The Link Between Self-Leadership and Self-Awareness
In its simplest form self-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate yourself, to understand yourself and your emotions, and to be able to see yourself as others see you. This comes from understanding your personality traits and how and why you react and interact in the ways that you do.
Below is a short self-assessment to get a sense of just how self-aware you really are.
- What is your most important value?
- What is your biggest strength?
- What is your biggest weakness?
- What is your biggest trigger?
- What is your reaction to your biggest trigger?
- What is your biggest fear?
- Where does that fear come from?
- How do others perceive you?
Some of these questions are difficult to properly answer, not simply because a person might not know, but also because the answers can be uncomfortable to reckon with. Regardless, they are key to understanding our needs, motives and drives. Asking yourself not just “What?” but also “Why?”; not just “Why am I this way?”, but also “Why is that important?”. The answers to these questions will tell you a lot about your reactions to any given situation, and about how you self-regulate (if at all).
With all this in mind, the next step is to become more self-aware than you already are.
In our modern, fast-paced world, we rarely get any time for ourselves - this means we never get time for reflection and introspection. Key to developing self-awareness is spending time thinking about yourself, what kind of person you are, and what kind of person you want to be.
We constantly worry about the future, we also spend a lot of time thinking about our past mistakes, but when trying to be present, these thoughts and questions only serve as distractions. Set all distractions aside and focus on yourself in the current moment. What is happening right now? What do you physically sense in your body right now? (stress, tension, etcetera). What are you thinking about right now? Which emotions do you feel right now?
Once you are present to yourself, you will start to develop a better understanding of who you are and where you are at as a person. As cheesy as it may seem, one of the easiest ways to reflect on yourself is to keep a journal. Writing things down means we don’t have to rely on our memory, but it also forces us to be present and to really reckon with our thoughts and feelings, to admit to them and export them onto a page. Another easy method of making time for yourself is to exercise; be it swimming, cycling, weightlifting, or just walking, keeping your body busy with a repetitive activity frees up your mind to focus on something else.
Self-leadership starts at self-awareness, which starts with reflecting on who you are, who you want to be, and how you plan on becoming that person.
View the video related to this blog.
Other blog posts in this series
Self-Leadership: Benefits for the Self
Self-Leadership: Benefits for Others
