to be ‘fused’ with it. It leads us, automatically, towards our decisions and behaviours, the good ones and the bad ones. Many people believe that they can not ‘defuse’ from their mindset, because this implies questioning their identity, which is not easy.

But developing the ability, through self-awareness, to observe, notice, question and ‘change’ our mindset is key to good stress management. In psychological terms, this is called psychological flexibility, and it is crucial for good mental health.?

In case you are not yet convinced of the value of self-awareness, let me add that self-awareness is key to:

• Better collaboration
• Better conflict management
• Better decision-making
• More empathy
• Increase trust and psychological safety
• And, of course, better stress management and better avoidance of burnout

In 2014, Erich C. Dierdorff?and?Robert S. Rubin asked 58 teams and 300 leaders to participate in a business simulation. The objective was to test the connection between self-awareness and performance (based on different business metrics). They measured self-awareness by comparing a person’s own assessment of their contribution to the team and the assessment of their team members.

They found that the teams with less self-aware individuals made worse decisions, collaborated less and used less effective conflict management. In fact, working with low self-awareness people cut the chances of team success in half.

In conclusion, self-awareness is truly one of the most important skills to manage life and work challenges.

It can be trained through various techniques. All techniques involve a willingness to question the existing mindset and to change the status quo. Because no transformation can happen without challenging the status quo and without getting out of one's comfort zone.

The positive stress mindset method is helps to build self-awareness and relies on this self-awareness to create new positive stress mindset. For example, we use different tools to observe our emotional and cognitive landscape and to reframe it in a way that helps us to better achieve our goals, without suffering from stress.

'Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom'. Aristotle

Note: I am currently conducting a survey and I am looking for three people who work in HR to answer a few questions on coaching and training best practices in Germany and Europe. In exchange for 20 minutes of your time, I am offering a 20% discount on the Positive Stress Mindset training. Please contact me at [email protected] if you are willing to help me with this survey.