When you think of the life you want, what do you see? Do you see certain career attainment, financial stability, travel, setting your own schedule? Now, what steps do you imagine yourself taking to ensure that you arrive at that destination. What obstacles you imagine getting in the way on your path to success?
Do you allow those obstacles to make or break your determination to reach your goals?
If you answered ‘yes’ to the last question, you are playing a loser’s game. Allowing any sort of external obstacle to dictate your success is a surefire way to ensure that you will fail. In order to be successful and to be in control of your own success, you must be self-aware.
Self-awareness involves looking inward to determine where your own assumptions and biases have led you toward failure.
If you practice self-awareness, you are able to recognize when your own thought processes are standing in your way.Instead of blaming failure on external factors such as the economy, the government, your boss, or any other outside force, you use introspection to guide the assessment of your failures.
Practicing self-awareness means that you are always in control of your own success. Your success will not be a factor of what is going on in the world around you, but rather your success will be a factor of your ability to conceptualize, plan, execute, and most importantly, make adaptations where necessary.
If you are self-aware, you accept responsibility for your choices, celebrate your successes, and really learn from your failures. The most successful people are those that acknowledge how their own decisions led them astray, rather than using external factors as scapegoats for their failures.
Self-awareness gives you control. Self-awareness gives you power. Self-awareness provides a mechanism by which you can reflect upon your own decisions in order to gauge when and where things went right or wrong. You can’t change the economy; you can’t change the thought processes of your boss. You can only change yourself and your actions.
Being self-aware allows you to acknowledge your part in your failures so that you can make changes and turn them into successes. Self-awareness is the winner’s game.
2 comments
I couldn’t agree more with this article. Success is made through one’s actions and perseverance. Going into my Senior year of college, I wanted to do everything possible to ensure that I would be a starter for my collegiate soccer team. I refused to let the external factors dictate the goal I wanted to achieve. At first I allowed these external factors manifest in my mind and turn into doubts and fears. At first I let the idea that the coach would play the same athlete that took my spot my junior year for my senior year, that the coach would bring another foreign player in to take my spot, that other players would be faster, stronger, and more intelligent on the pitch than I would. But shortly after realizing that I had no control on any of that I began to focus on what I could do. I hit the gym more than I ever had, I trained with a ball as often as I could, I kept learning the game, and I made sure I was fit heading into preseason. The results were great! There were new players both domestic and foreign, the starters returned, and they were all indeed fast and strong. However, with all the work I put in, I was named a starter and it stayed that way for the entire year. If I choose to only look at things I had no control over I wouldn’t have reached my goal. But because I choose to work on the things I could control, the things I was self-aware about, I was able to accomplish my goal and even a defensive player of the week honors for my conference. This is why I agree completely with this article. Changes can be made if you are taking the right steps with the right thought process along the way. Thanks for the article.
Jordan, thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad to see you were able to focus on what you can control and used that to achieve your goal. We can be mindful with this with everything we do; from making a sports team, to losing weight, to getting our dream job. What’s most important is to spend our time working on the things that will help us get where we want to go. Thanks again!