Self-awareness is foundational to your health and happiness.  Daniel Goleman, the author of Primal Leadership, also teaches Emotional Intelligence (E.I.).  One of the key dimensions of being emotionally intelligent, is being self-aware.  There are ways to cultivate and increase your self-awareness, 5 ways to do this include:

1) Journal Writing – journaling is a powerful tool for changing thinking and deepening self-knowledge, especially when you do it often and write for the purpose of observing and knowing yourself.

2) Meditation – there are many types of meditation, some are silent practices, others are guided meditations that help you tap into your inner knowing, or intuition.  One of my favourite guided meditations is the Wise Guide meditation that I created for the Creative Wellness Guided Meditations CD

3) Counselling or Coaching – working with a counsellor or life coach can help you uncover patterns in your thinking and behaviour, having someone who can mirror your own patterns back to you offers immense opportunities for great self-knowledge and it can be a lot of fun to learn about yourself with the help of trained professional.

4) Feedback from others – in the field of personal and professional branding, experts suggest one of the ways to determine your uniqueness is to ask 5 people who know you well to give you feedback – ask five friends, family members and colleagues to tell you three of your greatest strengths, their feedback helps to expand your self-awareness by having insight about yourself through the eyes of others.

5) Silence – in the world today, most people are rarely in  the presence of their own company, while also sitting in silence.  Simply be quiet, surround yourself with silence, and listen within.  Become the observer of your own mind and heart.  You can be amazed at meeting yourself in this way.  Open, aware, present, awake.

What are some of your favourite ways for increasing your self-awareness?