Self-awareness in my own words, is being comfortable and aware with your own state of mind, your emotions, and your intuitions.
Daniel Coleman describes it as, “knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions (26)” in his book Working with Emotional Intelligence. This book inspired me to think about myself and those around me from a different perspective.
Understanding these concepts not only makes you more comfortable with yourself, but more comfortable with others. If you are self-aware, you can be honest with yourself. When you do this, you can experience life changing realizations. A simple example of this, is a personality realization: are you an introvert or an extrovert? I have always had this desire to be an extrovert- someone known for being fun, outgoing, happy… but the truth has always been that I am an introvert. The sooner I could admit that to myself, I could also look more into it and realize that being an introvert isn’t a bad thing. It describes who I am considering both my strengths and weaknesses. Instead of wanting to be something else, my self-awareness has made me accept that I am an introvert and that’s not a horrible thing. I just need to give myself alone time when I need it. What some introverts lacks extroverts have and what some extroverts lack introverts have- there is no “better” person, one is not greater than the other. It is simply about how people chose to live their lives.
This whole idea of becoming self-aware, as described in Coleman’s book, starts with three competencies relative to becoming more self-aware which are: emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence. These are the 3 key aspects to being fully self-aware. You must be in touch with your emotions, you must be able to critique yourself, and you should have confidence in this. If you are self-aware you are proud of who you are, even with the acceptance of your flaws.
Now let’s talk motivation. If you are a motivated person you are self-driven, you have goals, and you are focused. Motivation refers to your emotional willingness that guides you to reach your goals. To be motivated, you must have achievement drive, commitment, initiative, and optimism. Achievement drive means you are trying to improve yourself, and trying to meet a certain standard of excellence for yourself. This means pushing yourself to face challenges and work through issues that will inevitably come your way. Commitment is a key concept in motivation. If you are not committed to something, you will not be motivated. If you don’t care about something enough, it will show within your commitment and what you are willing to give up for it. Along with this, initiative will prove you are ready to act on opportunities that come your way. If something isn’t happening for you, you need to go out of the way to make it happen. That would mean you are able to take initiative. While doing this, it is so important to stay optimistic. If you don’t stay positive you will inevitably give up, as you will let multiple obstacles and setbacks defeat you.
Now let’s talk empathy. The 5 competencies of empathy are understanding others, developing others, service orientation, leveraging diversity, and political awareness. I like to think of empathy as being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. It means you are aware of other people’s feelings and concerns. Being able to see a situation from another person’s perspective is a huge step in building a strong relationship with that person. This could be a love relationship, a business or work relationship, a friendship, or a relationship with a family member. Breaking down the competencies of empathy: we first have: understanding others. This is self-explanatory: understand another’s feelings and more importantly take active interest in any concerns that may arise. Developing others means you are making an active effort to support and assist those around you. If someone is struggling with something, take the time to help them. If they’re successful at something, take the time to compliment them on that. This would show you are actively developing others. Then we have service orientation which is anticipating, noting, and meeting customers expectations and needs, as well as maybe even going beyond what’s expected. Thirdly, leveraging diversity is an important skill, especially important in today’s workplace. You will work with a lot of different types of people… not only their backgrounds but their personality types. It is important to adapt to work with people’s personalities if it is necessary. Another concept to think about it political awareness. This doesn’t have to do with politics necessarily, it has to do with power relationships within your work environment. It means you are reading a groups emotion and seeing how they react to one another.
Becoming more self aware by practicing some of these concepts will greatly help you grow as a person. I suggest to always be willing to accept a challenge. If you fail you will at least learn something more about yourself or others. If you succeed, that is just one more thing you have to be proud of yourself for. So never turn down a challenge and remember that you are always stronger than you think.
Sources:
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
copyright: Carly Ristuccia
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