From the course: Mindfulness Practices

Grow self-awareness

From the course: Mindfulness Practices

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Grow self-awareness

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- Most of us think we're more self-aware than we actually are. Did you know that one of the biggest reasons most of us fail is because we have blind spots? We don't know what we don't know. Our mind can ignore new information that is outside of our belief system. There's even a term for it. It's called cognitive dissonance. When I was a general manager working in Mexico, I asked my team for feedback. One piece of feedback that was hard for me was when they told me that I was a control freak. They didn't actually use those words but that's what they meant. I was quick to dismiss their feedback because, of course, I believed I was a great delegator. Then as I started practicing mindfulness and started noticing my thoughts, I realized how much I was really invested in. I wanted to control not just what our team goals were, but how they were accomplished. Indeed, I am a bit of a control freak. Who we are, our mindsets, our behaviors, are developed over time through millions of thoughts and emotions that we've experienced. As thoughts and emotions get repeated in our brains, they create ever-deeper neural pathways. These create our belief system and our mindset, and that impacts our behavior. The problem is that many of our beliefs were established early on when we were kids. We're not consciously aware of these beliefs and we never go back to see if they're still relevant. When we watch our thoughts without judgment, we notice mindsets we were blind to before. This gives us more choice about whether to hold onto these beliefs or not. For example, one of my old beliefs is that asking for help is bad. This belief was a major blind spot for me. It was one of the reasons I got fired from a previous role. Mindfulness helps us see those blind spots. Our self-awareness is an important foundation for growing our emotional intelligence. So you see, mindfulness practice is a lifelong gift to ourselves to help us be agile in a world that is changing rapidly.

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