The Magic of Self-Awareness
original recording: June 21, 2021 (below is a transcription of the video)
Thank you for joining. Welcome to my very first Coaching Moment Conversation.
My name is Angie Robinson. I am an ex-corporate Human Resources leader gone entrepreneur three years ago. I currently have my own coaching and consulting practice. This is my first time doing this Coaching Moment Conversation, and I'm kind of excited!
I've spent over 20 years in Human Resources in the corporate world, mostly in leadership roles.
And then three years ago, I started my own practice for a number of reasons. I thought about it for a long time and finally made the leap. I now do mostly coaching and some consulting in organizational development and also facilitation. I do a lot of leadership development and team development work, and I love it. I am also an avid Disney fan, and I love that I build it into my business as much as I can. I actually have an undergrad in Hospitality and Tourism Management, crazy enough, but I got into human resources shortly after I launched my career. I also have a master’s degree in Organizational Development and Change Leadership. And in about, I guess, a week I will officially have my life coaching certification. So, all kinds of good stuff going on.
So why am I doing this? I'm kind of picturing this a little bit like an interactive podcast, in a way. What I do for work in coaching and in developing leaders and working with teams and just individuals is so good. I have seen people make significant changes in their lives, really transform themselves as a person, which has all kinds of ripple effects, all kinds of effects on their business, on their work and their family life, on their happiness. I've been through it. I continue to go through it.
And so I just want to be able to share some of what I've gained through coaching myself, but also through my clients. And I want to spread the concepts and those tools to the world so everyone can experience the transformation. So that's why I'm doing this. Again, for the first time today, we are going to talk about the Magic of Self-Awareness. Self-awareness, to me is very, very foundational.
I do want this to be interactive. So again, for people that are on live, if you want to pop in the comments any time, ask a question, share a thought, I'd love it. And if you're catching the replay, do the same because I'll be able to see those comments later as well. Let's make this kind of a two-way street. Okay, let's talk about self-awareness.
I’m curious - what pops into your head when you hear the term self-awareness?
What are some of the first things that you think about? And as you're thinking about that, if you want to pop them in the comments, please do. Here is my definition of self-awareness: it’s kind of a culmination. If you were to Google self-awareness, you're going to get all kinds of definitions. Here's where I've landed with my definition. Knowing and understanding yourself. Knowing and understanding yourself is self-awareness. It is way deeper than that, honestly.
To keep defining it – it is bringing the subconscious to the conscious. I won't get too deep into this. Maybe in the future I will do talk a little bit about the brain science. But we do have our conscious brain, which is our prefrontal cortex, and that's where we make all of our logical decisions. The things that were really intentional about are in our prefrontal cortex. The rest of it all, which is the bulk of our thoughts and the bulk of our actions come from what you call the monkey brain, toddler brain - our back brain. That's our subconscious. That's all of our beliefs, all of our thoughts, all of what we’re not even aware of, quite frankly. And so with self-awareness, when you have a healthy self-awareness, it's about bringing the subconscious to the conscious so you can make intentional choices and decisions. But when we do that, then we allow ourselves to intentionally leverage the uniqueness of who we are. Intentionally create change and connect more effectively with others. And the ripple effect, quite frankly, just keeps going and going and going. That word ‘intentional’ is intentional.
Because when we can bring things to our conscious brain, we have the ability to be intentional about what we do. Our brains are wired to protect us and that's what it tries to do. That's what it does. That's all fine and dandy, but oftentimes it's not in our best interest. It doesn't serve us well.
And that's why we need to bring our subconscious to our conscious. So again, I know that's a lot, but maybe another time we'll talk deeper about that. Here is what else I say: self-awareness is pixie dust for making the most of our lives. Yes, that is a bit of a Disney reference. Again, I completely own my Disneyness and I bring it into my work for so many reasons.
Pixie dust is really like a magic effect, right? Think of Tinker Bell. It's a magic effect. And I believe that self-awareness is the pixie dust to get the most of what we want. I strongly believe that, so I love that.
What do you think? Does that resonate with you? Does that make sense?
I see self-awareness in three key elements.
Again, if you Google it, you're going to get all kinds of layers and layers and layers of self-awareness. I compiled most of it into three elements, three areas, and each of these, if you were to unpack have lots of layers, lots of things to uncover, lots of things to explore. So, I'm keeping this pretty high level just to get a base understanding of what it is.
We’ll start with psychological preferences. That is something that we all have - things like how we gain energy. Are you more leaning toward introversion or extraversion? Or maybe a combination of both? How do we make decisions? Do I make decisions from a thinking space from my head or from a feeling space from my heart? And am I more logical and use my senses? Or do I use intuition more? These terms might ring a bell to you, especially if you've ever taken any of the personality profiles, like Myers Briggs, DISC or Insights Discovery. They are all based on these psychological preferences by the work of Dr Carl Jung, who's a Swiss psychologist. That is one of the elements of self-awareness.
