A spoken YouTube video by Stephen Scoggins presenting four ways to increase self-awareness. The speaker outlines self-assessment (using personality tools, outside feedback, and experience), building self-confidence and self-esteem through wins and learning from failures, and self-direction by aligning identity with purpose and action (example: Samuel Feiner's One Life). The tone is practical and motivational, with calls to use tools and seek external perspectives.
Now we've already talked about this before about how important self awareness is. So I thought I'd do a video on 4 Ways to actually level up your self awareness. So stay tuned.
Well, enough time has gone by where we've actually talked about personality styles, we've talked about value systems, we've talked about comfort zones, we've talked about all kinds of things that help you improve your emotional intelligence and your ultimate self awareness. What we haven't really talked about is different ways to increase it with the different areas that are affected by self awareness. Which is why I want to take the time in this video to break those things down. So we'll start with number one, which is self assessment. Okay? That's the ability, if you will, to assess.
Your strengths.
Your struggles, and you may have guessed it if you've been watching for a while, your blind spots.
Now here's the tricky part.
Most people when they do a self assessment they don't get real with themselves. They tell themselves about all the different things that they're either doing way wrong and they focus there or they're on the other side of the spectrum, which is these are all the things I do way right, which is why I'm so awesome. Well, one of the things you're going to learn about very quickly in emotional intelligence and self awareness overall is everything is truthful in the middle. So there's going to be things you're not great at, there's going to be things you're awesome at. The difference is whether or not you can actually discover what those are and assess where you are objectively.
Okay, objective.
Are you being objective? Are you being honest? Now it can be difficult to see yourself properly because you're doing your day to day life on a regular basis. A couple things that I do to kind of get objective feedback is one, I have taken a variety of personality style self assessment tools, Disc values, the attribute index, Myers Briggs strengths finders, Gosh, the enneagram. I've taken so many different assessments and I'm looking for commonalities inside of those assessments. I'm looking to see what things they agree on in an effort to better understand that it's precisely the reason why we give actually have an give you access to self awareness tools because it is that important. The other thing that I do is I'll typically get outside perspective. Why? Because I can't see. It's just like having eyes in the back of your head, right? If somebody's sneaking up behind me right now, I'm not going to know they're there, right? Unless someone else outside of me can get has a better perspective and can tell me that person's there. It's the same thing. So you want to make sure you have not only personality assessments and tools like that to identify, help you identify what these things are, but also the people that can help you see your blind spot, see your strengths and help amplify it. Okay, We've talked about it before. Connor can sing. I'm on him all the time about making sure he continues to sing. Why? Because he's good at it. I want to see him succeed with it. Okay. Same thing with piano. These are different types of things where an outside perspective can actually bring more value than not. Okay, the next thing, the final one in this area is experience. All right, what happened? That is a result. And were you pleased with the result or were you not pleased with the result? Okay, and if you weren't pleased with the result, how do you change it for future use? If you were pleased with the result, how do you amplify it? Okay, that is a process of self assessment. Again, tools. So personality tools can help a lot. Or what I call self awareness tools. Not necessarily just personality. Right. Outside objective and then using experience as a teacher. Okay, the next area we want to focus on is overall self confidence. Okay. That's the ability, if you will, to manage.
The level of your esteem.
Okay, now once you actually manage the level of your esteem and have a certain confidence, then you can actually move into the next bucket in a second. But for the time being, what about you? Can you appreciate about yourself and build confidence? What about you are yourself, are you not happy with? Okay, again we're looking for commonalities that are uniformly in the middle. Confidence is built over time after having multiple successful wins. Also, just as importantly, confidence is also built by withstanding multiple successes or multiple failures along the way. I will tell you point blank that the reason that my life has taken the turn it has and I'm able to do things that I never thought I'd be able to do is not because I've succeeded a lot, it's because I failed a lot. And as you've heard, I'm sure other people say, there is a power to failing forward. And seeing failure as a learning exercise rather than an event. A permanence, if you will. Alright, now once you understand that and then you can start to build self confidence. It's your ability to understand where your ego is at any given time. Okay, now we're going to move to self esteem in General. Okay, I'm going to give a small little pivot on self esteem in this respect because here's the thing. I find that people who struggle with their self esteem are doing one of two things. They're either lying to themselves.
Okay. Or they're believing.
A lie someone else has told them.
Let that sink in.
How has your identity been shaped so far? Right. Were you affirmed growing up and you've always had the love of a parent and everybody and everybody's always been awesome and you're at it, you're just amazing and stuff, or did you grow up in an event or an area like I did, where it was a little more difficult to get consistent affirmation and connection on a regular basis? Those things play a role in self esteem. Okay? Self esteem is how you see yourself and your value you bring to the world. Okay? If you see yourself as having no value, then you're not going to take the action to increase your opportunities. Conversely, if you see yourself as something of value, then you'll constantly taking risk and trying to take the next step up and up and up to reach a higher and higher level. And of course, in my hope to actually go back and actually help you kind of get to the next level and that where you're actually inspiring other people. You see, I believe we go through a stage where there's a discovery stage of ourselves where we're going through these different things, where we have to go through a self assessment phase where we start building the self confidence up, which then in turn affects our self esteem in a positive direction. Because most of the people that we bump into that are part of the audience struggle here, right? And the reason they struggle there is because we used to struggle there, which is why we made the content to begin with. Alright? The next phase is called the self direction phase. Self direction phase is how do you see yourself in the direction that you're going? Okay. My buddy Samuel Feiner, okay, created an awesome organization called One Life. Now One Life has supplied us with this T shirt today. Motivational messages to help people who have actually been sex trafficked or trafficked in general. So what they did was they decided to say, you know what, the direction that we want to go, the commitment of my life, the thing that I want to go after in life, is I want to help as many people as possible who have been trafficked. Why? Because it's horrible that they had to go through that to begin with. And there's a restoration process, there's a provision process. Not only do they need emotional Support and spiritual support and intellectual support. They need financial support, they need housing support, they need educational support. Well, my buddy, Samuel Fainter and One Life, his entire group, this entire clothing line is about sending out wonderful, inspiring motivational messages in an effort to take care of the less fortunate. Right. So that is a determination of self direction. What can you take right now and pivot it for a greater purpose?
Right.
Some people get unclear on self direction. They're not sure where they're going. They may have an idea of done some work here in the assessment phase. They may have some confidence. They may even have a stable level of self esteem. But if they don't feel like they're doing something of progress to move forward, then inevitably what happens is they stop right about here. Right. Well, breakthrough is on this side.
Breakthrough is when identity meets purpose meets action.
Identity meets purpose meets action.
You have something incredibly powerful inside of you. You've got natural gifts, you've got natural talents. Maybe you're a singer, maybe you're a painter, maybe an attorney, maybe you're a bricklayer that can build cathedrals. But no matter what you do, you have potential. And in that potential is your power. So let's go through the steps. Discover who you are, what drives you, understand how to amplify that and build confidence. Take that as part of your identity in such a way that you can add value to the world that maybe people around you can't see. And that's okay. Then do something special like my buddy Samuel Fainer at One Life. And if you want to check out more at One Life, go ahead and visit the1life.com and check out all that Samuel and his team are doing to help people that have been in the trafficking area. Get yourself a shirt and help support a wonderful mission. You can do this. I believe in you. And we'll see you in the next video.
Hey, it's Connor with the Journey principles. If you enjoyed that lesson, you should totally grab our free ebook linked in the description of this video. It's all about self awareness and it'll really take you to another level. Also, do us a favor and like comment and subscribe and we'll see you in the next video.
