With today’s challenges at work—hybrid work, job instability, and many other lingering effects of the pandemic—self-awareness is more essential than ever for business success. The more self-aware we are, the better we understand ourselves and how we interact with the world in both our professional and personal lives. Self-aware people are more productive, engaged, and successful than their less self-attuned colleagues. Read on to learn more.
What, exactly is self-awareness?
It’s been defined as our ability to understand our thoughts, feelings, motivations, values and reactions and consequently, to better manage those thoughts, feelings, motivations, values and reactions. The more self-aware we are, the better we are at controlling ourselves, improving our relationships, and making wiser decisions.
The two types of self-awareness:
Self-aware individuals:
How to develop self-awareness
Self-awareness is a skill that can be learned. It takes time to actively improve our self-awareness and separate our choices from our emotions, rather than having our emotions control us. Few of us are as self-aware as we think. Some ways to grow self-awareness: spend quiet time asking yourself why you believe you act as you do; ask trusted friends what they admire about you and what issues they feel you could work on; and try to put yourself in others’ shoes to become more attuned their needs.