Do you know yourself ?  Do you understand what motivates you ? Do you understand what drives you? Research shows that self-awareness is crucial for all levels of success. Becoming self-aware is a long process, but it is only by knowing yourself that you will be better placed to make the right decisions about your professional and personal life.

After all being self aware is all about having a clear perception of your personality, which includes your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs and motivations. It also includes your thoughts and emotions. Having an awareness of yourself gives you the opportunity to make any required changes in your behavior and beliefs.

Become self aware – as this is the first step you need to take in creating what you want and also mastering your life. In which direction you are focusing your attention, your emotions and your reactions determine where you are going in life. Having self awareness permits you to see where your thoughts and emotions are taking you. It also lets you analyze your emotions, how you react to situations, your behavior and your personality, so that you can make changes you want. Without having that awareness you will have difficulty in making changes in any direction of your life.

How can one develop self awareness ? It can only be developed through practice in focusing your attention on yourself and the minor details of your personality and behavior. No one can know themselves completely. It is difficult, if not impossible to solve every single thinking error that we as human beings make in processing information that we have, but we can try. We cannot solve every problem in our life, but we can make some minor changes which would contribute towards getting us where we would like to be. Some ways of doing so are:

• Step back and look at yourself objectively: t may be very difficult if n early impossible to look at yourself objectively, but it’s always worth a try. The main idea is to study yourself and do a self criticism of your actions and decisions in an impartial manner.

• Seek Feedback from people you trust: We all have qualities which may be seen by others but we are unable to see them in ourselves. These are our “blind spots” which you can deal with by receiving honest feedback from people you trust. Remember receiving and accepting feedback is hard. If you feel defensive, think back and analyze as to why you do so.

• Frame your objectives: The main purpose of enhancing your self-awareness is self-improvement, so it makes a lot of sense that you need to have clear cut aspirations defined. If you’re not clear and are struggling with that part, defining your objectives is an excellent way to clarify to yourself and push yourself into focusing on what you want to achieve.

• Maintain a diary or journal: Relying on our memory is not good enough as it tends to color the past pretty deeply. If you want a more accurate gauge of what you want to achieve and how you are doing, a journal is a much better way to do it. Maintaining a dairy or journal makes you much more aware of what you’re doing and where the problems might be lying that you need to deal with.

• Perform a self-assessment:Doing a periodical self-assessment is one of those things we all do at our jobs. It is a very trying task seen by most, but you can make it beneficial if you think of it as a opportunity to improve yourself. Instead of you spending your time and thinking about what you should improve about yourself, as an alternative try thinking about what your boss thinks you should do. You may even consider taking the feedback of team members and try to work on that. In this manner, you can see yourself from someone else’s perspective and gain much more insight into yourself.

It is very important to remember that going through the process of self-awareness is in fact introspection, not really the process of spending too much time just considering your own thoughts, feelings or problems. Self-absorption and overthinking doesn’t get you anywhere, as your judgements may get cloudy and stress may rise if you spend too much time in negative thoughts. Thus making it difficult for you to act.

BUT JUST BEING AWARE OF YOUR NEEDS AND ACTING ON THEM CAN HELP YOU IMPROVE.

Finally remember that becoming self-aware won’t happen in a day. Rather, it may take years of reflection and introspection. As you learn to examine your thoughts and feelings, leading to looking within yourself, you will become a more authentic and self-aware person.

“Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.” –  Debbie Ford