9 Questions to Help You Improve Your Self-Awareness

Know thyself.

If we all knew ourselves and understood the concept of self-awareness, this world would be a very peaceful place. We all would get along, live in harmony, there would be no fights, and we would all live happily ever after.

Sadly, that is not the case.

If self-awareness was easy to master, everyone would have done it by now. And while it is difficult to achieve complete self-awareness, it is paramount that we think about it and try to master it for ourselves.

In this article, we will provide a list of questions in order for you to understand your level of self-awareness and learn how to improve it.

Start Paying Attention to Yourself

Are you living your life on auto-pilot? Are you just going with the flow? How much do you think about your daily chores? Do you even think about them at all? Do you think about how you are communicating with the people in your life?

If you have not been paying attention to yourself and your life, start doing that now. This is the first step to begin your self-awareness journey as the whole point of self-awareness is to understand your personality, your thoughts, your behaviours, your actions, the do's and don'ts of your emotions and actions and everything in between.

Ask Yourself

1. What are your values?

You prefer to live your life with honesty, you are loyal and value the same in others around you, you believe in forgiveness, you understand that people make mistakes but they can always learn and improve. These are some examples of values and principles that people hold dear to them and function accordingly. If you are not aware of your values, start by creating a list based on your experiences so far.

2. What do you hold dear in your life?

Is it friendship? Is it family? Is it work? Or is it all of them with the right balance? Once you have your values sorted, understanding what you hold dear in life becomes easy. If your family is your top priority, your values might be different as compared to if your priority is work.

3. What relationships do you hold dear in your life?

As an extension to the above the question, it's also worth exploring the different types of relationships you have. Identify your personality in all the various roles you have to play in your life. How do your values differ when you are a parent, a sibling, a best friend, a colleague, a boss, a relative, a neighbour?

4. What are the things that bring a negative emotion out of you and what are the things that bring a positive emotion out of you?

Note how you feel when you don't get enough time to spend with your family due to your work obligations, how you feel when you wake up every day in the morning, what you feel when you are about to give an important presentation, what you feel when you see a baby laughing, what it feels like to take a walk or go for a run, what it feels like to have a nice homemade meal. What makes you laugh out loud and what makes you extremely sad? When you understand your emotions, you become more aware of your behaviour and feelings.

5. What is the ratio of negative vs positive emotions in your life?

If you have to look back and analyze your life so far, do you see happy memories or sad ones? All the significant decisions you made in life, were they based on negative emotions or positive ones? Was the outcome of those decisions positive or negative?

Retrospect every now and then and improve yourself for the future.

6. How do you handle your emotions?

Are you good at handling your emotions or cannot make sense of them? When you find something unpleasant, what is your first impulse? Do you react immediately or do you internalize your emotions? Do you try to rationalize the situation you are in?

While differentiating between negative and positive emotions is important, it is equally important to understand your reaction to these emotions. The more you understand, the more self-aware you become.

7. Do you thrive in your work environment or do you thrive at home?

What is your life's purpose? Do you feel more accomplished at work or do you feel more competent at home? How does your brain work when you are in the office and how does your brain work at home? Or do you switch between making decisions with your brain and your heart? Do you like a balance between the two? Do you think that applying the same principles work in both cases?

Take out some time every day and analyze your thoughts, differentiate the decisions you make at work and at home and how they differ and the results that come out of those decisions.

8. How do you like to spend your time?

Pick a day in your life and break it down into chunks, the time you spent with family, the time you spent at work, the time you spent outside, the time you spent alone with your hobby. Think about which of these things you enjoyed the most and how much time you spent doing that particular thing. This will take you out of auto-pilot and you will learn to make the most of your day and your life.

9. Are there any behaviours or patterns that keep repeating in your life?

If you have started thinking about all of the questions listed above then you'll be able to identify patterns and behaviours from your life that have led you to the same outcome over and over again.

At the end of it all, it's important to understand your personality, your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions to get out of auto-pilot and start living a life of purpose that fulfills you as a human being and also fulfills your dreams.

Stretch Your Mind

Stretch your mind as much as possible, think, rethink, re-evaluate, redo, and continue. You can also come up with variations of these questions as you learn more about yourself and continuously improve your self-awareness.

And remember, you can only go as far as you allow your mind to take you so live your life with an open mind.

#WorkWarsWomen

Happy growing!

- The Other Working Woman

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