Essentials for developing your self-awareness

It took me years to truly understand the importance of self-awareness. Yet it soon became the first and biggest step in helping me better understand my actions and behaviours. As the years have gone by my self-awareness has developed. Becoming a powerful guide for me as I’ve built two businesses.

In this week’s blog, we’re going to be exploring how to use your self-awareness to manage your self-sabotage and increase your self-belief. What to do if you’re ignoring your intuition and feeding your negative behaviours. Lastly, how to master your self-awareness to recognise and address your sabotaging behaviours.

Ready to dive in?

Letting self-awareness be your inner compass

According to Eurich, T. (2018), Harvard Business Review, self-awareness is defined as…

"The ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don't align with your internal standards. If you're highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behaviour with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you."

I’ve been on a journey of self-development from a defining moment in my mid twenties. A huge catalyst for change in my life. Yet it wasn’t until ten years later that I fully understood the impact that having greater self-awareness can have on the understanding of our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. 

Looking back now I’m so grateful for this powerful mindset shift. On how it’s helped me achieve so many of my goals. It’s really helped me recognise my self-sabotaging thoughts and actions. It's given me the ability to pause and reflect, so I can create a better outcome for myself and others.

As you develop your self-awareness you’ll notice your actions will start aligning more with your values and goals. This will naturally boost your self-belief. Helping you make choices to support your business goals and the impact you want to make.

Pay attention to your negative thoughts and pay attention to the energy and emotions in your body. Then act as if you’ve already achieved your goals. Use your self-awareness to embody the success you want to create and manage your self-sabotaging behaviours for more self-belief.

Aligning actions with intuition

There used to be a time when I was too busy hustling to achieve my goals that I ignored my intuition. But I soon learnt that this was a costly mistake. The more I spent time in the present moment being aware of my thoughts and reactions to my outside environment, the more I was able to tune into my intuition.

Often we can dismiss our gut feelings or inner voice. Getting caught up in the busyness of running our online business. This can create a significant roadblock in your journey towards self-awareness and personal growth. When we’re disconnected in this way it can lead to patterns of self-sabotage. This is where we repeatedly engage in actions which affect us achieving our goals and next level of income and impact.

A powerful way to break this pattern is to start by acknowledging your intuition without judgement. Give yourself the time to pause before making decisions, allowing yourself to lean into your inner guidance. Journal on experiences where you’ve listened to and equally ignored your intuition. Notice the different outcomes and reflect on the lessons from each experience. 

This reflection can help you recognise the benefit of listening to your intuition and help you build a powerful habit. Trusting and nurturing your intuition is a powerful step towards greater self-awareness and positive changes in your behaviour.

Spotting sabotage through self-awareness

When we increase our self-awareness it helps us to recognise how and where we’re self-sabotaging. By regularly paying attention to your thoughts, emotions and actions (without judgement) you’ll start to identify the triggers and thought processes that lead to self-sabotage.

Once you start recognising these patterns the next step is to develop strategies to address them. There’s several ways to do this from…

💚 Challenging your negative self-talk and replacing it with the next best feeling thought

💜 Reframing limiting beliefs and shifting your perspective to one of opportunity

💙 Creating new and empowering habits to replace destructive behaviours

Consider keeping a journal to track your progress and insights. Or working with a coach to gain an additional perspective and go that level deeper with your healing. Remember, your goal isn't about achieving perfection.

It's about developing a deeper understanding of yourself and developing the tools to make conscious choices that align with your desires and goals.

To receive more support email me at [email protected] and we can look at ways we can work together or what free resources I have to support you.