Meditate on your mind The simple practice of keeping your attention focused on your breath or any other physical sensation. Then, if you find your mind wandering to other thoughts, gently return your attention to your point of focus. While mindfulness meditation has been shown to be beneficial for everything from weight loss to depression relief, it can actually be a powerful way to increase your level of self-awareness.
Read high-quality fiction Great writers are great observers of the world around them. And it is this ability to notice the subtle details and features of life that allows him to so soulfully recreate it in his work. But the best writers are expert observers of human nature in particular. It is their job to pay attention to the small details of thought, feeling, desire and action that most of us miss amidst the frantic business of daily life.
Identify Your Emotional Kryptonite No one likes to feel other kinds of difficult emotions. It is understandable because they feel bad - sometimes it hurts a lot! And while we all tend to recoil from painful feelings, each of us has a particular emotion we particularly dislike and try to avoid. A common pattern I see in my clinical practice is people will do anything to avoid feeling depressed. They will go to extraordinary—sometimes harmful—lengths to distract themselves or numb that specific feeling of sadness
Draw a timeline of your life One of the most eye-opening “tricks” I perform as a psychologist often happens in the second session with my clients. At the end of our first meeting, I sometimes ask them to spend 20 minutes drawing a timeline of their life as a homework assignment. The isntructions are simple enough Sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Starting with your birth, mark the major events in your life along the timeline.
Discover your blind spots by asking for feedback (and taking it well) if you're anything like me - or most people, I bet - probably not often. Which is a shame because good feedback is one of the fastest and most effective ways to grow and improve yourself. In particular, while there are many aspects of ourselves that perhaps need improvement, it is the parts of ourselves that we cannot see – our blind spots – that are the real problem. And others are uniquely positioned to help us notice and see them. If we ask…
Do some micro-travel Take some micro travel - New places and strange environments take us out of our routine and force us to be more self-aware. When lived in Italy, how much time did people "waste" in the beginning, on long, extravagant meals - for 3 hours at dinner, are you kidding! But after spending time in Italian culture and being forced into these long, leisurely dining experiences, I came to appreciate this alternative approach to food as much more than just a refueling process.
Learn a new skill Just like traveling forces us to become more self-aware by throwing us into novel situations, learning something new increases self-awareness by forcing us to think and act in novel ways. As adults, we all get pretty set in our ways, in large part, because we end up doing the same things over and over again.And while this leads to a certain kind of comfort, it also fosters a narrowness of min
Identify cognitive distortions Cognitive distortions are inaccurate thoughts and beliefs that warp how we see things—including ourselves—and usually lead to overly painful emotions and moods. Think about it like this: Just like we all can get into unhelpful physical habits (e.g.: nail-biting, snacking late at night, etc.), we all have certain mental habits that aren’t doing us any favors.
Take Time to Clarify Your Values The busyness of daily life leads you into a constant stream of activity without much time for reflection, especially reflection on your personal values. So is it any wonder that you have a hard time reaching your goals when you don't spend any time thinking about what that looks like? What's more, it's probably not surprising that we pursue the artificial goals that culture and society tell us are important (nice cars, big houses, trim waistlines, Ivy League schools for our kids, etc.) Do not find it really meaningful and important.