Self-awareness can be defined as having a clear understanding of your personality, including your beliefs whether positive or limiting, emotions, what motivates you and your strengths and weaknesses.

Rachel Letham, We are Wellbeing’s Associate Trainer, talks us through how building up your self awareness has a parallel effect on your businesses success:

“So often we know what our weaknesses are, am I right? However, we don’t take time to focus on our strengths and how we can use them to bring up our weaknesses, turning them into strengths and how this can radically shift your business success.

“Human beings are by their nature emotional people. We need to be aware of our emotions, how they help us and how they hinder us in our business journey. Having a sense of the Self and building your understanding of your own self-awareness is key to boosting your business success.

“Studies have shown that individuals with high self-awareness tend to live happier and more fulfilling lives. That’s because being self-aware brings several powerful benefits. Mostly this surrounds the concept of finding and expressing your authentic self, which I’ll talk more about later. High self-awareness also often means that you will have deeper thoughts, be more aware of your true purpose and enjoy more positive relationships with yourself and others. One aspect behind the concept of self-awareness, is the fact that being self-aware allows you to see your weaknesses. Once you know what they are, you can then act accordingly to fix them which will undoubtedly boost your business success.

“I believe that we all have the power within us to realise our potential.

“We need to be aware of our desired outcomes and focus on what we want to achieve and break this down into small manageable chunks to reach our potential and build our own route map to success. This is where having a coach is useful because they will help you navigate that journey and help you be accountable to reaching your goal.

“Self-Awareness starts with self-assessment of where you are now with your life and your business, where you want to be next, and what you want to achieve. You will need to get out of your comfort zone, I’m afraid. The space between the comfort zone and potential is where we learn and where we need to push ourselves to succeed.

“Tim Gallwey wrote about the concept of Performance in his 2002 book, The Inner Game of Work, with the equation, P = p – i. That is Performance (P) is our potential (p) minus interference (i). As a coach, that’s part of my role to help my clients reduce the interference. Doing inner work on your self-awareness with or without a coach can mean dismantling the blocks that are causing this interference.

“But sometimes we are not even aware of those blocks. We have within us two types of Self. Self 1 is our critical inner voice, the one that keeps us safe. As we grow older this Self develops and we learn and receive a lot of critique from other people and the world around us. Self 2 is the Self that we are born with – our authentic self. As we get older we answer the critical inner voice, Self 1 and lose touch with our inner self, Self 2. We do things that keep us safe and in our comfort zone. As a coach I help people get in touch with their Inner Self, Self 2 to help them connect more to their intuition and that ‘gut feeling’ when making decisions.

“Intention and the power of intention is an amazing way to build your self-awareness. It can help your business success too. So often we do things from a place of expectation rather than intention. The expectation is a negative concept that often leaves us feeling anxious or nervous. Whilst intention can be super powerful at helping us achieve our goals. Dr Wayne Dyer wrote the book The Power of Intention and one of my favourite quotes from it is, “The power of intention is an invisible energy field that surrounds us” – it is universal energy that we are all a part of and can tap into. By increasing your self-awareness you can tap into that energy, you can be present and drive your business forward without getting attached to an outcome. Intention allows you to be very clear on what you want to achieve and a great sense of self-awareness will boost this even more so.”

How to boost your self-awareness

“Book some time out with yourself (self 1 and self 2) to really explore your own self-awareness

• Keep a personal journal: reflect on your strengths and weaknesses.
• Ask for feedback – get the perspective of a friend and find out how the world perceives you.
• Learn to meditate: To clear your thoughts and help you listen to your inner voice.
• Try new experiences: Sampling new things will teach you a thing or two about yourself.
• Take a moment out of a tricky situation: pause and understand how your actions might affect other people.
• Get a coach: Through coaching, you will also receive feedback from the coaches that you can use to change or improve your perspective.

“Time spent working on your and your inner self is time well spent when it comes to the success of your business. Your business is only as good as the leader it has within it – so take some time to focus on you!