Let’s be honest.

Self-awareness is not always something I enjoy.

Sometimes, I don’t want to evaluate myself to figure out what’s wrong with me or how I really feel or what I actually believe.  I don’t want to do this sometimes for one simple reason.

At heart, I’m a lazy woman.

But I don’t want this to keep me down from becoming better—or to stop you from recognizing your full potential.  Are you lazy, too?  Then let’s look at ways we can work on becoming better together with only a small, simple amount of effort needed.

I think it’s simpler than we think it should be.  When I started looking through things on the internet, and from things I’d read in the past on self-awareness, I think I’ve found that it really all boils down to just one thing.  I can’t cite where I got this from—so if you’re the one who said it, let me thank you right away.

To become self-aware, you need to be genuine.

This sounds easy—and I think many times it can be easy—but that’s not always the case.  People we know influence us to feel as they feel, through persuasion or peer pressure.  Others want us to buy what they’ve bought, and we want to do that too, in order to fit in or be trendy.  Or advertisements convince us that we need things in our lives that we don’t actually have to have to be able to move forward.  It can be exhausting finding the authentic you in all of this mess, I know.  I’ve been there.  I’m often there every day.

But here is the challenge for us—how can we be genuine and true to ourselves?

Introspection can be a key to this.  Simply stopping to ask if what is at hand is something we need, or if an emotion we have that comes up in the course of the day is really warranted, and what we actually feel inside.  Introspection doesn’t take a lot of time and it doesn’t take a lot of energy.  It’s only a question or two to see if we’re keeping ourselves in line with what we feel and believe to be the truth.

I believe identification is the other part of finding this authenticity.  Identification of who we are and what we believe is crucial, and can be used with the introspection to come up with a true picture of who we are as a person.  It could be as easy as jotting down a list of goals for yourself, to echo your true values or a list of things to try to accomplish to make ourselves into who we long to be—who we would be most comfortable being if we’re not pleased with ourselves at the moment.

Then the hard work can come in.  But for now, let’s take the easy route to get started on a new path to self-awareness.  After all, we all have to start somewhere.