Self Awareness is Critical to Your Success

Now that you’ve identified your beliefs, what does it mean to your life? Learning your beliefs and those of your fellow team members can make you unstoppable as a leader. If you take time to better understand yourself you’re on the way to being a top 5% leader, choose to ignore this powerful tool at your own risk. I’ve seen people change their lives by understanding how just one of their beliefs impacted their lives. Just imagine what you could do by developing a better understanding of how your beliefs shape your world.

Last week, you found which of your beliefs came up over and over again in your different sentence completions. These different completions help you better understand how you see yourself and your world. The critical thing to remember is there is no right or wrong answer here. The idea is to fully explore how your beliefs may be impacting your life.

Understanding your beliefs is critical to increasing your own self-awareness. Understanding where these beliefs originated and how they may be overused help you work better with others and release limitations you might see in your own life. One way to do this is challenge your beliefs once you become aware of them. Beliefs are used to explain your world but too often they can become false beliefs. Many of our most powerful beliefs are passed on from generation to generation and are very difficult to see from our own perspective. To maximize your own strengths and beliefs, you must be aware of how they color your world. Some beliefs can be very empowering for you but others can become limiting in their expression.

There are several types of beliefs including: core beliefs, cultural beliefs, hand-me- down beliefs, advertised beliefs, and biological. The challenge to all beliefs is to determine the origin and how they might change the way you see yourself and others.
Let’s create a system to evaluate your beliefs. A great resource for learning more about your own beliefs can be found in Dr. Nick Hall’s program called Change Your Beliefs, Change Your Life. He has a droll sense of humor but the material he shares is incredible. He also talks about how beliefs impact other parts of your life, as well. They really are the foundation to living a better life in today’s changing times.

Dr. Hall suggests that you go through all your key beliefs and challenge them. He believes that the moment that you begin to understand the origin of your beliefs, they faster you are on the course to mastering them. He has uncovered that many people’s strongest beliefs about themselves originates with someone or something else. He finds that many of us are carrying beliefs that do not serve us but have served someone else in our life. For example, Baby Boomers never lived through the Great Depression but some have adopted many of their parents’ attitudes towards money or education.

For example, the belief I am Irish can sometimes allow people to take pride in their nationality, but also in the perceived shortcomings. If you grew up in a family that was very nationalistic, you might think people with different national backgrounds as inferior to your own. It also means that you might limit yourself based on earlier generations’ belief about their own limitations. I’m Irish and I can’t manage my own emotions well. It’s a way of saying, “It’s not my fault.” Not a good way to navigate through life.
When we come back on Thursday, we’ll talk about how to use your beliefs to grow and succeed in your life.