Self-Awareness is the Key to Building Your Self-Confidence

Have you ever spent more time worrying about how you were perceived in a situation than how you actually performed in that situation?

Picture this scene. You are in a meeting with your colleagues. You are excited about the project that has just begun. You are looking forward to learning more so you can define how you will contribute to this project. Everyone sits down (or appears on video) and engages in small talk.

The meeting host starts the meeting. Everyone listens intently. You are excited by the opportunity being uncovered. You know that your continued focus on the project overview and intended schedule will be useful grounding for your eventual questions.

And then it starts happening. Your colleagues begin to fight for air time. Some people are bubbling on about how wonderful this project will be. How thoughtful everyone involved so far has been. Others are asking questions like, “On day 10, what exactly will be the approach to handle X, Y or Z situation? (of which none of those situations have been discussed yet).

You start to panic. You aren’t saying anything! Not that getting a word in edgewise is even possible with this group, but what will you say?? Of course the project is awesome! Of course the people who created this idea are amazing. And who the heck knows what will happen on Day 10?

What can you say? How will you say it? Do people now think that you don’t understand the project? That you have no intelligent question to ask? No brilliance to add?

Your mind races. You start to question your abilities. You worry that your boss will think you shouldn’t have been a part of this project.

And just like that – you have missed half the meeting.

If you haven’t yet figured this out, the YOU in the above scene is ME. This scenario was my normal during my 25 year corporate career. I used to spend a lot of meeting time worrying more about how my colleagues were perceiving my contribution vs. contributing.

And while I have grown a lot since those times I still have moments where my self-confidence can wreak havoc on my ability to add the value I know can to a situation. Those are the moments when my usual self-awareness anchor dislodges and leaves me spinning in a wave of anxiety, worry and complete confidence melt down.

Start with understanding yourself, your strengths and your working style.

Self-awareness is just that: Awareness of yourself. Our online Google search notes the definition of self-awareness as: conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires

Your character. Your feelings. Your motives. Your desires.

I would add to that your strengths. Your personality. And probably other words that describe you, how you think, how you communicate, how you approach situations, etc.

My corporate career offered me the opportunity to find my strengths and working style in multiple formats. Myers Briggs, DISC assessments and Strengths Finder are three tools I’ve used extensively and that may be very familiar to you as well. More recently I have done some work in the Twelve Archetypes (Awakening the Heroes Within by Carol Pearson) which I found very interesting!

There was one tool that my boss used years ago that I also found amazing, though I can’t remember the name. The tool was an individual assessment of your learning style, but then mapped all individual styles for a team in a graph. So, you could see how you and your colleagues could best learn and work together.

This tool in particular remains in my sub-conscious because it helped me though a somewhat traumatic performance review one year with my boss. You see, my learning style is to listen intently to information, digest the information and then ask questions or make brilliant observations. I need time.

Whereas there was a gentleman on my team (we’ll call him Tim) who’s learning style was to repeat information that was presented and make off the top of his head observations.

Two different styles. Both of them good. No judgement on either. We are different people.

But in this performance review, my boss told me I needed to speak up more in meetings. Like Tim, she said.

OK, so even though I knew we had different styles and now have a deep respect for those differences, at the time I really thought Tim was a blowhard! My view of his contributions were that he talked a lot, never really said anything important, and his observations were simply to make himself sound really good – of which he didn’t because he didn’t think through anything before he opened his mouth!

And here I was – being told I needed to be more like Tim.

My self-confidence was shot. Tim and I were both the new people on the team and I realized that my boss thought he was better than me. And what was I supposed to do with that feedback? Change my style? Could I even do that?

I spent years unraveling from that performance feedback. And every time I tried to be something innately different than who I was, I lost a little bit more of my self-confidence.

We are all different people. We all learn differently. We all present ourselves differently. We all like different music. We all have different family lives. We all have different strengths.

We need to anchor to what we know about ourselves to then bring our best to others. And, we need to have patience for other people’s anchors.

In some of my more holistic health circles this concept is labeled ‘self love’ and found through meditation. Which is all good.

But being self-aware, I find those words don’t resonate with me. No judgment on me or those who like those words, I just know that if I’m going to accept the point I’m making here, I need different wording.

So that wording for me is to understand yourself – the way you think, the way you interact, are you an introvert or extrovert, your learning style, your presentation style. While these words may feel more professional oriented than personal, they work with both your professional and personal lives.

For example, Rj talks through his questions out loud (and usually when I’m trying to write). I think through my questions internally. Rj is a verbalizer while I tend to be more cerebral.

Find your self through some of the tests I mentioned above (if you haven’t done them already) or draw on other information you’ve received regarding your style. Really understand what the results mean. And use that information to become more self-aware.

When you understand how you work, and anchor to that truth, you will find your ability to bring your best self to every situation – and not care so much about what others think.

As mentioned earlier, and with everything in life, building your self-awareness muscle takes time. And, even when you feel pretty strong in your self-aware bad self, there will be days when you are weaker. Know that there will be days when you slip up.

Your confidence comes from understanding and feeling good about yourself and what you can bring to the table of life. Take some time to understand yourself – the more you know, the stronger you grow and the more confidence you will harness.