Self-awareness is about being aware of the way you feel and the impact your feelings can have on decisions, behavior, and performance. It’s also the first step in your journey to emotional intelligence. Your self-awareness affects everything you do, even your performance at work. That’s why it’s no wonder that self-awareness at work is becoming increasingly important. So, to help you, we list down some things you can do to become more self-aware!
Self-Awareness at Work: Things to Do to Become More Self-Aware
Take a personality test
Personalities are important in the workplace. The popularity of personality tests and it’s continuous growth throughout the years can be contributed to this. Personality assessments give you insights on who you really are and your behaviors, helping you with your career decisions, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and even finding your niche or people who have the same personality as you. Some personality tests even give guidance on how you can improve and be better at work, making it a good tool to increase your self-awareness.
There are even different types of personality tests such as the DISC Personality Profile, MBTI or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and many more that you can use to help you be more self-aware.
Ask for feedback
Feedback is important for various reasons. The feedback you receive, may it be formal or informal, is a good step to have self-awareness at work. Knowing how others see you will also help you learn more about yourself. There are some things that you do that you don’t notice. Having a new set of eyes to see the situation will help you gain valuable insight, helping you improve yourself.
Keep a journal
Record your thoughts, experiences, and feelings each day by keeping a journal. One advantage of keeping a journal is that you can recall your day. From there, analyze and reflect on your experiences and emotions. For example, you wrote about feeling angry. What made you angry? What happened during that time? From your actions, is there something you could’ve done differently? Keep in mind the answers that you came up with so that next time you’re put in the same situation, you could take a different course of action.
Practice mindfulness
Mindfulness is being aware of your surroundings, your team members, and how you perform in the workplace. You may be used in the fast-paced environment and the countless multitasking, but there are also benefits in focusing on one thing at a time—on being mindful. Mindfulness is a way to monitor your thoughts and feelings. A few minutes each day of practicing mindfulness can help clear your mind, lower your stress levels, improve attention, and even banish negative feelings.
Improving and growing always start with you. Practicing the things listed above and making it a habit can help increase your self-awareness. And with higher self-awareness comes greater work performance.
