Two of my favorite pieces of advice to give people are…
- Know yourself.
- Own your shit.
I even started my podcast, Master Your Mission, with those five words in the first few episodes.
Knowing yourself and owning your shit are both qualities of a person who is self-aware. Google defines self awareness as conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.
I personally think that self awareness is one of the most overlooked keys to fulfillment and success in life and in business. The opposite, not knowing yourself, is really a liability.
Self awareness builds integrity. When you have integrity, you own your mistakes and you do what you need to do to correct any situation in which you’ve made a mistake or to avoid repeating the same mistake. You treat people with fairness and you don’t try to take advantage of people. When you have integrity, you care about your reputation and you genuinely want your customers to have the best experience they can possibly have with your product or service.
Being self aware also means that you are willing to do the hard work of being honest with yourself. When you’re honest with yourself, you tend to be honest with other people. What do you do when no one is looking? Do you do what’s right, or do you do what’s convenient for you in that moment?
Knowing yourself builds confidence. That’s because when you know yourself, you’re in touch with your shortcomings and more importantly, you’re in touch with your strengths. You know how to use those strengths to your advantage, and you’re aware of how they can affect other people. In the same way, you’re aware of how your shortcomings can affect other people, so you are careful not to allow them to.
Self awareness also brings happiness and peace. When you’re self aware, you know your wants, needs, and desires and it’s likely that you’re the kind of person who goes out and gets exactly that. You don’t waste time doing things that don’t align with the vision you have for yourself.
Experiences and people who don’t serve you don’t get time and space in your life, and when you find yourself in situations that don’t deserve your attention, you are willing to do what’s necessary to change that so that you can get back to your peace. Your groundedness is unshakable because, no matter what happens in life and in business, you know who you are and where your happiness resides. Where your happiness resides is where you want to be.
Being self aware is one of the most important qualities that we can develop as people and as entrepreneurs. Self awareness makes life so much easier, because it gives you direction and clarity.
If you don’t feel like you are self aware, take some time to get to know yourself. Sometimes that means removing people, things, and beliefs that have prevented you from being introspective and paying attention to your inner voice — or your intuition.
A few questions you can ask yourself to get started are:
What makes you tick?
What do you love about yourself and what do you love about life?
What do you want in life?
What kind of person do you want to be?
What kind of life do you want to live?
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
How do you treat people and how do you want to treat people — even strangers?
Are you always honest or do you lie when the truth is inconvenient for you?
Are you fair and do you live by the same standards you hold people to?
Again, those are just a few questions you can ask and answer for yourself. Don’t be afraid to go deep and to think about some of the experiences you’ve had in life that have shaped you. That will help you to understand why you are the way you are and make any adjustments that are the result of outside influences.
Building self awareness takes time and is an ongoing journey in life, but continuously doing the work to become and remain self aware will reward you endlessly.