Another is our inherent strengths, our weaknesses and our passion. I don't like the word weaknesses. I'm using it anyway, but I just sometimes feel like it has less than positive connotation. But you know what I'm talking about, right? We all have inherent strengths, things that we are born with, things that come natural to us, things that are weaknesses that we’re maybe not inherently great at, which is okay, too. And things that we love. These are things that oftentimes are inherent to us but also can be built, evolve and change/transform over time as we add more experiences to our life.
The third one is our experiences and beliefs. Our experiences shape who we are and it doesn't stop. We continue to gain more wisdom, more truth, more beliefs based on what we experience. We have an experience to put in our back pocket, it then forms our beliefs, and our beliefs will shape future experiences. It’s like the circle of life, but it's super huge. And when we can be aware and understand those experiences and how they have shaped our thoughts, there's so much power in that.
That is one that I will talk about again, probably in the future. These elements of self-awareness, like I've already said, are very foundational. And in any of the work I do, whether it's individual coaching, it's teamwork, it's with organizations overall, I bring this in because again, it's the pixie dust, right? So being self-aware is going to catapult all the things that we want in order to reach our goals. I strongly believe that.
Why Is Self Awareness Important?
Why is it important? Why do you think?
I will tell you all the reasons I think it is important.
The crux of self-awareness is that it allows us to be our best self. What does that mean - to be our best self? It’s pretty subjective. We all might have our own thoughts around what that means.
When we understand who we are, what makes us tick, what are our preferences and motivators are, what detracts us, what are our thoughts and our beliefs and our emotions are, when have even an inkling of an understanding, especially when we get really, really deep into it, it gives us the opportunity to number one, honor who we are; number two, leverage who we are; and number three, manage who we are.
And that is really the key, right? You know, when we're more aware and using our conscious brain, we can do less of the comparison game. Do you ever do that? Where you're comparing yourself to others, comparing yourself to what society thinks that you should be doing, comparing yourself to all kinds of things, right? When we're more self-aware, we can manage that better.
That's amazing in itself. Increased self confidence has a ripple effect in so many ways. Increasing self-awareness is about trusting yourself and having your own back. What else?
It allows us to be more intentional in our decision making, in changes we want to make, rather than just kind of going with what we think is right. We can be much more intentional about all of that. When we have more self-awareness, we definitely create stronger relationships, too, with yourself, of course, but with others. This is super, super powerful in leadership, for sure and in teams for sure. But in any situation in life, right? That when we are more connected with ourselves, just naturally, we can be more connected to others and our relationships can be stronger. We can gain more compassion and the skills based on that. When we understand us, we start to understand others, too, that maybe aren't like us or have different perceptions of things. And that in itself, again, is super powerful.
All of this leads to increased productivity and catapults us to reaching our goals. So, you know, it's interesting because there's so many different things that I might coach on - the different goals that we have, right? And there's always a solution or steps to reach those things. For example - you want a different job, so you brush up your resume, you polish up your interview skills, you apply for jobs. These are all very tactical things. They absolutely can get you to that new job. But you throw some self-awareness in there it’s about, honoring who you are, leveraging who you are, being super aware of your blind spots and owning those too. That is what's going to get you to the next job. That's meaningful and sustainable.
What are some other goals that are common? You want a promotion at work, you work really hard. You want to be a better leader.
There are so many things in the leadership world to develop skills in leadership, how to delegate, give feedback, how to coach, how to read the P & L, all of these things that are needed for leadership, but you throw in a dose of self-awareness in there. I'm telling you; you know yourself better and you have the self-confidence. That's what's going to shine. The better connection you have with your direct reports, the more it will set you apart.
Another example is when you want to lose weight. There are so many ways to do that. We've got the pills, we've got the programs, we had all of the things, and they work sometimes, maybe not forever, right? You manage your mind around it, though. I'm telling you; those are the things that are going to make the biggest difference for meaningful change and sustainable change.
I talk a lot about this, too, with my clients and my teams. There's always a barrier, right? There's always a barrier to the things that we want, and self-awareness is no different.
What are some of the barriers to intentionally becoming more self-aware?
What do you think? Here's what I think. Sometimes I hear that self-awareness is one of those things that is touchy feely. “I don't have time for that”. Maybe - I don't know. I don't think it's touchy feely. I think it's important, obviously, but it's for everybody. It's for all humans. It can sometimes have a connotation of being woo-woo. That's fine. It can have that label. You just have to clear your brain from that terminology. I think that it's actually a skill. It's a life skill. And who doesn't need life skills? We all do, right? So erase from your mind the woo-woo.
Another barrier is oftentimes people might be afraid of what they're going to learn, right? They might learn things when self-aware that are different from where they thought they should be.
Or it might bring things up and make someone question, maybe I shouldn’t be in this relationship, or maybe I am on the wrong path, or my parents told me I should be doing X, Y, and Z. And if I'm more self-aware and realizing I shouldn't be doing those things now, I'm not doing what others expected of me - it can bring up some pretty uncomfortable things.
