Written by: Ray Befus, Executive Coach

When a leader or manager stands in front of a happy team busy breaking records, you can be confident she is smart and full of grit. The key strength energizing her impact is not her grit, intelligence, or technical skills. The gift setting the team on fire is the leader or manager’s emotional intelligence. She has developed the skill of knowing what is going on inside herself as well as the other men and women on the team. She also constantly responds to the emotional climate around her and she consistently provides team members with what they need or want to do their best work. Companies rightly place a premium on leaders and managers who demonstrate emotional intelligence.

What is the doorway a person can walk through to develop emotional intelligence?

It’s self-awareness. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist and author of the book INSIGHT: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life. She provides a helpful definition of self-awareness: at its core it is our “ability to see ourselves clearly—to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world around us.”

Women and men who are clear about their motivations, their behaviors, and their impact on others are self-aware. They are aware of the value they bring and the impact they have. Their self-awareness developed and deepened over time, and opened all kinds of doors to healthy, long-term friendships and partnerships. Self-awareness has empowered them to do great work, harmoniously, with diverse people, overcoming misunderstandings and conflicts, engaging cross-culturally across generations, and even fiery political divides.

When I think back over the decades of my marriage and family life, the different positions I’ve held, the different people for whom I’ve worked and who have worked for me, my greatest regrets are related to being in a tough spot with too little self-awareness. I didn’t see how I was throwing gasoline on a fire instead of water. Conversely, my greatest points of gratitude over my life relate to working successfully with extraordinarily strong, smart men and women whose work styles could also be incredibly challenging. I learned over the years not to take on their issues as my own. I decided not to relate to them as though they were the parent and I was the child. I stepped up as an adult in an adult world so, as different as we were, we learned to respect each other and we did some great work together.

There is solid scientific evidence revealing how deeply self-aware people experience more happiness, make better decisions, and enjoy healthier and longer-lasting relationships. They’re more creative, communicate more effectively, obtain more promotions and lead more productive teams and profitable companies. Tasha Eurich labels self-awareness “the meta-skill of the 21st Century.” No matter what abilities you may have, no matter what skills you have developed, or what experience you bring, your value to any team or company will be multiplied many times over by your self-awareness.

In healthy families, teams, and organizations, our internal and external self-awareness can grow deeper, slowly over time. But then it happens! We experience what might be described as 2:00 a.m. alarm clock events. These events abruptly wake us up to some shocking new reality. Maybe we take a new job and are asked to embrace new rules for working with a team. Or we lose a job or a friendship or even a marriage partner and hear people say painful and alarming things about us. Or maybe we just wake one morning, look in the mirror, and experience a clear revelation that we’ve become someone we don’t want to be. In this alarm clock moment, all of a sudden we are face to face with our blind spots and are presented with an opportunity to take our self-awareness to a much deeper level. It’s your moment to seize the day!

Your shortest path to deepen self-awareness is to decide to take a long, intentional look at yourself through others’ eyes.

The people around you who live with you and work with you from day to day are likely to see strengths and values in you to which you have been blind. And, yes, they probably also see weaknesses and flaws of which you are unconscious.

But the truth you can build on is this: your clearest view of yourself and your world is best seen through others’ eyes. If reality is one big pie, cut up into eight different slices, our perspective of ourselves and our situation is just one slice of the pie. We know what we know about ourselves. And we may even be aware there is another slice of pie on either side of our slice. We know what we know and we know there are things we don’t know. This still leaves five other slices—most of the pie in fact—fully outside of our awareness. As it’s been said before, we don’t know what we don’t know about ourselves as well as others. To gain the clearest and fullest picture of reality, we have to ask what others see in us, hear in us, and experience with us.

Are you ready to move quickly down the path to deeper self-awareness? Allow me to give you three tools you can use to reveal and embrace your blind spots.

Ask others for feedback instead of waiting for them to work up the courage to give it to you. Asking for feedback has several benefits. First, people are surprised. Who does this? It demonstrates unusual humility and courage. You’ve made their job much easier. Don’t be surprised if they respond with respect and sensitivity. Second, if you wait to be given feedback, it will often be after some irritation or frustration has developed. It’s likely to be corrective instead of preventive. Emotionally intelligent people invite feedback, and the feedback they welcome deepens their self-awareness.

