7 - On Self-Awareness

This video is on self-awareness. Self-awareness in the context of this program and the metaphor that we've used is like knowing what kind of boat you are, knowing your make, your model, your strengths, your weaknesses, and knowing what kind of boat you could be. What sort of potential do you have inside of you? What sort of potential don't you have inside of you? The answers to these questions

are often not quite as obvious as we think, and our own answers to the questions are actually often inaccurate, which presents sort of a paradox in developing self-awareness that we'll talk about and resolve by the end of this video. So first of all, why does self-awareness even matter? Why even make a video on this? Why should we care about it? There are a couple reasons. First of

all, entrepreneurs tend to warp reality. They tend to see the world from their point of view, to relentlessly seek to achieve their vision, and this is a strength, by all means. This is something that makes you an entrepreneur. This is something that characterizes entrepreneurs, but it often means we paint pictures of ourselves that aren't true. It often means we have such strong frames, such perspectives of the

world, that we are hesitant to paint ourselves in the negative light at all, or accept our weaknesses, and it's often difficult to, even despite our best intentions, even when we try to build self-awareness and to be self-aware, it's often difficult to do so because we naturally have the ability to shape the world to sort of fit our will. That's one problem. Another problem is it's really difficult

to recognize the difference between who you want to be and who you actually are in this moment right now. This is very subtle, but it's extremely common. You'll see people who have these big ambitions, and they're often very capable and talented people, but they don't realize that they're not there yet. They don't realize that they lack the skills or the mindset or the experience or something, and

they just immediately project themselves into the future. I certainly have done this many, many times. In fact, it's one of the reasons my first six-figure business crumpled because I didn't... I wasn't willing to accept the fact that I wasn't quite ready to handle the business that size, and I couldn't deliver on it. My ego or my projection or my reality warp field just completely took over my

decision-making, and I was unable to recognize the difference between who I wanted to be and who I actually was at that moment in time. Very subtle, very common, and very dangerous. Third, some people go their entire lives without developing self-awareness. They never sit down and take the time to consciously learn about themselves, and I'll talk in a minute about exactly what I mean by that because it's

not quite just sitting and thinking about yourself, although that can help. But a lot of people go through their lives without ever developing self-awareness, and as a result, they never reach their full potential, and from my perspective, that is devastatingly sad. So here's the solution. Here's what we want. We want to use other people you trust as a mirror to learn things about yourself that you wouldn't

otherwise see. This is the antidote to the downsides of the reality warp field that entrepreneurs generate, and we need to be able to use trusted advisors and friends and mentors as mirrors to be able to see crucial pieces of information and data about ourselves that we wouldn't otherwise see. Second, we want to be able to recognize exactly where we are right now, what stage of growth we're

in, our strengths, our weaknesses, how develop we are, while at the same time working towards becoming the person that we want to be, recognizing that as well, recognizing that we're not there yet, we're working towards it. And finally, we want to be able to bet on our strengths, avoid our weaknesses, or compensate for them, and in doing so, reach our highest potential. That is the outcome that

we want. Now, here's the exercise that we're going to go through, and this is something that is recommended by Gary Vaynerchuk. Somebody talks about self-awareness a lot, and I've personally done this. I've had a lot of my clients do this, and it has often spectacular yet highly uncomfortable results. So it works like this. Pick five trusted people in your life. They can be friends, family, mentors, anybody

who you think will give you 100% honest feedback under the right conditions. Then reach out to them, tell them that you'd like to schedule a hard-to-hard call or something very important. Explain that you're going to ask them some questions about yourself, and you want them to be 100% honest in their answers. Finally, when you get on the call, remind them again that their honesty will not affect

your relationship. You will not react negatively, and everything you say, everything they say you will genuinely trust and actually act upon. So I'm going to walk you through the exercise in a little more depth. Here's a quote from Tim Ferriss that is highly appropriate. A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. This exercise

is an example of consciously engineering these uncomfortable conversations that are extremely valuable for your personal development and your self-awareness. So just to go over the exercise again, pick five people you trust, reach out to them, schedule a 36-60 minute call with them, telling them that you want to ask them some questions about how they view you and what advice they might have for you, and you want

them to be 100% honest, and tell them that you will in no way, under no circumstances, react negatively, and everything they say will be trusted and acted upon. Then you want to ask them questions like, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What have you always wanted to tell me but been afraid to tell me? What do you tell people about me behind closed doors? What

do you think I should do differently in my life? If you ask penetrating questions like this, the conversation will quickly get very deep and it'll just sort of continue on of its own momentum, and you'll learn hell of a lot about yourself, and a lot of the answers will surprise you. A lot of them will refine things you already might know about yourself and take notes during

these conversations because you will likely learn incredibly valuable things about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. This is the single fastest way that I know to deepen your self-awareness virtually overnight without having a near-death mind-altering experience or something like that, and it is deeply, deeply valuable. So go do this. Feel free to share your results in the community if they're particularly insightful, and this will dramatically deepen

your self-awareness and help you achieve incredible things in your life and business. That's it for this video, and that is it for this module. So go ahead, complete all the exercises, take action, and I will see you in Module 2.