Life is a really hard journey full of challenges. And to enjoy it, a person must be able to choose his own path and navigate through life.Self-awareness is often defined as the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through introspection and reflection. It involves looking within yourself to have a better understanding of yourself. Having self-awareness will make you acutely aware of your personality, including your strengths and weaknesses, thoughts and ideas, feelings, and motivations. A self -aware can easily understand other people and detect how they are perceived by other people.
Kenneth Yuan, a Harvard alumnus, former General manager, and a real estate expert talks about the way his life was radically changed once he became more self-aware and constantly focused on figuring himself out and navigating his path. According to Kenneth, being self-aware will help a person pursue any goal and face any challenges in life. The more aware you become, the happier, energetic, and peaceful you will be. Kenneth shares some key tips that you can use to improve your self-awareness
- Know your Strengths and weaknesses: The first step to becoming more self-aware is to know your strengths and weaknesses. The clearer you become about your attitude, behavior, strength, and weaknesses. It will help you in planning and working on yourself and using your strengths best and improving your weaknesses. You can start by writing what you think your traits are and then asking your circle feedback about you.
- Seek out new experiences: Immerse yourself in new experiences. This will get you out of your comfort zone and give you the opportunity to learn how to act, think and feel in unfamiliar situations. Also, create opportunities to discover more positive qualities in yourself. It can be as simple as trying a new hobby, chatting with new people, or exploring a neighboring town. Whatever you decide to do, these experiences help you to get new perspectives about yourself.
- Identify the negative emotion triggers: Understanding what makes you sad, stressed, angry or jealous can go a long way toward self-awareness. When you recognize what triggers your negative emotions, you can become more selective about the people, places, and situations you connect with. It also helps you in becoming more conscious of how you respond to environments and things that you cannot control.
- Challenge your opinions and beliefs: Challenging your opinions and beliefs is a great way to get a better idea of who you are. It increases your awareness of your own thoughts, along with the behaviors and biases that are a result of these thoughts. The challenge is all about recognizing the possibility that your beliefs and opinions can change and allowing them a chance to actually grow. Asking these questions will help you to assess and identify your own thought patterns.
According to Kenneth Yuan, by understanding your personality, needs, habits, values, and emotions, and how they affect your actions you’ll be better able to manage your stress, make quality decisions, and become successful and happy in life.