Here are a few courageous questions you can use to invite meaningful feedback.

• What do you think I’m not seeing or hearing?
• What do you think I don’t want to hear?
• What are you afraid to tell me?
• If you were convinced I would embrace your perspective and thank you for speaking up, what would you tell me?
• What do I bring to our work that you value most?
• If there was one thing I could do to take my work with you up a notch, what do you think it might be?
• If there was one thing I could stop doing to make it easier for you to partner with me, what would you request I stop doing?
• What could I do or stop doing to deepen your trust in me?

If you want the best feedback, don’t ask someone who is safe. Ask someone who is successful, strong, and fair. You don’t have to take everything they say to heart. In fact, they won’t expect you to make their perspective your law. But you’re going to find a gold nugget or two as you sift through the words you hear.

In my first job, right out of graduate school, I worked for a man whom I couldn’t seem to please. I had been working for him for three years and a company anniversary was coming up, so I wanted to do what I could to build a bridge and honor him. I summoned the courage to make an appointment to talk face to face. I let him know I sensed some tension in our relationship, and I wanted to be a team member who created significant value for him. I asked him for feedback on how I could add more value to the company. He took the opportunity to dress me down. He was extremely clear; he saw little potential in me. But here’s the gift I found in his feedback: because he responded with such overwhelming negativity, I experienced a profound revelation. My work ethic wasn’t the problem. We were just two people who were working from radically different visions of how the world could be. We were even working from opposing values on how best to complete our work. His feedback deepened my self-awareness. I actually didn’t want to go where he wanted to go. I didn’t want to become more like him. I didn’t even want to work for him. At last, I understood him. I had honored him by inviting feedback. I felt good about myself as I left his office, and, I felt free to start planning a personal transition. Sometimes even negative feedback can deepen our self-awareness in positive ways.

Here’s a second tool you can use to deepen your self-awareness: compare your assumptions and judgments before an event or meeting with your actual experiences during the event or meeting. When we anticipate a test of some sort, our fears frequently whisper to us about how our experience is going to unfold. Our past and our prejudices predict disaster. We find our minds repeatedly turning over possible contingencies. If he says this, I’ll say that. If she does this, I’ll do that and so it goes as we mentally prepare ourselves for some kind of disaster.

It starts with feeling mild anxiety around possible criticism. Then mild anxiety escalates to real worry about how we may be exposed as incompetent. We might start obsessing about an imagined conspiracy. Maybe they’re actually hoping we fail so they can humiliate us! At this point in our inner monologue, we might start thinking about writing a resignation letter. And all this is filling our minds while we’re driving to work, fretting about a challenging presentation, or a difficult conversation. We begin to believe we are the only one who has these fears. I want to encourage you. You’re not the only one whose apprehensions play with you before you face a test of some sort.

To resolve this, to deepen your self-awareness, after your daunting test has come and gone, interrogate your fears and judgments. How did the project actually go? How did the conversation actually turn out? How did the person actually respond? How were the results different from what you anticipated before you stepped into the situation? Were your apprehensions, fears, or judgments beforehand proven accurate or, do you need to make a conscious decision about how your reality was wrong?

Pause, reflect, and rehearse what you’ve learned. Decide what truth you have discovered and declare it. Write a new page in your diary and reset your beliefs and expectations, “Dear diary, my fears were lying to me about Mary or Joe, or the team or the meeting or the project or my abilities.

Moving forward, I now know the truth is                  .”

Your commitment to expose the lies you believed, reject them, and replace them with the truth you experienced will go far to deepen your self-awareness as the years go by.

Here’s a third tool you can use to deepen self-awareness. Stop asking yourself WHY questions and start asking WHAT questions?

Instead of asking WHY did this happen to me? ask WHAT can I learn from this experience? or WHAT can I do now to respond constructively?

WHY questions often invite simplistic, self-serving answers. WHY did this happen to me? People are idiots, that’s why! No one appreciates me. I should never have trusted those people. That company’s entire leadership was toxic. WHY questions often pull us into the ruminations of victimhood and stir up defensiveness or even self-loathing. WHAT questions invite us to move forward, to take control of our thinking, and to embrace our responsibilities and possibilities.

