Today is part 2 of our series on self-awareness.

If you need to catch up on the first part, here’s the link to that – 5 Dangers a Lack of Self-Awareness Brings.

After discussing the dangers we encounter without self-awareness, today I’d like to explore ways we can create or cultivate it.

The most important part of self-awareness is being intentional to attain it.

The most important part of self-awareness is being intentional to attain it. Click To Tweet

It’s not something one could acquire once and never have to work on again, the diligence involved to pursue this aspect in your life is vitally important.

Creating self-awareness involves actively tracking down the necessary requirements from a personal accountability mindset.

It should cause you to submit to a voice of encouragement and guidance in your life for your growth and development.

This list is something I gathered from several books I mentioned in the first part of the series, some items came from a few books by John Maxwell and others from my own experiences.

As we look at these, you’ll see a few are the antithesis of the dangers to avoid, which only makes sense for us to incorporate.

Here are the 8 things we need to solidify in ourselves to create self-awareness in our lives.

 

1. Moral compass

 

You need to have something solid that shapes your worldview.

For me, this is Christ.

Having a compass of truth and righteousness that points us in the right direction not only leads and guides us but is a safety net we can fall back on in turbulent times.

In order to implement self-awareness, we begin with our moral compass that shapes how we think and how we conduct ourselves.

Remember, self-awareness is intricately woven into our emotional state of mind and thereby our actions and reactions should reflect how we live according to that moral compass

If this is abandoned, we run the risk of a warped interpretation of our purpose and the rest of the attributes needed to complete an accurate model of self-awareness.

 

2. True Humility

 

If a danger of lacking self-awareness is pride, then the opposite must be true that in order to facilitate a healthy atmosphere of self-awareness we must have true humility.

We’ve seen the false humility before whether at times in ourselves or in others and it’s honestly repulsive.

How does this happen?

Not by a single encounter with the response to a situation, but it’s seen over and again to where we recognize that trait for what it is.

Humility isn’t weakness, it isn’t a lack of confidence, it doesn’t mean being a pushover, it means truly understanding our place.

Understanding that without Christ we can do or be nothing on our own is how we should daily conduct ourselves.

Approaching life from that standpoint and operating in that manner will perpetuate that behavior over and again.

                       

3. Motives

 

One of the best questions to ask when doing anything is what are my motives behind this?

Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People tells us to ‘begin with the end in mind’.

When we do that, we discover our motives.

If we can start anything by answering that question with pure intentions, then we generate a level of self-awareness in that endeavor that’s already established every move we make hereafter.

Why do you want to be in leadership?

Why do you want to be a teacher, artist, musician, doctor, etc.?

Why are you spending so much time reading?

If the answers to those questions are self-serving, then it’s time to re-evaluate. If the answers center around pouring ourselves into others for their benefit, then we’re on to something.

Even Jesus’ time was spent not for Himself, but for others. He even told the disciples that they would do greater works than they saw Him do.

His attitude was steeped in the right motive about His purpose.

 

4. Authenticity

 

Honestly, I didn’t realize how widespread of an issue this was until I began paying more attention to the things I was reading the last couple of years.

In the book, The Centurion Principles, the author Col. Jeff O’Leary points out that the WORLD is desperately seeking great leaders. He provides examples of how leaders have failed due to a lack of authentic character.

In the writings of John Maxwell also, he’s consistently stressing how we need real, authentic leaders to take charge because of the bad leadership our world has endured.

With that, we face the increasing pressures of social media and Hollywood presenting to us that everyone else has it together, so we should too.

If you have any flaws or are imperfect, then you don’t measure up.

What has this caused? Only an increase in teen suicides, a false reality to every one of us, and a focus on obtaining the unattainable.

People aren’t as interested in that as we think.

They want to know we’re real and go through real things just like they do.

Grafting this into who we are can be scary because we don’t want to admit to ourselves and definitely not to others that we mess up.

Being honest about these parts of our lives endear us to others rather than drive them away. If we want to have true self-awareness, we have to be authentic, real, and transparent.

If we want to have true self-awareness, we have to be authentic, real, and transparent. Click To Tweet

 

5. Be Teachable

 

Here we have another opposite in our list of dangers.