However, you keep squishing stuff down. It's going to pop up at some point anyway. So you might as well be intentional about it, right?
What else is another barrier? Your blind spots. We all have blind spots. These are things that we are not even aware of, the way that people might perceive us. Things that someone else might see about us that we have no idea about. That can get uncomfortable too, right? Getting your blind spot pointed out to you - it's perfect to have that happen, because then you get to manage that better. Do something with it. But if you don't, people are still going to perceive you and you're still going to have these blind spots without you knowing it. It actually could be detrimental to you. It might be a barrier. It could be uncomfortable, but it's good. It's magic.
What else? Another barrier is becoming more aware of biases. We all have them. We all have biases that we have collected in our lives based on so many things, like our experiences and what we were taught when we were kids. When we bring those biases to the surface, it can get very uncomfortable. Sometimes people don't want to know what those are.
Sometimes people feel like self-awareness is like therapy. Sure, it could be. And there is nothing wrong with therapy. When I use self-awareness in coaching and development, it is very, very forward focused.
Our past is the past. And is it important to understand maybe some of the ‘why’ we believe in things or why we do some things? Absolutely. But it's not the focus. The focus is on the now - what do I do with this information and how do I move forward? So even thought it could be seen as a barrier again, I challenge that.
And the other thing I think that can be a barrier is the fact that it takes work. Honestly, you know, I've been working on self-awareness for a lot of years, and it doesn't end, nor should it. I think it's awesome that it doesn't, but it does take intention. And who has time for that? We are all so busy, but it's going to pay dividends. However, that can be a barrier.
All these barriers are something that anybody can overcome, though. I would challenge you to do that.
Alright. So, the question might be asked…
How can I cultivate more self-awareness?
There are several ways. I'm just going to put out some of the quick hitters. I would say, number one, is just start to notice. Right?
Self-awareness is noticing.
Notice what makes you laugh. Notice what triggers you to get upset. Notice when you start to get that tingly feeling in your belly that might mean something's coming or notice when you get that anger feeling. Just notice what triggers thoughts and feelings in you.
That is a form of cultivating self-awareness. Writing them down is even better. Extra credit for that.
Challenge your thoughts.
When a thought comes up about something, ask yourself the question: “Why am I thinking this way? What am I making that mean?” It is a super good question. Those of you that I work with, you know that I love that question. “What do I make this mean?”
A situation happens - for example - I'm at work and somebody said something and it totally freaked me out or made me mad. Stop and ask yourself - what am I making that mean? Why is that making me so mad? Don't just let that that lizard brain take control. Stop and ask yourself some questions and challenge yourself.
Ask others.
With self-awareness, part of it is not only digging deep into yourself, but it's also understanding, like I said, how others might perceive you, how you might land on others. Ask them a question, like “Hey, how do you think I did in that meeting? How did I come across?” Just ask other people. I did a form of this in grad school for one of my projects I was working on. I sent out an email to some of my closest friends, like a pretty good chunk of them, actually, and just asked some questions, which was super vulnerable, uncomfortable, but so good. And I got all of this feedback, and it really helped me to understand some of my areas of strength and areas of opportunity from the eyes of others. It was super helpful.
Tools and exercises.
There's a bajillion out there. I love the personality profiles. My favorite is Insights Discovery. It's the one that I'm certified in, and it's what I lead teams and individuals through. I think it's amazing, but there's some pretty, pretty awesome tools out there. There are journals and tons of exercises that you can do that help to cultivate self-awareness.
And then, of course, work with the coach.
You know, somebody like me. Coaches are amazing (I don't mean that indulgently). I just mean, coaches are amazing, right? I work with them, too, both inside of work and life coaching outside of work. What a coach can do is: number one, not be your best friend; number two, remain super objective and then; number three, help you see your brain from the outside. It's really hard for us to be in our own heads, in our own emotions and in our own thoughts. It is an advantage to have somebody else on the outside observe that and then challenge you. Working with a coach is a great way to cultivate self-awareness, for sure.
Okay, that is what I have for this first Coaching Moment Conversation. Hopefully you got something out of it.
You have your comfort zone. Everything outside of it is where the magic happens.
Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is where the magic happens.
So that is it. If you want to connect, reach out to me either here and follow me on Instagram. Also - check out my blog. There are also some free resources. I have a free downloadable: 10 Impactful Coaching Questions for Yourself and for Others. There is a Jump Start Your Change guide as well. And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you will get an email at least once a week. Once a week I send a Monday Magic message where I take a Disney quote and I talk about it a little bit and how it applies to life in general. And so you can have that land right in your inbox on Mondays if you sign up for my newsletter. If you're looking for any coaching, whether it's life coaching or in an organization and team development work, give me a shout. I'd love to talk with you!
Please let me know if you think this is valuable. I have a list of topics that I would love to do! Thanks for tuning in!