10 Things You Don’t Know About Yourself
Posted on April 05, 2015 by Ivana Pejakovic, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
A lack of self-knowledge almost always causes women to form distorted beliefs about themselves that lead them to poor choices.
One of the advantages I have as a life coach is listening to people’s most private stories. Hearing their experiences is better than any education I could buy. Why? Because these stories come from real women with real concerns, the practical stuff that often isn’t covered in any text book.
Based on what I heard over the years, I came up with a list of 10 things women generally don’t know about themselves. And the lack of this self-knowledge, almost always caused them to form distorted beliefs about themselves that lead them to poor choices.
Here are 10 points you likely don’t know about yourself either and how they impact your life:
1. YOU ARE RESILIENT: You can bounce back from anything that life throws your way, including the most unexpected and painful challenges. Being resilient is all about your mindset and how you decide to proceed. Do you decide to use all your resources (including strengths and wisdom) and a self-serving attitude to overcome one-step-at-a-time or do you convince yourself it’s hopeless? True, handling challenges may not be easy, but you are wired to come out on the top if you play your cards right.
2. YOU ARE CAPABLE OF NON-STOP LEARNING. Your ability to learn doesn’t slow down with age; it only slows down with a low desire to learn new things. Your brain is wired to keep you interested in learning, however, when poor habits kick in, it becomes a principle of “use it or lose it.” Why is this practical? You’re also wired to be able to keep up with the modern world and it’s NEVER too late to start working on new ambitions. Unless you chose to stop learning.
3. YOU ARE READY! Most women put things off till another time simply because they don’t feel ready to tackle their aspirations today. Even the most successful women never feel 100% ready; they don’t always feel overly confident and mentally prepared. But they know they can handle step one. They also know regret comes to women who wait around for the perfect day to get started because this day will never come. If there is something you want to do… Just start now.
4. YOU ARE MAKING MOST OF YOUR DECISIONS UNCONSCIOUSLY. That’s why you keep seeing the same patterns in your life. No matter how ‘consciously’ you think about a decision and plan it ‘logically’ you’re still motivated by unconscious patterns that drive you. You can gain the upper hand, however, by developing your self-awareness skills so you learn what motivates you. Take the Self-Awareness Quiz to see how in tune you are with yourself.
5. YOUR MEMORIES ARE SKEWED. Both your good and bad memories are exaggerated. The good memories are over exaggerated in positivity, and the bad memories are over exaggerated in how horrific the events truly were (e.g., how embarrassing a past failure was). This is why past memories can hold you back from future experiences; the false memory scares you from making second attempts… especially when you’re CERTAIN that things were absolutely HORRIFIC last time. Believe me… your memory is exaggerated (and it’s not how others remember it).
6. YOU OVERESTIMATE THE REACTION TO FUTURE EVENTS: Chances are you’re not a psychic… yet you live your life based on your ‘predictions’ of the future. How often have you exaggerated how badly something could go to the point you almost scared yourself off (only to realize it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be). You do this more times than you realize by rationalizing with why you were not interested anyways. And you may not even realize how many experiences and opportunities have slipped through your fingers because you were just certain things would never work out.
7. WHEN YOU DON’T TRUST YOURSELF YOU WILL AUTOMATICALLY TRUST SOMEONE ELSE. You crave certainty in your life… it’s one of your psychological needs. And when you’re burdened with low self-trust and high self-doubt you’ll blindly put your trust into someone else who appears to know what they are talking about. No exceptions. This happens whenever you ask someone what decision you should make. Who are you choosing to listen to and who is leading you on your life path?
8. EVERYTHING YOU DO IN LIFE IS MOTIVATED BY YOUR DESIRE TO MEET YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS. Why spend your energy on something that will never give you a ROI. This explains all of your behaviours and decisions. When you dig deep to understand why you do what you do, you’ll notice your self-serving and sabotaging behaviour isn’t random. It’s really a desire to meet your needs. Find out what motivates you so you can meet your needs in a self-serving way.
9. YOU’RE CONSTANTLY COMPETING. It’s tempting to say you don’t base your decisions on what others are doing … because you want to make yourself happy. But if you look very closely, you’ll see that you’re competing. You’ll notice you measure how happy you are to how happy your friend is, or the status of your achievements to how much your colleague has achieved. And you can be certain you’re competing when you feel like you’ve come up second best or feel glad you outdid someone else. Be careful. The game of comparing is bound to lure you away from what’s truly important to you… to the point you end up somewhere with no idea of how to get back on the right track.
10. ACCOUNTABILITY SCARES YOU: As a child you were likely conditioned to be afraid to say “I am responsible for that” because it often meant you would be in trouble from mom, dad, teacher. This is a learned reaction you still carry with you to some extent. The problem now is that it’s difficult to achieve success if you shy away from accountability. You can’t take on challenges and move ahead if you say to yourself “I don’t want to be responsible for that those people or for that outcome.”