Self-awareness Is Key. Stop Lying to Yourself.

Self-awareness is key to everything you do in your life on a personal and professional level. Self-awareness is defined as “the ability to accurately assess one’s strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a growth mindset.” Being self-aware means that you have to stop lying to yourself. Successful people are very self-aware. They know their worth, but they also know their weaknesses; they can take constructive criticism well because they always want to improve themselves, and they want to find better ways to do things. Their strengths help them feel confident in their ability to improve on their weaknesses.

Everything starts with awareness. You need to be aware of the way you treat your body, your thoughts, your emotions, the food you eat, the words you use, and the possibilities that are around you.  Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection. If you are self-aware, you know what your strengths and your weaknesses are. Knowing this gives you an undeniable advantage compared to someone who operates in a self-righteous or self-denial mode.

Being self-aware means that you can make changes, rectify, and optimize everything you do in life and be the best you can be.  Self-aware people listen, observe, learn, and then act.  

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”

Aristotle.

Self-awareness is key. Stop lying to yourself.

Being self-aware is not easy, most people struggle with it because self-evaluation is difficult. When you self-evaluate you can be either too kind or too harsh with your assessment.  It is easy to fall into the self-righteous trap or the self-sabotage trap.  Ideally, you want to be somewhere in the middle. It is important to engage in self-evaluation to determine whether your thoughts, feelings and actions are congruent with each other.

People who lack self-awareness are operating in a world where double standards and hypocrisy are the norm. Their lack of objectivity is hidden behind a facade of excuses and falsehood. People in higher office who put themselves forward to speak on behalf of their constituents should abide by a higher standard of honesty and integrity because serving their people honestly and honorably is what is required for the job.  The sad truth today is that a lot of politicians demonstrate a fantastic lack of self-awareness. that affect their judgment and decision-making process.  Their lack of accountability is embarrassing and shameful. But at the end of the day, the half-truths, lies, and falsehoods they project onto the world will come back to bite them.

You also have the situation where people are unaware of their own biases and will spend a lot of time and energy ignoring facts, evidence, and data preferring to stay in the same comfortable belief that they had for a long time because the truth is too uncomfortable to contemplate. Stop doing mental gymnastic to try to justify your own confirmation biais. Try not to be too rigid about your beliefs or your understanding of how the world operates.

Some people tend to overestimate all the good things that they do, not taking direct responsibility for anything that goes wrong, attributing it to external circumstances. But you also have those who have impossible standards. Therapists’ offices are filled with people who hold themselves to impossibly high standards, effectively giving themselves no chance of success when comparing themselves to their own standards.

There are several reasons why people lie to themselves

• They suffer from self-delusion and live in a fantasy world of their own making, believing their own lies.
• They want to make other people happy; they want to avoid conflicts; they want to be accepted and loved.
• They want a way out of their problems, pretending everything is fine, whilst it is not.
• They want an easy way out of the situation.

But remember that you can run with a lie, but you can’t hide from the truth, it will eventually catch up with you.  Stop lying to yourself and start working on increasing your self-awareness; this will benefit you in many ways. Your decision-making process will be better. Your relationships will improve because you are more honest with yourself and others.  You will become a stronger person mentally and emotionally by taking responsibility for all your successes and failures. You feel more in control of your life, and more confident.

A few tips to Increase your self-awareness and stop lying to yourself.

• Stop taking constructive criticism as a personal attack and consider other people’s points of view. Not everyone is out there to get you. Constructive criticism usually comes from people who really care about you.  You have the right to feel upset or even hurt but resist the urge to blank out completely some constructive criticism and useful recommendations.  Pay attention to what other people say. Their perspective may just be the piece of the puzzle that was missing but that you couldn’t see. Take the time to consider all perspectives. You will be able to make better decisions if you can see things from an outside perspective instead of focusing only on your own way of doing things. Being receptive to constructive criticism allows you to be aware of your blind spots. Being aware of your blind spots will improve all aspects of your life.

• Stop trying to convince everyone that you are right.  Don’t be self-righteous. Resist the need for everyone else in your life to see things from your perspective.  People have different opinions about all kinds of things and that’s OK.  You and all the people around you can be right on some issues and wrong on others. Everyone does the best they can with what they have and that’s OK. But as soon as you know better, you should do better.

• Pay attention to your emotions because they are a good indicator of how you really feel about something. If you have been feeling anxious, depressed, or even angry whenever you do something or meet a certain person, you should pause for a moment and think about why you are feeling this way. If you are doing something that doesn’t make you happy or if it does not feel right, then stop lying to yourself by admitting that maybe this may not be the right thing to do at this particular point in time. If you say “Yes” to somebody or something, mean “Yes”! If you say “No” to somebody or something, mean “No”! Sounds simple, but it is not. Start practicing saying what you really mean.

•  Realize when you’ve taken too much on. Sometimes we lie to ourselves by thinking that we can handle more responsibilities than we can. Be honest with yourself. It is not worth the stress and anxiety that will follow from taking on too much.

• Quit doubting yourself. It is not a good idea to overestimate your capabilities, but it is also a bad idea to underestimate yourself. It can be easy to doubt yourself when you are trying something new or venturing out of your comfort zone but stop lying to yourself by believing that you are not capable of doing what it takes to get what you want in life.
• If you change your mindset, you change your life. There is so much to say about this. I wrote a whole Guide about this very subject. Click here to have access to it:

And this my dear friend is your Quest. Self- awareness is key to everything and please stop lying to yourself, it is not good for you.

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