5 steps to get better self-awareness immediately
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” — Ralph Ellison
Self-awareness is one of the most important tools in life. Yet, it often gets overlooked in favour of confidence, intelligence, wealth and many more individuals assets or qualities. Yet, what are you if you have any of these things but have no self-awareness? A dick, and you’ll probably let people know it.
Self-awareness is the root of human interaction and enables you to get what you want. It’s the most valuable tool. It allows you to read other people, make sure they gravitate towards you, make them feel comfortable, give them trust and, most importantly of all, allows you to have empathy. It lets you know what you really want from life, where you are happiest, prioritise the things that are most important and achieve the goals you want.
The whole of your life, you’ve probably been a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. With self-awareness, you can embrace your squareness and stop feeling out of place. People never tell you that it’s possible to do that — but it is. And this is how.
Step 1: Identify your intelligences
Forget what your teachers told you, academia isn’t the only intelligence worth dedicating your time to. Nor is it the only intelligence full stop. For anyone who has ever been told they’re stupid, or made fun of for not being able to remember history dates or recite passages of Keates, this will build your confidence and prove all those Jacob Rees-Mogg thinkalikes wrong. Ignorance is the essence of stupidity, so ironically everyone who values only one type of clever is an idiot.
Step 2: Identify the type of communication you’re best at
It isn’t all about the talk. Or the walk. It’s also about the hearing, doing, writing and so on. Different people have different strengths — identify your communication strength and maximise on this. Thread this strength into everything you can and it will make every situation easier for you.
Step 3: Take a personality test
The single best way to understand how other people can get the best reaction out of you. This will help you identify what type of environment is best for your productivity, how people should be delivering feedback to you, how to ask you to do tasks… doing a personality test is particularly helpful when it comes to maximising regular interactions with people. So maybe you want to assess your results in relation to how you work with your colleagues. Or maybe it’ll be helpful for you and your flatmates. This is all about self-awareness in terms of your various triggers, reactionary habits and the environment around you so you can always be within reach of the best version of yourself.
Step 4: Get familiar with self-awareness psychology
Now’s the time to become invested in the cause. You’ve already peaked your interest with some relatable research, so expand your horizons and have a read/listen/watch and immerse yourself further. The self-development journey doesn’t necessarily have a satisfying end, so feel free to continue. Or don’t. It’s totally ok to just leave it there if you’re feeling happy with yourself. But if you are interested, I can guarantee there’s a psychological theory for everyone out there so get digging. Here are some of our favourites.
Step 5: Up your Empathy
Part of self-awareness is being conscious of how your actions or words will land on other people. And in order to be able to anticipate this more accurately, you need to make sure you have a good grip on empathy. It’ll make you far less anxious about those small things that keep you up at night. Things like “argh, I definitely offended that person I sent an email to yesterday by signing of with ‘sincerely’ rather than ‘see you soon’” and “I went in for the handshake and they went for the hug, god it was so awkward they must hate me” and suchlike. Things that the other person has either forgotten or doesn’t care about in the slightest. Useful for everyday living, but empathy also will make you more in control. The ultimate empath will always have the right response because they can read people and be confident they have correctly assessed the emotions of the recipient.
This article has actually been turned into a workshop by the author Sam and her business partner Mae. Watch or listen to them chat through the reasons for creating the article and how they’ve actioned these points in their own lives here.
This workshop is the first in a series titled ‘The Career & Self-Development Series by ERIC’. All are action-focused and designed to not only help you know what you want from a career but also find companies that are hiring, get in touch with them, interview with them and find people who can help you get the future you want.
Mae & Sam run ERIC together, a community that empowers Gen Z creatives through career & self-development content.
ERIC are launching a career and self-development app. Sign up to be an app tester at meet-eric.co/app.
