Stop Repeating Mistakes: Build Self-Awareness To Improve Your Life And Grow

Self-awareness is key to self-care, personal development and long-term change

Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

There are periods of my life I don't remember - I was numbed out or dissociated. I reacted to life as it happened and got confused about why it didn't go my way.

This week I was interviewed for a university (UCL) research project about therapeutic coaching, and it's benefits in stress management and improved wellbeing.

During this conversation, I realised one of the main benefits of coaching is to increase self-awareness in our clients.

Through open questioning and creating a safe space for vulnerability, clients explore and understand what's going on in their inner, unconscious experience and how it affects how they think, feel and act.

We help enhance their self-awareness: their ability to recognise and understand their thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and motivations.

They become aware of their self-perception and how others perceive them. They start to recognise what gets in the way.

Better self-awareness is crucial for personal growth, emotional intelligence, and building healthier relationships. If you want to improve your life, you need to take an honest look at what’s going on.

Once we know what we think or feel about an issue, we get to decide what to do about it - we’re informed.

This is invaluable compared to being numb, dissociated or blind reaction. In that state, you're destined to stay stuck or repeat the same old mistakes that get you nowhere.

What blocks self-awareness?

If you’ve never been taught to be self-aware or curious about your inner experience and how the world impacts you, going down this path seems like a foreign land.

I had a client who was so conditioned to ignore their own needs due to an overbearing parent, they didn’t know what they thought or felt about situations.

They constantly felt uncomfortable in interpersonal conflicts or asserting their needs - as if they were fighting an inner urge to do something else, but their programming got in the way.

It was utterly confusing. They decided nothing would change and it was a part of life. They’d turn it inwards with a strong inner critic berating them for not standing up or stating their needs to others, as an example.

Much of our work together was helping them realise they didn’t have to believe their thoughts, nor accept other people’s thoughts and values as their own if they disagreed.

Denial and fear of change are common barriers that hinder self-awareness. They stop you digging deeper to discover what’s really going on. This leads to self-blame which doesn’t help and stops progress.

Ask yourself this: what does it cost you by not being open to change or discomfort whilst you shift how you do things in the world? Staying as-is doesn’t seem as appealing.

At a basic level, our behaviours are driven because we’re moving towards or away from something.

We work hard to get the new client, bonus or chocolate cake. We avoid difficult conversations, ignore to-do tasks with easy distractions or consume to numb our agitated or wired state.

If you want to achieve personal growth and goals, recognising what’s driving that approach or avoidance behaviour is key.

• Which cognitive biases kick in when you’re trying to speak up in a meeting?

• What unhelpful self-talk causes you to keep working harder than you need to?

• Which distressing emotions get in the way of an honest exploration of why you have relationship issues - guilt, shame, sadness?

The thing with discomfort is the more you ignore it, the louder it gets so you take notice. T

A better approach is to get used to feeling it and using it as a guide.

Reduced self-awareness impacts emotional distress

Dr Itai Ivtzan recently wrote about the importance of self-awareness to growth and transformation on Psychology Today. When asked by clients what they should focus on to optimise personal growth, he tells them to ‘Get to know yourself’.

Through years of personal therapy, self-help knowledge and training as a therapeutic coach, I’d agree. Clients who struggle to make progress and meet their professional and personal goals often aren’t as self-aware of their inner experiences.

They notice outcomes or results but not necessarily what causes them or how their interpretation impacts how they feel.

This leads to frustration, shame or distress, ironically reducing self-awareness if you spend too much time in that headspace.

It’s one of the reasons I’m expanding my coaching practice to include art-based coaching - this approach supports deep exploration and brings the unknown into our open awareness.

That weird feeling you have - let’s explore it, and get to know where it’s coming from or what it means. Let’s understand how your anxiety, guilt, or shame get in the way of your self-awareness and progress.

Psychology researcher Dr Susan David wrote Emotional Agility to help readers step back from their emotions and understand what needs to change.

We often don’t see life how it really is, but create a narrative that fits how we want to feel or think about something.

This keeps us stuck in emotional distress without knowing why.

How to cultivate self-awareness

There are several ways you can improve your self-awareness skills.

A great way to get unstuck is to name the emotions you feel as accurately as you can. Get detailed - instead of sad, dig deeper - what kind of sad is it? Is there a better word to describe how you feel? Are you actually morose, regretful or a different emotion?

With clearer self-reflection and accurate emotional labelling, you’ll build emotional agility and flexibility to handle what comes your way.

Over the past year, I’ve used writing and art journalling as tools to help deepen my self-awareness.

Writing these articles, newsletters and posts on social media on a daily and weekly basis help me reflect on what’s going on for me, what it means and how I want to communicate it.

Finding space for introspection and reflection in daily life is fundamental for wellbeing and life satisfaction. You get a balanced view of what’s going on without the additional narratives or distortions you may layer on top.

Chatting to peers and loved ones is another great way to improve your self-awareness. Pick a theme or topic you want to explore and listen to what others say.

Ask for their feedback and perspective on an issue you’re struggling with or want to enhance. Diverse views give you valuable feedback and help you see things from a different viewpoint.

You might agree or disagree, but reflecting on that process improves your understanding of it. If you don’t, you’re destined to repeat the same old mistakes and wondering how this keeps happening to you.

You have more control than you realise.

Remember that any personal growth and development processes need you to embrace self-compassion and non-judgmental self-exploration.

We’re not looking to fire up your inner critic or do it the ‘right’ way.

Find what works for you and integrate it into your daily life.

You’ll make better decisions, offer a healthier response in your interpersonal relationships, and choose where to focus your attention rather than zoning out.

Key takeaways

Before we change something, we need to understand what makes it work or what we need to fix.

Take a similar approach to your personal growth and wellbeing.

Introduce daily self-awareness enhancing activities to boost your self-discovery.

Build community and social interaction by sharing your experiences of cultivating self-awareness. Help each other.

Here are some ideas to improve your self-awareness:

1. List your barriers to self-awareness - what are the thoughts, feelings or behaviours that get in your way. Create action steps to counteract these or ask others what they would do.

2. Explore your emotions and what makes you feel uncomfortable. Are these reflecting reality or a story you tell yourself to feel better about it?

3. Label your emotions in more detail. Don’t stay at the high-level - sad, happy, angry etc. Get specific - upset, excited, elated, grumpy, devastated etc.

4. Introduce a daily, reflective practice - it could be meditation, a meditative walk, journalling, creative expression or something else. Start for 2 minutes and build from there. Keep it simple so you do it.

You might find it tricky to increase your self-awareness at first. But this is all in service of your personal growth or transformation.

Live the life you’ve always wanted, aligned to your values and with the people that matter.

If you ignore reality and don’t take an informed approach to life, you’ll be destined to repeat the same, old mistakes - that’s a waste of amazing potential. 🚀

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If you want to build your self-awareness skills and emotional agility, book a free 25m call with me and I’ll share how I can help.