Day 47 — Self Awareness Skill
My learning for the day
Today I want to summarise two books on interpersonal skills.
Book 1 — Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life
Author — Tasha Eurich
Source — Book summary by Luke Rowley
Summary -
Socrates’ quote to start with — “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Tasha’s quote picked up from her TED Talk — “…… 95% of people think they’re self-aware but the real number is closer to 10% to 15%. It means that on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about ourselves…”
Essence of ‘Insight’ — What self-awareness is, why it’s vital if you want to become your best self, and how to overcome the obstacles in the way of having more of it.
The top three messages from the book -
1. Follow seven insights to grow your self-awareness
2. Do regular introspection to improve your insight
3. Master the art of reacting to feedback
The seven forms of insight
1. Values are the fundamentals we use to choose how to live
2. Passions, or identifying what we enjoy doing
3. Aspirations, which are defined by our goals
4. Fit is how happy our surroundings make us
5. Patterns are the habits we constantly follow that make up our personality
6. Reactions, or our emotional and physical responses to events of life
7. Impact, which is knowing the effect of our behavior on others.
Doing introspection correctly
Ask what or who we are, and what we think, feel, and do in each circumstance
Name your emotions, including the negative ones. This allows us to recognize better and adequately cope with emotions
Avoid self-analyzing or asking why we are a certain way
Three steps to reacting to feedback correctly
Step 1 — Make sure that you Understand the feedback accurately
Step 2 — Reflect (Do I feel that the feedback applies to me? What are the long-term effects of this criticism on my happiness and progress? Should I do something about this information from others?)
Step 3 — Respond appropriately based on the two steps above
Book 2 — StrengthsFinder 2.0
Author — Tom Rath
Source — Book summary by Josh Kaufman
Summary -
A great math — When you’re using more than one strength while working on a task, your talents aren’t added — they’re multiplied
A great success and happiness formula — Find a role that engages 3–5 of your top strengths on a daily basis (if you are creative, find ways to use your strengths in the current role itself — my thought)
The ten big ideas from the book
1. Talent and potential matter
2. For best results, focus on doing what you’re naturally good at
3. Time spent developing areas of weaknesses is time ill spent
4. Partner with others who have different strengths that complement yours
5. Diverse teams are more effective because they have a larger pool of strengths to draw from
6. Encourage peers and direct reports to focus on utilizing their strengths, not “areas of improvement”
7. Hire for talent and develop for strength
8. Build your activities and schedule around your strengths
9. Intentionally focus on activities that help you develop your talents into strengths
10. Identify areas where you’re using more than one personal strength at a time — those are activities in which you can be world-class
What is Self Awareness Skill?
Self-Awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection
My learning so far on this topic
Day 7 post — What Is Self-Awareness? Four daily practices
Day 17 post — Importance of self-awareness and Bandura’s Self-efficacy
Day 27 post — Imposter syndrome, advice from Gurus about daily journaling
Day 37 post — Two TED talks — The power of vulnerability & Should you live for your résumé or eulogy?
How to improve this skill?
Set a goal to become a go-to person by mastering the art and science of Self Awareness Skill.
Follow the LAST model to build your personal brand as a Guru of Self Awareness Skill.
Learn — Invest time in learning different frameworks/ models/ techniques of Self Awareness Skill
Apply -
Identify a model suitable to you
Create a template to document the flow of the process
Find opportunities to use the selected method/ template
Maintain record/ process flow of every important activities you did with respect to Self Awareness Skill
Maintain notes of your thoughts/ insights/ failures/ challenges…. to be used for sharing/ training others
Share — Share the insights captured in step 2 above in a planned manner (social media posts, blogs, videos, study notes…)
Train — Generate opportunities to train your peers and team members so that, over time, your organization benefits from your efforts
Purpose of this document
I took a 66-day challenge to study Life Skills last year (10 April 2019). To my astonishment, I succeeded in studying for 66 days one skill a day.
My objectives in learning these skills were — To strengthen my mind to face life’s challenges with ease, To use these skills in my work life for better performance, To use these skills in my personal life for enriching my relationships, and To open new possibilities to surprise myself.
This is my next 66-day challenge (from 10 April 2020) — To share my Life Skills learning with my social media friends.
I pray that my toil helps you in your success journey.
What are Life Skills?
UNICEF defines Life skills as — psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. They are loosely grouped into three broad categories of skills
- cognitive skills for analyzing and using information,
- personal skills for developing personal agency and managing oneself,
- interpersonal skills for communicating and interacting effectively with others.
Which LifeSkills are covered?
The World Health Organisation identified these basic areas of life skills that are relevant across cultures:
1. Decision-making
2. Problem-solving
3. Creative thinking
4. Critical thinking
5. Communication
6. Interpersonal skills
7. Self-awareness
8. Empathy
9. Coping with emotions
10. Coping with stress.
Some trivia
‘Life skills’ was never part of the school curriculum. WHO/ UNESCO mandated academia to teach these skills in all schools across the globe in 1993.
Different countries educate their children in these skills with different objectives
- Zimbabwe and Thailand — prevention of HIV/AIDS
- Mexico — prevention of adolescent pregnancy
- United Kingdom — child abuse prevention
- USA — prevention of substance abuse and violence
- South Africa and Colombia — positive socialization of children.
(Previously published on LinkedIn)