🧭 Self-Awareness

Hey Builders! 🚀

Here’s what you’re going to learn today:

⭐️ What is self-awareness?
⭐️ Why should you care about self-awareness?
⭐️ How can you become more self-aware?
⭐️ How can you foster self-awareness in your team?
👀 How does Cary Sparrow’s 8 figure business handle self-awareness and ego?

Reading time: 5 minutes

⭐️ What is self-awareness?

Self-awareness is a skill developed over the long-term that enables you to understand that you exist as part of the universe, but also as a distinct individual within it (ego helps in allowing self-awareness).

Self-awareness is one of the most important characteristics a person can have because it enables them to see inside of themselves, something which is quite difficult to do for the vast majority of people.

Being self-aware means that you recognize that despite being made of trillions of atoms, you have formed into a cohesive unit with thoughts, feelings, desires, needs, and cognition.

People who are self-aware tend to be capable of introspection, probing their own minds to try to understand what exactly those thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs are.

By becoming self-aware, a person is able to question the reality of their existence, their purpose, and what they should be doing with the time they have to be alive.

⭐️Why should you care about self-awareness?

You should care about self-awareness because your business is a reflection of your inner self.

We are all busy running around trying to build our businesses, but inevitably we will become the bottlenecks to our business’s success and growth.

By making the pursuit of self-awareness part of your life, you will naturally become able to identify what your shortcomings are, accept your strengths and weaknesses, and learn to trust other people to help you build your business.

As a side effect, you’ll end up being a smarter, more empathetic leader.

You’ll have better relationships with your teams, clients, partners, investors, and friends/family.

Basically, your life will become more meaningful.

Instead of waking up, working, and going to sleep and wasting your life like a drone, you’ll have cultivated spirit, meaning, purpose, goals, and be able to strive for something better.

❓What makes you want to pursue self-awareness?

⭐️ How can you become more self-aware?

1) Asking yourself deep questions that force you to make sense of why you do the things you do. Why do you believe the things you believe? Why do you like or dislike the things you do?

For example, eat sugar despite not wanting sugar and knowing that it’s not good for me. But I subconsciously do it anyways because it makes me feel good and tastes delicious.

2) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can provide you a safe space to communicate with a trained professional who can ask you deep, probing questions that will surely expand your self-awareness.

I’ve tried CBT before because I want to work through my anxiety and panic attacks I started experiencing while running my last software company. I didn’t have the best experience because of the therapist, but I’m looking for another therapist now, and I’m sure you can find someone amazing to help you!

3) Meditation can give you a safe space inside your own mind to observe your thoughts and feelings without the need to be affected emotionally by them. This takes YEARS to master, but creating a simple daily routine can help you get there over time.

I’ve been meditating daily for 19 years and it’s been an incredible experience for me, so don’t be a stranger, respond to this email and ask me about it!

4) Mushroom trips can take you outside of yourself and show you all sorts of incredible things about yourself and the universe, which will almost definitely get you thinking. PLEASE only do this if you are READY for the experience, because it can be quite shocking if you aren’t prepared to let go of your “self” and accept “ego death”, which during trips is known to feel as if you are actually about to die (but then you don’t).

I’ve never taken a mushroom trip myself, but I’ve helped many friends go through their journeys.

❓What other examples can you think of?

How can you foster self-awareness in your team?

Obviously you can’t go making your team take mushrooms together, so having the courage to discuss therapy and meditation with them is great.

Talking about your own issues can get them to think about theirs in a positive way that creates bonds, so it’s important to not be judgmental during this process.

Doing these types of deeper questions with each other will foster introspection and bonding at the same time.

Next steps

I interviewed Cary Sparrow about his experience practicing self-awareness with himself and his team, and how he only hires people who have healthy egos and are able to control themselves. Watch it below!

Listen to the interview here:

• YouTube

• iTunes

• Spotify

Next Friday, we will talk about which is better, being a founder or a VC, see you then!