Welcome back to our limited blog series, where we embark on a journey towards achieving your performance and wellness potential in every domain of your life. This week we are exploring the seventh and final category of the PERFoRM Score™ – Self-Awareness.
What is Self-Awareness and why does it matter?
Self-awareness is the foundation top achievers use to maximize their potential by making the most of their strengths, knowing where they need to improve, and understanding how their tendencies can help or hinder them in being their best.
In the PERFoRM Score™ Assessment, the self-awareness score measures how well you know your strengths, where you need to improve, and what it takes to get ready to be your best and perform at your peak.
Rules to Raising Self-Awareness
1. KEEP A JOURNAL
Keeping a journal is one of the best practices for self-reflection. As little as five minutes a day can help you clarify your thoughts and emotions, identify your motivations, and gain insights into your strengths and weaknesses. Journaling is an easy way to help you see patterns, identify triggers, and gain a deeper understanding of yourself and how you change over time.
2. CLARIFY YOUR VALUES & BELIEFS
Reflect on your core values and beliefs. What are they? Why are these values and beliefs so important to you? Clarifying helps provide a foundation for making decisions and setting priorities that align with your authentic self.
3. EXPLORE YOUR MOTIVATIONS
Identify the motivations behind the key goals and activities in your life, whether they are work-related, personal, or social. Understanding what truly motivates you can help you gain insight that will help you make choices aligned with your passions and interests.
4. SEEK FEEDBACK
Solicit feedback from friends, family, and colleagues on a regular basis. Ask them about your strengths, weaknesses, and how you behave in different situations. We all have blindspots and biases so gathering a 360-degree view provides an opportunity for a more comprehensive understanding of yourself. Use questions like, "What am I like when things are going well? What am I like when things aren't going well? What blind spots do you observe?" Be open to constructive criticism as it will help you grapple with your biases and potential blind spots.
5. CREATE A BEST DAY & WORST DAY PROFILE
Create a profile of yourself by reflecting on the mindsets, behaviours, and emotions that define you on your best days and worst days. Understanding these differences can offer valuable insight for future performance. This exercise will help you understand your tendencies and triggers in various situations and allow you to be more intentional about how you show up in similar situations in the future.
6. COMPLETE A PERSONALITY PROFILE
There are a plethora of personality, leadership, emotional intelligence and other types of profiles that can help you gain objective insight into your natural tendencies and preferences. These profiles provide frameworks that can help you develop new ways of thinking and behaving that allow you to maximize your strengths while managing your weaknesses.
7. GET SOME PERSPECTIVE
Practice looking at issues from multiple angles. Consider other people's point of view and explore “what if” scenarios to weigh best-case and worst-case outcomes on key decisions to expand your perspective. Examine scenarios through the lens of different timeframes (What was this like in the past?, What might it be like in the future?) or points of view (How might others experience this? Why am I experiencing this the way I am?). This will help you develop empathy and a broader understanding of yourself and others.
8. COMPLETE A PERSONAL HISTORY EXERCISE
Create a timeline of your life, highlighting significant moments, key experiences and any high points and low points. Reflect on the factors that contributed to these moments, what you learned about yourself during those periods, and how they shaped your values, perspectives, and who you are today.
9. EMBRACE SELF DEVELOPMENT
Dedicate time for self-exploration and personal growth whether through meditation, self-help books, coaching, therapy, or workshops. Just as self-development is not an automatic process, the same is true for self-awareness. Investing time in activities that expand your knowledge and experience will also create opportunities for you to deepen your self-awareness. Reflect on these activities and how they influence you and help you evolve.
10. IDENTIFY YOUR STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
Complete an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. You can explore this from the perspective of skills, knowledge, experiences or even attributes. Having a full understanding of these can provide you with powerful insights in pursuit of your goals and a clear roadmap on where you might focus efforts to make improvements or utilize your current strengths.
Stay in Touch
Thank you for joining us throughout our series as we have explored each component of the PERFoRM Score™ and what it means for you and your performance journey. If you have not yet completed the PERFoRM Score™ assessment, we encourage you to do so here.
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