Committing ourselves to having a teachable spirit can mess with our pride in a lot of ways.

We have certain experiences in life that shape the way we operate and when someone counters that with a different way to approach it, we can feel like they are attacking us and not our behavior.

It’s key that when we’re addressing something in others, we address the behavior and not the individual.

Similarly, we need to take that approach when someone is addressing us.

As long as they are not attacking our person, then understand they’re attempting to shape our behavior.

Teachable moments can come from anywhere.

Being on the lookout for these is a way to increase our self-awareness.

Now the receiving of these lessons doesn’t start and stop at recognizing, but not implementing. It’s the actions we take after we’ve heard, seen, or experienced these lessons.

We must not leave the lesson in the classroom, but take it with us and apply it to shape our thinking and behavior.

 

6. Know Your Strengths and weaknesses

 

If I asked you to name a few or your weaknesses, we can often rattle those off fairly quickly.

If I asked you to pinpoint a few of your strengths, that’s a challenge that we all face.

But why is it?

Well, for one we don’t want to appear boastful.

Tooting our horn is what comes to mind and the majority of us are not comfortable with that.

Once we begin to list the things we feel we’re good at, we are under the impression it changes the way people think about us.

Just think about the last time you sat in an interview and tried to “sell” yourself to your prospective employer.

If that’s all you do, then most certainly that’s the case.

We have to be honest with the things we possess and what we don’t.

It’s not an indictment on any of us to be lacking in certain areas because it’s the way we were created.

If everyone had the same strengths, how off balance would that be?

Identifying our weaknesses will put our minds at ease.

Allow yourself to come to terms with these things about yourself.

One of my weaknesses is that I think I can do everything. Believe me, that is not the case.

This reality hit several years ago when I had heaped so much onto my plate that I began to wear down, fail, and become ineffective.

The scary part was stripping away some layers to remove the burden. While it wasn’t an easy thing, it was necessary.

The true test of self-awareness in this area starts with recognizing what we should be doing and what we can allow others to do.

Having that understanding, we don’t focus on building our weaknesses, we identify them so they don’t hurt us, but we focus on our strengths and let others come along side to make up the difference.

It’s more than delegating, it’s building you and others.

This is one of the truly great marks of self-awareness.

 

7. Reflective time

 

The benefit of quiet time with God will facilitate our path to being more self-aware.

It’s good practice for us to sit and reflect on our development, where we’ve come from, what we’ve implemented in our lives, and evaluate these points.

This time of reflection should serve three main purposes:

   1 It should automatically stir up an attitude of gratefulness in us.

Where God has brought me and my family from is something I’m thankful for every day. Reminders of this come when we have glimpses of the possibility of where we could be today.

   2 It will cause you to evaluate your motives again.

Keeping our focus on our ‘why’ brings a renewed vigor to what we’re doing and reminds us that we had a purpose, to begin with, so are we maintaining that day to day?

   3 It will help you measure progress.

Have you been intentional and diligent about where you planned to step up and give of your time, talent, and treasure?

Have you truly changed the things you said you’d change? Have you implemented the techniques, created the habits, or built the skills you desired?

 

8. Laugh at yourself

 

I realize this may not be as earth-shattering of a point as you may have expected.

However, to build self-awareness comes at the expense of our pride and ego and what better way than to be able to truly laugh at yourself?

This doesn’t imply that you speak negatively about yourself.

Don’t have a self-image of failure where you assume that you “never” can get things right, you “can’t” change, or you’re no good and worthless.

True self-awareness stops for a moment and laughs when you intended to say “habits” in your teaching and you said “hobbits”.  (Guilty!)

Glossing over and continuing on like it never happened can be a sign of insecurity.

These things are going to happen, and everyone is going to notice. So the best thing we can do is reveal in those moments that we know how to laugh at ourselves.

If you won’t laugh at yourself, you know what will happen? Other people will laugh at you. The goal is to have them laughing WITH you, not at you.

 

Can you do it?

Of course, you can!

We all have the ability to put these things into action, so what are you waiting for?

Leave the “what if” behind of creating self-awareness and start today!

 

What would you add to this list to help others? What’s the biggest one you struggle with? Comment below and share!