• Instead of asking, WHY am I acting this way? ask, WHAT am I feeling right now? and WHAT can I do to learn and grow through this?
• Instead of asking, WHY can’t I do what others do? ask, WHAT small steps can I begin taking to develop a new strength?
• Instead of asking, WHY aren’t I farther ahead in my life, my relationships, my career, my journey to better health? ask, WHAT do I have to be grateful for today? and WHAT specific steps can I take to make the most of this day?

WHY questions pull us back into the past. WHAT questions invite us into the future. WHY questions highlight our limitations; WHAT questions help us to explore our potential.

Now sometimes when we are dealing with issues at work or breakdowns in our businesses, we need to ask WHY questions in order to discover the roots of a breakdown. But when it comes to our personal lives—our personal disappointments, losses, fears, and longings—adopting the discipline of asking ourselves WHAT questions will guide us into deeper and deeper self-awareness.

Many of the people coaches work with confide their struggles with Imposter Syndrome. Usually, Imposter Syndrome is a fancy label for a common human experience: self-doubt. Let me suggest your decision to take steps to deepen your self-awareness is your vaccine against Imposter Syndrome.

Yes, you have weaknesses you don’t see. Everyone has them. They don’t make you weaker or worse than the other people in your world. You’ll help yourself live longer and enjoy life more if you start practicing the discipline of inviting feedback from the people with whom you live and work.

Yes, your worries and fears can lead you down deep, dark paths toward imagined disasters that will most likely never take place. Again, it’s a common temptation to us all. But, at the end of those days in which life tests your mettle, interrogate your anxieties and fears. Were they lying or telling you the truth? Discipline yourself to decide and take note of the truths life is trying to teach you.

Yes, WHY questions assail us all. But keep your mind’s door locked against those distractions. Develop the habit of asking yourself WHAT” questions. Even after taking a fall or admitting a failure, asking, and answering “What” questions will empower you to pick yourself up and begin moving deliberately toward the vision you dream of enjoying.

As your self-awareness grows, you’ll be able to take off your mask, be yourself, trust yourself, and embrace the freedom and joy of bringing value wherever you go.

Written by: Jenny Mason

I am sure most of you have had your vital signs checked. I’ve had mine checked frequently lately with my daughter going to nursing school; everything from my pulse, blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation, respirations, and rating my pain on a scale from 1-10.  I found myself wondering how often we check our vitality signs?

Our vitality signs are an expansion of our body’s vital signs, the compilation of our overall health. Summing up our vitality signs means adding together everything we do mentally, physically, and spiritually. Our daily habits are a contributing factor: movement, nourishment, relationships, rest, work, stress, and thoughts are a few habits that come to mind. We add up our own unique habits to gain a true reading of our vitality signs.

We can eat all the kale we want and exercise all day long, but if we are constantly stressed it can cause negative health effects: mental and physical. It is widely understood in the medical community that untreated, consistently high stress can become a chronic condition resulting in serious health problems including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure, and a weak immune system. Research shows stress can even contribute to the development of major illnesses such as heart disease, depression, and obesity, as well as exacerbate existing illnesses.

Our bodies communicate changes before our mind is fully aware. Have you noticed how emotions affect our bodies? For example, when something upsets, worries, or concerns us our heart begins to race, our stomach begins to churn, and for some our hands begin to sweat. Focusing on a negative thought is like walking through a field full of white, fluffy dandelion seeds, our steps fling the delicate seeds into the air where the breeze picks them up and carries them further and further aloft. The negativity spreads through our body as easily and it spreads even faster than we could pick the flowers.

How Can You Do a Vitality Check?

A vitality check is a task you can perform anytime and as often as you feel it’s needed. Begin by formulating a series of questions to ask yourself. Here are a few sample questions to consider and get you started on your own list:

• Are there areas in my life I’d like to change?
• When I think about these areas, do they cause fear?
• What are my biggest fears? Are they legitimate?
• What depletes me?
• What habits do I want to break?
• What has convinced me doing something different would make me happier?
• When do I become super nervous?
• Where in my life do I feel grounded?
• How do I feel most days when you wake up?
• What am I passionate about?
• What do I love learning about?
• What things do I wish I could do more or have more of?
• When am I at my best? Your worst?
• Where am I living right now? In the past, present, or future?
• What advice would I give to my younger self?
• What advice would I give to myself about work? About goals?
• Am I living my life to the fullest right now? Could I be doing more?

