How to Dominate Self Awareness - Know your Strengths and Weaknesses faster

How to Learn About Your Strengths and Weaknesses

The key to professional development and leadership capability begins with the Greek maxim: know thyself. It's lack of self knowledge - either grossly overestimating our abilities (one piece of research surveying 11,000 people found 33% of leaders overestimated their leadership ability) or profoundly underestimating what we are capable of (how many people do you know with chronically low self-esteem?) - that leads to failure.

Here are five techniques for KNOWING YOURSELF even better. They are an excellent smorgasbord to be used in a coaching situation or to be drawn out in an appraisal discussion as the manager helps the employee get to grips with self-development.

1) Get 360° feedback -

From family, friends, peers, subordinates, bosses, customers, suppliers - anyone who gives quality feedback. Getting quality feedback is arguably the single most important thing you can do to improve yourself. In America they have the expression, 'Feedback is the breakfast of champions'. So the question becomes: where will you get good feedback?

A good idea is for you to list the people you know, like and trust - who can help? When and how will you ask them?

2) Test yourself using psychological profiles and other valid and objective insights:

For example, Learning style profile (Kolb), Team style profiles (Belbin), Personality style profiles (Myers-Briggs), Motivational style profiles (Motivational Maps) etc. The named tools in brackets are just examples - there are others. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses here, you can then go to work on them by creating a plan.

What profiles will you complete? What will you do with them when they are done? A key task is to compare the type of person you are with the type of work you do - is there a fit?

3) Review your own life in detail:

What you have done speaks volumes about the real you, not the imaginary you - the false you that you have inadvertently constructed over time. What patterns emerge? Keep a diary or journal.

When will you start your journal? A key issue in building self-esteem is to log 3 achievements per day and then review your week and month regularly. This builds a portfolio of evidence that becomes believable to the subconscious mind - yours!

4) Stretch yourself by going out of the comfort zone:

Do things that that drive you to your limits. Children do this all the time - they sing in public for the first time, they undertake complex work, they go on some adventure trek - and as a result they grow at a tremendous rate.

What activity or learning will you undertake? Going out of the comfort zone is not to be confused with doing bizarre and dangerous things just because they are there, or because others do them. Find something - and often it is something you wanted to do as a child but never had the time - that really you'd feel proud of if you did it.

5) Use your imagination -

Daydream - ask 'what if?' - visualise yourself with knowledge, skills, talents that appeal to you. By focusing your mind on what you want or even on finding what you want, a powerful force is unleashed.

When will you visualise your possibilities? How? Under what conditions? The power of the imagination is virtually unlimited - everything that is came into existence via the imagination - it was seen in the mind's eye before it was 'created' literally or physically. Thus the more time is spent imaging ideal realities, the more likely it is that that reality will come to pass. It is important that when using visualisation and imaging techniques that we stay in a relaxed state of mind. A key extra point here is that if you have never experienced relaxation techniques before, the most well known being meditation, then I strongly recommend you find a teacher first to get you on your way.

So, we have it then: five techniques that will certainly boost your self-awareness, your understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and which if appropriated - your choice - could make a major difference to the outcomes of your life. The added bonus is: they are all fun because learning is fun!

Have a go.

Source:

Big Keith's Appraisal - The Office - BBC

This is an hilarious example of being completely self aware in the wrong way!!

42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself - Part 2

This is Part 2 of 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself

11. Write a letter to your future self. What do you see yourself as 5 years from now? Will you be the same? Different?  What kind of person will you be? Write a letter to your future self – 1 year from now will be a good start – and seal it. Make a date in your calendar to open it 1 year from now. Then start working to become the person you want to open that letter.

12. Get out of your comfort zone. Real growth comes with hard work and sweat. Being too comfortable doesn’t help us grow – it makes us stagnate. What is your comfort zone? Do you stay in most of the time? Do you keep to your own space when out with other people? Shake your routine up. Do something different. By exposing yourself to a new context, you’re literally growing as you learn to act in new circumstances.

13. Put someone up to a challenge. Competition is one of the best ways to grow. Set a challenge (weight loss, exercise, financial challenge, etc) and compete with an interested friend to see who achieves the target first. Through the process, both of you will gain more than if you were to set off on the target alone.

14. Identify your blind spots. Scientifically, blind spots refer to areas our eyes are not capable of seeing. In personal development terms, blind spots are things about ourselves we are unaware of. Discovering our blind spots help us discover our areas of improvement. One exercise I use to discover my blind spots is to identify all the things/events/people that trigger me in a day – trigger meaning making me feel annoyed/weird/affected. These represent my blind spots. It’s always fun to do the exercise because I discover new things about myself, even if I may already think I know my own blind spots (but then they wouldn’t be blind spots would they?). After that, I work on steps to address them.

