7 Self-Awareness Exercises That Will Help You Lead A Better Life
You’re stuck in a traffic jam and the first thing you do is curse all the people and animals and the world. You deliver a brilliant presentation and instead of thanking your colleagues for it, you take all the credit. How often do we notice these behaviors? Most of us are living our entire lives on auto-pilot leading us to think at the end of the day — “Why did I behave like this? I should have stopped myself.”
Worry not. Brutask brings to you 7 self-awareness exercises that will help you make better decisions so you can live your life intentionally instead of on auto-pilot.
Put a pause on instinctive reactions
Someone spoils your morning coffee or your supervisor gives you an important task just when you were about to finish work for the day. Nine out of ten times your response would be an instantaneous one (and not the best one either). The next time you find yourself caught in such a scenario, take a deep breath before you act. This allows your brain to assess the situation rationally and objectively rather than emotionally. The more you practice this self-awareness exercise, the better your resilience and response dealing with stressful situations.
Monitor your self talk
There is a non-stop mindless chatter going on in our brains. When this takes the form of negative comments every day, it can easily lead to depression, anxiety and stress. By monitoring your self-talk, you can become aware of when your thoughts turn into a negative spiral. It might be after a failure, not being able to complete a small task, or not meeting someone’s expectations. Only when you are aware of what triggers that negative cycle, can you try and put a stop to it.
Be aware of your flaws
Do you shy away from calls? Do you hate working on projects that are challenging? When you know your flaws, you can better deal with situations. For example, if you get anxious when there are uncertain variables surrounding you, you can make a contingency plan for such situations. It could be reading a journal where you dealt with such situations in the past successfully or channeling that anxiety to work on the things you are sure of. When you acknowledge your mistakes instead of making excuses, this self-awareness enables you to improve yourself and prevents hypocritical behavior.
Expand your emotional dictionary
How many times has it happened to you that when someone asked you what you were feeling, you were unable to put that feeling into words? This leads to a lot of stress. And why not? There’s more to emotions than just feeling happy or sad. Knowing how to put those feelings into words actually has a therapeutic effect on your mental health. Learn how to label your emotions by learning a new feeling word each day. Here’s a list and helpful guide for you to get started.
The Three Why’s
Sakichi Toyoda, the inventor and founder of Toyota, uncovered errors in the company’s manufacturing process using an approach called the 5 Why’s. This has been tweaked to the Three Why’s technique for self-awareness. It involves asking yourself “Why” three times before making a decision or in order to gain valuable insights. Let’s take an example to understand better.
- Why do I hate going to the office every day? Because I feel tired at the end of the day
- Why do I feel tired at the end of the day? Because my body shifts to a lethargic zone.
- Why does my body shift to a lethargic zone? Because I don’t exercise and eat healthy.
Who knew the solution to love going to the office was to get a subscription to a Zumba class and a healthy yet tasty diet plan?
Add a question mark
We make unnecessary judgments throughout the day without even knowing. Replace full stops and exclamation marks with question marks for each of these opinions. For example, “Sarah is so lazy,” becomes “Sarah is so lazy?”. This forces you to think through your opinions and become more self-aware of how you assess different situations and how they have an effect on your beliefs and judgments.
Pay attention to your body language
Have you watched yourself on a video and thought to yourself, “Ugh! Do I really stand like this or slouch my shoulders like this?” Don’t worry. You’re not the only one. By paying attention to your body language, mannerisms and postures, you can improve your confidence and self-esteem. For example, slouching or taking a low-power pose increases cortisol in your body and results in low self-esteem. On the other hand, standing tall or taking a high-power pose increases testosterone and improves confidence and performance.
Now that you have a list of seven self-awareness exercises that are easy and helpful, try each one out and see what works for you.
To make this even more effective, put this as a to-do list task on our simple and effective productivity platform so that you don’t forget to practice it when you’re surrounded by a thousand other tasks.
Remember. It takes just five minutes every day to change your life for the better.
Sign up to Brutask for your free trial now: https://brutask.com/