After considering the questions during your vitality check, identify what action you will take.

• What steps will you take to make those changes?
• What can you do to overcome your fears?
• Consider how can you add more activities you enjoy back into your life. Are there elements to be removed? How can you remove the people, the job, the negativity, and other issues holding your back?
• What actions can you take now to generate major positive results?
• When something lights you up with joy, add more of it to your life. When something becomes an angry smolder, figure out how to do less of it. Follow what sets your soul on fire, and you will find passion.

How Can We Stop the Dandelion Seeds of Negativity from Spreading?

In Dr. Marilyn Joyce’s article, 5 Keys to Maximum Energy and Vitality, excerpted from her book Instant Energy, she states, “Science has proven that living a purpose-driven, authentic life, with passion and compassion, while embracing each moment fully, is one of the keys to unlimited energy and vitality.”

It is important to take control of emotions when we feel the knots and butterflies begin to form. That’s the time to take a deep breath, breathe in and out slowly, and walk around for 90 seconds. We have to be quick to take thoughts captive before they hold us captive.

• Find a way to replace your old patterns of dealing with fear with new ones. Ask yourself, where did the thoughts come from? And are they true? Replace thoughts of fear, self-doubt, and negativity with positive thoughts. Create anchor thoughts and reflect on what makes you feel good, give yourself positive affirmations: I’ve got this. I can Do This, I Am strong. Remind yourself of all you have been through.
• Break out of the habit of wearing masks to hide how you are feeling. Show yourself compassion as you would your closest friend.
• Stop your wandering mind. Stop and think of what you have to be grateful for.
• Take action and break through your excuses. Identify what you really want. Take it one step at a time. Keep it small and let it build. Remember, the home is built brick by brick.
• A healthy set of vitality signs includes as healthy a physical body as you are able to achieve. If you don’t currently exercise, start small. Find physical exertion you enjoy and engage in it for 15 minutes, increasing as you build stamina.
• Make it a habit to perform nice acts for others. Rhonda D. Jones’s article, Christians and Depression – Scientifically Proven Activities to Elevate Your Mood discussed a study where researchers asked people to do five small acts of kindness every day. The results report the people routinely performing acts of kindness showed a significant boost in happiness. Acts of kindness don’t have to be big; small acts like sending notes or saying encouraging words to someone. Change someone’s life for the better today.

Start your day on a positive note. Research shows your mood in the morning affects your productivity all day.

• Spend time with positive people.
• Work on your relationships. Researchers have found 70 of your personal happiness can be explained by your relationships. It’s not so much how many you have as how strong they are.
• Keep a did it list, focus on what you have accomplished today and celebrate yourself.
• Another biggie is stop living the ladder of success life, that we’ve been taught brings happiness. What has convinced you that would make you happier? Once you’ve tasted significance happiness, success just doesn’t satisfy quite the same.

At the end of our lives, it’s not the success we will wish we would have had more of, it’s about living a life of vitality. We can be so caught up in what’s happening and the busyness of life we lose the connection with the bigger picture of our lives and what we really need to be nourishing and tending to so we achieve our own state of vitality. We are so busy being busy we neglect ourselves in critical ways—mentally, spiritually, and physically. If we don’t take time to relax our bodies will be in a constant state of tension.

Here are a few science-backed habits to get you slow down and pay attention to what’s going on around you to help you relax.

1. Take a walk in the woods, along the beach or outdoors
2. Think of five things you are grateful for; they can be simple.
3. Spend 30 minutes doing a hobby, going for a walk, or doing a relaxing exercise.
4. Pray or sit in silence for 15 minutes.
5. Start your day with gratitude, before you look at your phone, news, work, or anything spend 30 minutes for yourself; pour into yourself so you can overflow onto others.

Make sure to check your vitality signs from time to time and make sure your habits are nourishing you mentally, physically, and spiritually. Remember to be present, live virtuously, and relentlessly pursue what sets your soul on fire.