First Tip - Learning More about Yourself
- Highlight and ranking the top 10 priority in your life, that help you to understand what is truly important to you. As example, your ranking list might include 1-Parents 2-Family 3-Yourself 4-Friends 5-Community....
- Identify your personal goals to know what you want from your life.
- Determine your strengths and weaknesses, which is extremely important point for understanding yourself. You can discover your strengths by assessing your traits, knowledge, and skills. Additionally, you could focus on your weakness for improvement purpose, as example, you might struggle during a public speaking.
- Take online psychometric tests. These online tests allow you to learn more about your personality, about your personal traits, your learning style, and your strengths. Do several different tests to help you discover yourself. Keep a copy of your results so you can review them when you are reflecting on yourself.
- Write on daily basis your feelings and experiences in a diary, which assists you to understand your thoughts and emotions. In your diary, discuss what is happening in your day/night and how you feel about it. To get the most outcome of your journaling habit, set a time for revisiting your old entries to review it, which help you self-reflect.
Second Tip - Develop Emotional Awareness
- Allow yourself to feel your emotions. To understand your emotions is part of your self-awareness. For example, you might feel sorrow after getting passed over for a job opportunity. Do not try to fight that feeling! Tell yourself, “I’m sad as I thought I was going to get the job. It’s okay to feel this way.”
- Include stress release into your routine to prevent burn out. Stress is a normal part of our life, but it will be harmful if you get significant dose. You should have your own technic to deal with that stress to either call one of your friends after a stressful day at work or take a warm shower to decompress your tension.
- To understand yourself deeply, you should know what triggers your emotion. For example, let us say you blew up at your friend for yelling at your dog. You might realize that seeing people be mean to animals is an emotional trigger for you.
- To stay grounded in the present moment use mindfulness. Additionally you can engage your 5 senses sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to be more focus as follows
- Sight: focus on a specific color around you
- Hearing: notice the sounds in your environment
- Smell: sniff an essential oil
- Taste: chew a piece of gum
- Touch: rub your hand on your skin
- For a clear and calm mind, meditate for at least 10 minutes a day, then you will be in relaxed state and could control your emotions.
Third Tip - Getting Feedback from Others
- Ask people whose opinions you value to give you feedback. Identify people in your life who you think they will give you an honest, constructive evaluation of yourself. And send an email to them, asking for as an example,
- What is my five top strengths?
- Describe myself in 10 words.
- Give me five ways to improve myself.
- Pay attention to how others react with you, recognize their body language and notice if they appear comfortable and approach you with ease or if they keep their distance or close themselves off.
- Let one of your friends film you so you can watch yourself and understand how others see your facial expressions and mannerisms. Ask your friend to make a video while you are giving presentation.
- Review the feedback you get at work or school. You probably receive regular feedback about your job performance or academic progress. Read the critiques or job reviews that you receive. Additionally, talk to your supervisor or instructor to ask questions or learn more about your progress.