Develop Self-awareness

“At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.”
― Lao Tzu

Some of us have been luck with the enlightenment of  self-awareness while other still struggling unconsciously. Human being is capable of developing a survival capacity to adapt to environment changes when being forced to. The key word is “being forced”.

With ever changing of the environment we live, new behaviors and triggers are being introduced to us constantly as it may result in unexpected response that we may not be aware of. We may end up hurting other people feelings by a simple response without putting ourselves in their shoes to gain full understand on the intention and expectation. Sometimes, it just require a moment of attention to observe and listen rather than saying what we think it is right.

Back to how can we develop self-awareness. In my experience, we must “force it”. By forcing, I mean push ourselves to learn our the blind spots, develop strategy to watch out, and constantly assess our behavior toward any situation or stimulus from the environment.

Following steps are recommenced:

1. Identify list of blind spots behaviors with help of trusted friends
2. Start researching books that could help with the specific behaviors being identified
3. Immediately find a coach or mentor who emulates the opposite of what we do naturally
4. Write down exactly what we are changing and look at it everyday. It could be integrated in form of daily progressive questions that we must answer truthfully. The idea is to measure the progress not the outcome. Further development of such question could be into hourly and situational at high level of self-awareness.
5. Every time we handle the situation better, give ourselves a pat on the back

Please remember, we have to stay focused on those behaviors forever. It has taken many years to build the behaviors and things do not change overnight.