SUPERCHARGE YOUR SELF-AWARENESS!
Human behavioural specialist Dr JOHN DEMARTINI reveals how to be more in tune with yourself
Self-awareness is an important life tool that guides our perceptions, intentions and responses to our own behaviour.
“Self-awareness is about how you react to your environment, both externally and internally, in the pursuit of what is truly meaningful to you,” says human behavioural specialist Dr John Demartini, who founded the Demartini Institute (drdemartini.com).
“It’s a form of self-reflection, bringing your attention to how you respond and are functioning in your relationship to the world around you and your objectives. Selfawareness, ultimately, is about knowing yourself.”
So how can we get to know ourselves better? Let’s explore…
STEPPING UP
If you’re not really sure how self-aware you are or you’d like to expand your selfawareness, Dr Demartini says it’s quite simple.
“Our identity revolves around our true highest values and priorities. When we live in alignment with our highest priorities, we naturally become more self-aware,” he says.
“Things that are not important to us are extrinsically driven, while things that are most important to us are intrinsically driven.
“So knowing what is really a high priority to you, knowing what your highest values are and sticking to what will fulfil them will enhance your self-worth, confidence, resilience and your ability to self-reflect and elevate your self-belief, because you will be walking your talk, not limping your life!”
FIGURE OUT YOUR PRIORITIES
Do you need some help working out what your high priorities are? Dr Demartini suggests filling your days with things that inspire you rather than with distractions, which he dubs as a low priority.
“When you live by lower priorities, you’re unfulfilled, and you’re more likely to become disengaged, distracted and allow other people to influence you and become outer driven more than inner driven, and less likely to know and be yourself,” he says.
“Those who don’t live by their highest priority also become less certain about who they are, what they are committed to and how they are going to respond to the world around them.”
HELPING OTHERS
Perhaps you’ve noticed a loved one isn’t focusing on their highest priorities (or maybe they don’t even know what they are yet!) and could use some help refining these and their self-awareness.
So how can you help? Well, it actually starts with your own self-awareness and those high priorities.
“By communicating with others in a way that’s not helping them fulfil what they value most while also communicating in a way that is meaningful and
fulfilling to you, means you’ll have more dialogue and less alternating monologue, more objective responses and less subjective reactions, and you’re less likely to be distracted by or become engaged in these emotional reactions,” says Dr Demartini.
“You’re not going to easily convince someone who is already evaluating their world through their own value and belief system to see life through yours, unless you can help them fulfil what they value most by doing so. When finding yourself thinking that someone ‘could be more self-aware’, it’s wiser to self-reflect and look within, and then listen and learn rather than to project and assume.”
If you do this, you’re more likely to have a respectful, rational, open and adaptive conversation and relationship with someone – as opposed to projecting your priorities onto them and causing conflict.