There are 3 Stages of Self-awareness to self-mastery in all areas of your life, especially persona, business and money:
1. Self-awareness
How aware are you of your strengths & weaknesses? Do you over or under play them? How aware are you of how others perceive you? How others see your strengths & weaknesses? Your energy highs and lows and your emotional triggers and reactions? Your values and what you accept & will not stand for? What you love to do and what you want to leverage out? The mistakes you make over & over? This is a continual journey but the more you know yourself the more you can grow your wealth. Note these questions down in an Evernote or other folder system and re-evaluate your performance with a 1-10 score every 6 months.
I used to have anger management issues. When I say used to, I mean I can still feel the trigger sometimes, but have learned either to isolate myself in a padded room and put on my straight jacket so no one experiences the wrath of my flip outs, or have learned to become aware and self-coach the situation. A great little technique for this is to create a part of you; another voice or even identity of you within you that observes how you are reacting. Let’s say, like me, someone rejects you and this triggers a strong emotional reaction, probably deep routed within your childhood, and you feel a chemical overload in your body. You are about to spit venom. And then you say to yourself” ‘well Rob, that is an interesting reaction’. Try not to patronize yourself. But this will buy you time to let you calm down. You can then make a more calm decision, that won’t cost you money. You might say ‘that’s interesting’, or ‘thank you for your feedback’.
I once smashed a brand new Sony Vaio laptop because my art website that I was trying to update was loading too slowly. I smashed it up bad. I unleashed the beast on it, screaming at it, jumping up and down on it, shouting ‘what are you going to do now, bitch’. Ha, there’s hope for all humanity yet! Of course a few minutes later I was filled with remorse. Now before you judge me, we all have our own versions of these strong emotional reactions disguising something deeper within us that end up costing us money.
To my calmed down credit, I turned it into a piece of art, then uploaded it to my website (from another computer). Oh the irony. Of course I never sold it, but at least I was showing signs of recovery and more self-awareness!
2. Self-education
How much are you investing in yourself? Are you outsourcing your weaknesses and getting out of the way of those better and more suited to those tasks than you? Are you surrounding yourself with the right team to balance your personality traits? Are you challenging yourself or is your ego surrounding you with those who will only say yes? Do you have mentors who are at a higher level than you? Do you read and listen to audio daily, do relevant training courses and constantly fill your brain with the food it needs to grow your business?
As above, review these questions and score yourself out of 10 for each.
If I could sum up the two main differences between the debt-ridden grumpy bastard me and the new, not always as grumpy me who is rich enough to be hated by the old me, it would be these 2 things that my mentor told me would change: the books I’ve read and the people I’ve met. Expand these two areas of self-education and you expand your wealth.
3. Self-mastery
Do you plan your day around your energy levels? Do you game and second-guess yourself so you know how you will behave before you do? Do you challenge yourself regularly to grow? Do you constantly work on yourself or only when you have big challenges? Do you take feedback graciously and look to learn from everyone? Do you leverage and delegate to your team, inspire them with a vision and support them in growing too; serving them and others as much as yourself?
Whilst never complete, if you go and grow through these stages of self-mastery, you will have a sustainable, consistently growing wealth and riches.
