Self-awareness is about knowing oneself. It’s about truly understanding one’s values, feelings, motives, and desires.
The journey to self-awareness is not a straight line. It twists and turns as you peel back the layers of who you are, what you value, and what drives you. This journey isn’t for the faint-hearted either; it requires confronting uncomfortable truths and acknowledging strengths and weaknesses.
It’s also not an inherent strength of anyone. Everyone has to learn self-awareness through practice, mentorship, and hard work. However, the benefits are immense if you decide to take the journey. You’ll find greater self-confidence, improved critical thinking, more effective leadership, better relationships, and the ability to learn from experience more fully.
To help on your journey, I offer several tools and exercises to elevate your self-awareness.
Journaling
Journaling is a powerful tool to build self-awareness, providing a safe space for introspection and self-reflection. The act of putting pen to paper allows you to be free to be more honest and share freely. You gain valuable insights into your behavior and thought patterns by documenting daily events, feelings, and reactions. Moreover, the process of writing fosters mindfulness and presence, enabling individuals to cultivate a greater sense of awareness in their daily lives. As a result, journaling becomes a means of self-expression, self-discovery, and personal growth.
You can start with prompts or simply talk about your day, what happened, the emotions you felt, the situations you encountered, and how you reacted. The possibilities are endless.
The exercise is simple: grab a notebook, pen, and a quiet spot. If you need some help, consider the following questions:
- What am I most proud of in my life?
- What are the most important lessons I’ve learned in life?
- How do I define success?
- What makes me scared?
- What does the ideal you look like?
- What are your dreams and goals?
- Why are these dreams or goals important?
- What is standing in your way of reaching these dreams and goals?
- Who are the people that have influenced you the most (and why)?
- What does happiness look like to you?
- How do you handle criticism?
- What are your passions?
- What’s my personal mission statement or motto?
- What type of work do I get lost in?
Wheel of Life Exercise
The Wheel of Life is a very simple tool that facilitates self-reflection in 8 critical areas of life. While simple, it provides a lot of insight into how you’re living and how it differs from how you want to live.
Since it’s circular, it doesn’t matter where you start. Just pick a slice and get started. For every slice, give a rating from 1 to 10 in each category, one being you’re totally unsatisfied, and ten means that you’re over the moon.
Here’s how the categories break down:
Career
This focused on your satisfaction in your career. Consider what is important to you: compensation, responsibility, personal development, career path growth, or flexibility.
Financial
This focuses more on your personal finances. Are you set up for success? Are you achieving your goals for things like retirement, investing, and savings?
Physical
This focuses on your health and wellness. Are you taking care of yourself, making healthy choices, and moving your body often? How healthy do you feel?
Intellectual
This part the wheel is focused on how much you are intellectually stimulated. Many people use this area of the wheel to examine reading, learning, travel, culture, and the pursuit of education.
Social
This includes your friends and coworkers, your social schedule and how you spend your free time. It’s worth considering if you want to take up new activities or seek out new friend groups.
Family
Family focuses on relationships with your immediate and extended family members. Do you feel like you have loving secure relationships? Are you happy with them? Are there specific people or groups you want to be closer to or have better relationships with?
Recreation
This looks at how you fill your cup just enjoying the world. Do you have a hobby that you love or something new you want to try? This is more than just your social – what do you do for you?
Spiritual
Regardless of your belief system, this applies. How are you doing in your spiritual practice? Do you have one? Do you need one? From being connected to the universe to deeper religious concepts, getting in touch with that side ensures you’re satisfied.
Your Personal SWOT
Another way to increase your self-awareness is by conducting a personal SWOT Analysis. Famous for evaluating business opportunities, this simple yet powerful tool also translates well into the personal space. It involves identifying and assessing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, providing invaluable insights that can inform decision-making and goal-setting processes.
Strengths Finder Tests
Harnessing strengths finder tests, like the Via Strengths finder, can significantly boost self-awareness. These assessments offer practical insights into your distinct talents and abilities by pinpointing and comprehending your innate strengths. With the heightened self-awareness from these assessments, you can make well-informed decisions, set achievable objectives, and navigate life’s complexities with clarity and determination.
Core Values Exercise
Core values exercises are invaluable tools for personal development and decision-making. You understand what is truly important to you by defining your core values. This clarity helps you make choices that align with your beliefs and priorities, leading to greater authenticity and satisfaction in life. Additionally, knowing your core values provides direction and resilience, guiding you through challenges and keeping you grounded in your principles. Ultimately, core values exercises empower individuals to live more purposefully and authentically.
360 Feedback
Lastly, the hardest one—360 Feedback. Most everyone is familiar with this technique for performance management in companies, but employing a personal 360 is especially vulnerable but incredibly impactful.
Step 1: Choose who you want to seek feedback from. Start with your trusted partners in the organization. The ones you know will tell it to you straight.
Step 2: Now collect the feedback. You can use email, Google Forms, or even paper. Consider different questions about your own competencies, behavior, skills, and performance. It’s easiest for them if you use a Likert scale or finite way of evaluation along with an open-ended box for feedback.
Step 3: Now analyze the feedback. Breaking down the answers by groups so you can understand the perceptions of different groups of individuals is helpful. It can show you how you interact differently with various groups of stakeholders (i.e., executives vs. ICs)
Step 4: After you look at the feedback, it can be interesting to note areas where your perception differs from how others see and experience you. Consider any areas where you want to make a change!
Dont forget to thank those who partook in the exercise. Offer a similar feedback cycle to them if they wish
In the end there are 6 tools to help you start your journey. Whatever tool you choose, and you can mix and match them if you like, just make sure you take the time to sit down and deeply consider the outcomes of the exercise. You’ll be well on your way to better self-awareness.