The Power of Self-Awareness
Written by Steven Urban and Kat Cox
Build Your Alliance’s first principle is: “Self-awareness is the cornerstone of building trust.” But what does “self-awareness” mean in this context? And why is it so important?
As a professional coach certified by the Co-active Training Institute and with certifications in psychometric assessment tools like Everything DiSC, Gallup’s Clifton Strengths, EQi 2.0, EQ 360, and the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, I’ve seen firsthand how self-knowledge can change an individual’s life.
Knowing and understanding yourself – your strengths, weaknesses, emotional reactions, personality traits, and what brings you joy and loathing – is the first step in building any relationship and the first step in achieving our goals, whether they’re personal or professional.
Explore the importance of self-awareness and how to find it in this introduction to Build Your Alliance’s cornerstone principle.
How to Start Looking Within
“What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.” – Helen Keller
Many of us don’t realize that we tend to look outside of ourselves for answers before we trust ourselves. It’s as if human beings come pre-set to react to external stimuli from other people rather than reading our own habits and reactions to help us determine what to do next. This need to look outside of ourselves can come from a need for validation, reassurance, support, or our own inner saboteur telling us that we couldn’t possibly have the answer on our own.
But by knowing ourselves and how we react in a given context, we can proactively navigate situations to lead towards better outcomes. We can learn to trust our guts and our instincts and leverage them to give us the confidence to move forward while standing with others beside us.
Gaining self-awareness starts by taking the to truly understand ourselves, such as asking:
- What genuinely makes me happy?
- What makes me sad?
- What makes me angry?
It’s important to create the right vocabulary and find the language that identifies these aspects of who we are. That way we can call upon the right words in specific situations to avoid confusion and make sure we’re able to communicate what we really mean.
Another aspect of self-awareness is taking a moment to step back, acknowledge, and celebrate our accomplishments, knowledge, and what we do for others. We need to give ourselves credit for all the life that we’ve lived and all the experience we’ve gathered, whether it was intentional or not.
Self-Awareness Goes Beyond the Mind
“People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships – not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem.” – Deepak Chopra
It’s easy to focus on our brains when we discuss knowing ourselves, especially in professional situations. But it’s actually not a good idea to separate our rational brains from our emotional hearts when talking about the self. Being able to recognize our emotions allows us to manage them, which can help us build healthy relationships and manage hardships. How you feel is just as important an indicator that something important to you is being honored or not as your thoughts.
Our emotions impact our physical bodies and our rational thoughts – all of them play together in a feedback loop. Think of the physical symptoms you may have from emotions: exhaustion, tightness, smiling, laughing, or shrugging your shoulders are all physical expressions of emotion. Being aware of what our bodies are telling us is powerful, as is understanding what other people’s bodies are telling us about their emotions.
When our relationships with others thrive or when they cause us pain, this is telling us information about ourselves and about others. We must be willing to listen to our emotions and our bodies as well as our thoughts to navigate the world successfully.
Using Self-Awareness to Become a Champion
“I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.” Billie Jean King
However you want to measure success, if you want to achieve it and continue to have it, you must start with self-knowledge. It’s true that success is not something we often achieve alone; we usually need a village. But it’s important to be able to build a village of people you trust. This starts with self-awareness: By trusting yourself, you can allow yourself to be vulnerable, which allows you to build trust in others.
Also, the only person who you can change is yourself. Once we accept this truth, we can begin to look at how our behaviors and reactions affect others. We can then start to adapt our behaviors to glean different reactions from those around us to create more positive outcomes. But again – all of this must come from a place of deep self-awareness and knowledge.
Use Your Inner Knowledge to Achieve Your Dreams
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung
Many of our dreams and goals are outside of ourselves. But at some point we need to look inside ourselves to awaken our inner champion who will lead us on the journey of realization. Only when we realize who we are can we move toward those dreams.
If you’re ready to awaken your self-awareness, Build Your Alliance can help you find the right path. We use proven psychometric assessments and frameworks to help you realize your strengths, weaknesses, emotional reactions, and more so that you can begin to build habits that maximize the positives and negatives of your inherent traits to get the results you want. Set up an initial consultation today to see if Build Your Alliance is the right coach for you or your team.