Self-awareness is the foundation of developing high emotional intelligence, but it can be a difficult concept to fully comprehend. The good news is that increasing self-awareness is a lot easier than it appears. Here are four fast ways to improve your self-awareness!
Take an Assessment
Improving self-awareness is difficult without the right information. That information needs to come from a scientifically backed and reliable source like an assessment.
TTI Success Insights is an award-winning assessment provider with an in-house research team constantly working to ensure our behavioral assessments will bring accurate, actionable results for individuals and teams.
The EQ assessment is one of our most popular assessments for a reason! It breaks the complex concept of emotional intelligence down into 5 factors: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social awareness and social regulation.
By using a research-backed assessment, you will get an objective, accurate baseline measurement of your self-awareness. The EQ assessment will also give you actionable next steps to keep building your self-awareness.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness isn’t just a buzzword— it’s a crucial part of self-awareness. As defined by the Mayo Clinic,
“Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress…and engage with the world around you.”
Those benefits will tie into your overall wellness, and they will also increase your awareness of the world around you, which in turn will help you increase awareness of yourself.
You don’t have to jump into intense meditation or become a master overnight; starting small is still starting! A simple way to practice mindfulness is to pay attention while you’re eating. Put away work, emails, and your phone and focus on your sensory input— how does your meal look? Smell? Taste?
You can also take a short walk and notice the sensory input around you. Focus on the weather, the sounds around you, and the sights on your stroll—you’re practicing mindfulness!
Ask Yourself These Questions
We promised fast ways to improve self-awareness and this is the quickest one: here are some questions to ask yourself at any given moment!
- What am I experiencing right now?
- Why am I experiencing that?
- How am I feeling right now?
- Am I able to answer those questions quickly and accurately?
- How is it impacting me and my ability to perform?
- How might this feeling be affecting your EQ learning?
Keep in mind that self-awareness develops with experience, and negative experiences develop awareness more than positive experiences. For a fuller understanding, try ask yourself these questions when you’re in all kinds of situations and moods, positive and negative.
Journal Daily
Lastly, a quick, surefire way to improve self-awareness is to pick up journaling. It’s a great to consistently measure your moods and begin to understand your behavior patterns, stressors, moods, and more.
It doesn’t have to be an involved process— make a simple scale for mood and rank each day. It can be helpful to track other factors, like sleep, exercise and stress level to start gathering info on why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. For example, if you continue to have stressful and negative Fridays, look at your week prior and plan around the stress you normally feel.
If there’s a day of the week that’s particularly positive for you, dig into it; what makes that day different from others? How can you increase that positivity overall?
Improve Your Self-Awareness With EQ
Like we said, tackling EQ can feel daunting, but these 4 quick steps can help you get started improving your self-awareness immediately. Take an assessment, focus on mindfulness, ask yourself the right questions and keep track of your day-to-day experiences to improve the first dimension of emotional intelligence.
Do you want to take the EQ assessment? Contact TTI SI here to get started on your path to understanding emotional intelligence.
Want to join the TTI SI network? Here’s how to get started.