15. Ask for feedback. As much as we try to improve, we will always have blind spots. Asking for feedback gives us an additional perspective. Some people to approach will be friends, family, colleagues, boss, or even acquaintances, since they will have no preset bias and can give their feedback objectively.

16. Stay focused with to-do lists. I start my day with a list of tasks I want to complete and this helps make me stay focused. In comparison, the days when I don’t do this end up being extremely unproductive. For example, part of my to-do list for today is to write a guest post at LifeHack.Org, and this is why I’m writing this now! Since my work requires me to use my computer all the time, I use Free Sticky Notes to manage my to-do lists. It’s really simple to use and it’s a freeware, so I recommend you check it out.

17. Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). I’m a big fan of setting BHAGs. BHAGs stretch you beyond your normal capacity since they are big and audacious – you wouldn’t think of attempting them normally. What are BHAGs you can embark on, which you’ll feel absolutely on top of the world once you complete them? Set them and start working on them.

18. Acknowledge your flaws. Everyone has flaws. What’s most important is to understand them, acknowledge them, and address them. What do you think are your flaws? What are the flaws you can work on now? How do you want to address them?

19. Get into action. The best way to learn and improve is to take action. What is something you have been meaning to do? How can you take action on it immediately? Waiting doesn’t get anything done. Taking action gives you immediate results to learn from.

20. Learn from people who inspire you. Think about people you admire. People who inspire you. These people reflect certain qualities you want to have for yourself too. What are the qualities in them you want to have for yourself? How can you acquire these qualities?

Source

How Does Fear Hold You Back?

Fear can be a very debilitating emotion. We use it instinctively to keep us from perceived dangers but sometimes exaggerate the feeling and attribute it to situations in which fear should not be an issue. When fear becomes overwhelming it can negatively affect our emotional state, our physical condition, and our psychological well being. Thoughts spiral around themselves and alter our perception, rationality, and comprehension, limiting our expectations, reducing our productivity, augmenting the complexity of problems, and impeding our ability to survive. Understanding the mechanism behind our fears can help overcome them by addressing the nucleus of the problem.

Fear of Failure

Fear of failure is closely related to fear of criticism and fear of rejection and can be greatly incapacitating. Rather than successfully achieving a desired result, those who have a fear of failure imagine themselves unable to achieve a task or reach their goals and thus feel guilty or ashamed of their lack of productivity, often even before initial attempts. Rather than focusing on the possibilities of success, they envision the possibilities of failure. Feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, and eagerness shift to helplessness, hopelessness, and despair leaving the person discouraged (without the courage) to overcome the mountains they created out of molehills. People who fear failure essentially fear the large shadow that emanates from a small challenge.
To justify their negative perception, people who fear failure will often omit action or engage in ineffective action. Rather than learning from a mistake and improving the action(s) to perform, the failure leads to an abandonment of the mission or goal to achieve.

Fear of Success

Similar to fear of failure, fear of success is related to the fear of living up to one’s capacities and achievements and often leads to self-limitation or self-sabotages. The belief is that success tests one’s limits and makes one vulnerable to new situations with a higher level of responsibility. If one climbs to higher levels, the mistakes have more value and can be more detrimental. One is also forced to live up to a higher potential and must maintain good efforts consistently. In other words, the fear is not of achieving a single goal once but of having to achieve repeatedly and maintaining the higher standard.
People who fear success may undervalue or doubt their own worthiness for success. They may not want to excel because they do not want to stand out from the crowd and thus be observed by others. They fear being judged negatively or disappointing others if they do not meet the higher potential they set up for themselves. This may lead to negative self-talk and the limitation of potential action for “fear is but a dark room where negatives develop” (Usman B. Asif).

Fear of the Unknown

To prosper, succeed and achieve a higher self requires adherence to challenge and change. Such a step asks for one to step away from the known and move towards the unknown with valor and vigor. However, since the unknown presents indefinite outcomes and unfamiliar circumstances, it sometimes shifts away from a sense of safety and security in routine and familiarity. That which is well-known is effortless and undemanding; allowing one to remain sheltered in predictability. Unfortunately, remaining within the limits of what is familiar and refraining from thinking outside the box with inhibit excellence, success

Overcoming one’s Fears

With careful examination of the thoughts and beliefs systems that form one’s fears, one can obtain an objective perspective of the fears and learn to overcome them by becoming desensitized to them. Once a better understanding is achieved, we can more easily and readily summon the necessary strength, courage and confidence needed to overcome them. Recognizing that any outcome of our actions, whether they are successes, failures or non-actions, are all forms of feedback, none of which should be feared. The bigger our fears grow, the further our dreams seem to be.
So, what would you do if you weren't afraid?

Source: