The more you know about yourself, the better. Here are three self awareness activities for you. When you know what you’re capable of, you can make the best choices for your relationships, career, and life. For example, at a very simple level, if you know that you are not a detail-oriented person you can create systems to compensate for that attribute, particularly if being detail oriented is essential for your job.
Knowing you’re an introvert can help you with your relationships, and understanding your values and opinions can help you find the best friends and co-workers to collaborate with. In short, the more self-aware you are, the happier and more supported you may feel both professionally and personally. There are a variety of tools and exercises you can leverage to improve your self-awareness.
#1 SWOT Assessment
A SWOT assessment stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s a personal assessment that you can create yourself. In general, you create four quadrants on a piece of paper and you begin to list your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in each quadrant.
For example, a strength might be compassion and a weakness may be laziness. An opportunity may be your current employer and a threat may be your financial situation. You can also skip the O and T portion of the assessment and focus on your strengths and weaknesses. This assessment will help you learn more about yourself, your present situation, and help you make thoughtful plans for your future.
#2 Who Do You Admire?
Consider writing down or journaling about someone that you admire. Think about why you admire them. What attributes do you find appealing about their personality, their strengths, their values and their achievements?
Amongst their qualities, what attributes do you feel like you already possess or wish to possess? If journaling isn’t appealing to you, you might consider creating a video diary and talking it out. The point is to put some thought into your answer to this question. It can help you find clarity about yourself.
#3 What Do You Believe?
Consider your beliefs on everything from God to money. What do you believe and why do you believe it? You may find that some of your beliefs are no longer true and that you have new or different beliefs. You may also find that some of your beliefs are firmly engrained in who you are and they’re very important to you. Again, you can journal your response to this, you can think about it and meditate on it, or you can create a video or audio journal. You choose the method that works best for you.
If you want to get to know yourself better, it can take a little time and effort. Life gets busy and we become active in the lives of those around us. It’s easy to put your own thoughts, needs, and wants aside. Yet if you take some time to become more self-aware, you’ll be a happier and more fulfilled person.