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Maurine Patten, Certified Mentor Coach is committed to helping you access the inner power of your mind to live a life of competency, personal freedom, meaning and joyfulness.

Archive for Self-Awareness

Do You Ask Powerful Questions?

Posted by: Maurine Patten | Comments (2)
Friday, November 20th, 2009

We all ask questions on a daily basis.  Some questions you direct to others and some to yourself.  If you want to get the best answer to your questions, you need to be sure you have asked the right questions.

A good question provides the information you need and satisfies three requirements.  Each question:

  1. Must be specific and clear so that an accurate answer is possible. 
  2. Needs to be simple or have only one part.  Compound questions are confusing because one part may be true and the other part false.  Usually your intuition will only answer the first part.
  3. Needs to be directly relevant to the issue you want to know about.  When you want to know if ABC Corporation stock is a good investment, instead of asking if ABC Corporation is a good company, ask if it will be a good investment over a given time period.

In her book, Change Your Questions Change Your Life (2004), Marilee Adams, PhD. believes you can change your future by asking the right questions. 

As you go through life, you need to choose words that are solution rather than blame or problem focused when asking yourself or others questions.  To practice, try using some of the following questions with yourself to keep you moving forward in your personal and professional life:

  • What do I want?  Creates self-awareness.
  • What can I learn from this?   Creates self-awareness.
  • What am I responsible for?   Creates self-awareness, self-control and confidence.
  • What is the other person thinking, feeling, needing, and wanting?  Creates empathy.
  • What is possible?  Creates motivation.
  • What are my choices?  Creates self-awareness.
  • What is the best thing for me to do now?  Creates self-control.
  • Is this feeling related to the current situation, or is it related to some old situation, person, or feeling?  Creates self-awareness and self-control.
  • What are the consequences?  Creates self-control.
  • What other information do I need?  Creates self-control and motivation.

If you slightly reword some of the above questions, they can be helpful to other people also.

Action step:  If change and action are what you are looking for, asking more powerful questions can alter your perception and attitude.  Try this with yourself, and see how it helps you get results.

What you can learn by asking powerful questions?  Comment below.

To your success,

Maurine

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6 Tips to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Posted by: Maurine Patten | Comments (0)
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

There are three areas of Self-Awareness in Emotional Intelligence:

  1. Emotional Self-Awareness.
  2. Accurate Self-Assessment.
  3. Self-Confidence.

The good news is that Emotional Intelligence is learned over time through practice.  It is learned through experience, reflection and modeling.  That means that you are able to increase each of the above areas to reap the benefits of Self-Awareness.

There is an advantage to setting time aside to work with someone you trust and respect. This will allow you to experiment with and practice new behaviors, thoughts, and feelings to the point of mastery. 
 
In addition, the environment needs to be supportive, emotionally engaging and offer time for practice. 
 
Following are 6 tips to get you started and increase your Self-Awareness:
  1. Believe self-improvement is important.
  2. Know who you want to be.
  3. Know your strengths and limitations as well as your values.
  4. Seek out feedback – how you are perceived by others to determine the gap between who you want to be and who you are presently.
  5. Work with a supportive, encouraging person you trust (a coach is ideal) who can guide and hold you accountable as you experiment with new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to build on your strengths.
  6. Practice these new behaviors over time until your ideal self is realized.

Increasing the three areas of Self-Awareness is worth the effort.  It establishes the foundation upon which to build relationships and handle the challenges in your personal and professional life.

Action Step:  Who do you want to be and who you are now?  Identify 3 small steps you can take this week that will start you moving forward.  Be sure to take action on each of the steps and practice new behaviors.
 
Contact me if you are interested in learning more about my Positively Contagious Program.
 
To your success,
Maurine 


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How Accurate Are Your Self-Assessment Skills?

Posted by: Maurine Patten | Comments (0)
Saturday, July 18th, 2009

Self-Assessment is necessary for you to make wise choices.  There are three areas of Self-Awareness:

  • Emotional Self-Awareness.
  • Accurate Self-Assessment.
  • Self-Confidence.

The previous post (What You need to Know about Self-Awareness) discussed the importance of emotions to activate and chemically stimulate your brain.  Yet, this does not give you enough information to be able to build other important aspects of your life. 

In addition, you will need to know your inner resources, abilities and limits. This skill is referred to as Accurate Self-Assessment.   

We can have blind spots about our strengths and limitations, especially during times of stress when we tend to go on “automatic pilot.”  Blind spots, among other things, can cause us to:

  • Set unrealistic goals.
  • Push others too hard.  
  • Need to seem perfect. 

This will negatively affect your productivity and relationships.

 

The antidote for blind spots is to be able to accurately assess yourself.  Individuals who are high in accurate self-assessment:

  • Are aware of strengths and limitations.
  • Learn more from experience.
  • Are reflective and have a sense of humor.
  • Are open to constructive feedback and self-development.
  • Can identify resources.

My next post will cover the last area of Self-Awareness: Self-Confidence.

Action Step:  Ask for feedback about your performance from people you know and trust.  Be open to taking inventories that will give you information about your abilities, skills, strengths, and values.  A good source for free inventories is http:www.authentichappiness.org.  There are many other sites with a variety of inventories also.

 

 

 

To your success,

Maurine 

 

 

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What You Need to Know about Self-Awareness

Posted by: Maurine Patten | Comments (0)
Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Many of you are familiar with Emotional Intelligence.  According to Daniel Goleman’s model, Self-Awareness is one of two domains in the area of Personal Competence.  The second one is Self-Management which I may blog about later.

You might think of Self-Awareness as setting the stage for your life.  For that reason, it as an essential starting place from which you build the other important aspects of your life.

There are three areas in the Self-Awareness domain of Emotional Intelligence:

  • Emotional Self-Awareness.
  • Accurate Self-Assessment.
  • Self-Confidence.

All three of these areas are important.  However, in this post, I am only going to discuss Emotional Self-Awareness.  My next two posts will be about Self-Assessment and Self-Confidence, respectively.

Emotional Self-Awarenessis the ability to recognize your emotions and their effects.  It has been said that there is no thinking without feeling and vice versa.  Although we all have blind spots where we do not recognize our feelings, the more aware we are of what we are experiencing, the more learning is possible. 

Emotions activate and chemically stimulate the brain.  They are a critical source of information for learning and memory.  Individuals who are high in emotional awareness:

  • Know what they are feeling and why.
  • Understand the connection between their feelings and what they think, say and do.
  • Know how their feelings directly affect performance.
  • Are aware of their values and goals.

Action Step:  When you find yourself thinking a particular thought, ask yourself what you are feeling.  Notice your energy level.  Do you feel more energetic or less?  What happens if you change the thought?  You can ask the same questions about a particular belief, value or goal you have.  How can your feelings positively affect your performance?

 

 

My next post will be about being able to accurately assess yourself to eliminate blind spots.

 

 

To your success,

Maurine

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Antidotes for the Procrastination Epidemic

Posted by: Maurine Patten | Comments (0)
Thursday, May 14th, 2009

How motivated are you when you have to do something that is not important to you and/or does not use your strengths?  Would you like to know how to get things done on time with less stress?

Using competencies from Daniel Goleman’s model for Emotional Intelligence (Primal Leadership, 2002), the antidotes for procrastination are:

  • Accurate self-assessment and awareness.  You need to know your strengths and what is important to you (your values).  It is easier to start a task that requires your strengths and is important to you. When you need to do something that is not one of your strengths, allow more time to complete the task.  Make sure your expectations are realistic.  Avoid negative self-talk.
  • Self-confidence.  You need to have a realistic sense of your capabilities and healthy sense of your self-worth.   Also, you need to believe that you can do the task.  Use positive language (I can…, I will…, by…).  The best way to build confidence is to begin doing what you need to do.  Action precedes confidence.
  • Self-management, emotional self-control, and adaptability.  These competencies help you keep impulses under control, stay calm, and clear headed while adapting to changing situations.  They are necessary in overcoming obstacles and juggling tasks without losing your energy or focus.  Build in meaningful rewards and breaks to recharge.
  • Achievement and initiative.  You need to set realistic goals, accurately calculate risk, be ready to act and seize opportunities.  Break tasks down into small steps; keep your to-do list short.  Picture the finished task to keep you motivated.

If you use the above antidotes, you will move forward.  You may need to start by choosing one antidote to work on.  As you improve, add another one.  If you need support, hiring a coach who has training in Emotional Intelligence can help hold you accountable and increase these important competencies.

Action Step:  To avoid the procrastination epidemic, stop listening to the negative voice in your head.  Begin with small, doable tasks, and control your urge to jump from one thing to another.  Motivation and confidence will follow.

Maurine

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