Written by: Katie Stoddart, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Leaders often focus on external results, managing their team and their goals. Yet, all of these are only possible with great self-leadership skills. If you can’t lead yourself effectively, how can you lead others? Self-leadership is the ability to be aware of your thoughts & behavioral patterns, to regulate these behaviors, and to have the discipline and self-mastery to carry through your designed plan of action. This article provides an overview of these three pillars: self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery.
1. Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to:
Monitor your inner world
Understand your reactions (thoughts, feelings, behavior)
Have clarity on your values, beliefs, aspirations, and passions.
Without awareness, you can’t effectively address the challenges you are going through. Awareness is the light that shines on your reactions – it makes it possible for you to see your hidden thought or behavioral patterns.
Most challenges are related to your mindset (thought patterns) or emotional triggers (situations that provoke or perturb you). You can’t fully understand your thought patterns or emotional triggers without self-awareness.
External challenges, such as a change in the market or a client request, are easier to deal with if you understand how you function, respond to these situations, and process your emotions.
To increase your self-awareness, you can:
Journal: Writing and reflecting on your thoughts, ideas, emotions, daily struggles can help you understand your way of thinking and notice what comes up most frequently. As Julia Cameron explains in the artist way, daily journaling increases creativity and self-acceptance in your life.
Work with a coach: Working with an external person who mirrors your own words, questions your thought process, and reveals your hidden patterns of thought – is one of the most effective ways of increasing your self-awareness.
Meditate: Through regular meditation practice, you can increase the pause between external stimulus and reaction. This pause means that if somebody acts in a way that bothers you, you will have extra mental space before reacting. Meditation reduces impulsivity and improves self-awareness. In this moment of pause, you will be more aware of what you are feeling, what triggered this feeling, and how else you can choose to respond.
Pay attention: Self-awareness is simply understanding yourself more deeply. For this purpose, start to pay attention during the day: What bothered you? When did you feel most grateful? What thoughts came up in specific situations? When did you react in a way that surprised you? How do other people see you?
Once you have greater self-awareness, this will also impact your self-acceptance, confidence, and creativity. Such self-understanding also improves communication and decision-making.
An article on self-awareness in Harvard Business Review distinguishes external awareness (understanding how others view us) and internal awareness (as explained above). Combining both external and internal awareness is a powerful way to improve self-leadership.
2. Self-Regulation
Once you have a greater awareness of your reactions, a question might emerge. You will be seeing what triggers you and how you respond - yet you might want to learn how to modify or regulate your response.
Here is where self-regulation comes in. You can regulate your response by learning how to process your emotions and behaviors to act according to the context.
Self-regulation is relevant because it allows you to act according to your values, with integrity and respect (to yourself and others), and not through impulse. Being able to manage your feelings effectively will help you to be calmer, be adaptable, and persist in trying times.
There are two distinct types of self-regulation: cognitive self-regulation (control of your thoughts), behavioral self-regulation (control of your behavior). As your behavior stems from your thoughts and emotions, improving your cognitive self-regulation will improve your behavioral self-regulation.
There are three steps to cognitive self-regulation:
1. Notice and recognize the emotion that comes up. Observe it in your body, see the thoughts associated with it and what triggered this reaction. This step of self-regulation comes from heightened self-awareness.
2. Accept the emotion. Do not fight it, deny it, or reject it. During the acceptance phase, it is essential to pause and let the emotion just be. Distraction generally amplifies the emotion and does not allow you to fully process your feelings.
3. Release the emotion. Let it go. Once you have accepted it and felt it, you can release it. Do not cling to it or justify it. Notice, Accept and Release.
Different practices can improve your self-regulation:
Mindfulness: Being fully present in each moment and not distracted makes it a lot easier for you to notice when a thought or emotion pops up. You can then regulate this emotion. One of the reasons people struggle with self-regulation is because they are not fully engaged with the present moment. They are ‘caught off guard’ and react impulsively. Pausing, recognizing, and accepting your emotions will positively influence your self-regulation.
Emotional Resilience: A combination of physical, mental, and spiritual resilience will allow you to deal with tough situations and be in control of your reactions. Emotional resilience helps you to step away from auto-pilot and act more consciously.
Cognitive Reappraisal (also known as Cognitive Reframing): When a difficult situation comes up, reframe its meaning. With a different perspective, it is easier to change your reaction. Sentences such as ‘Life happens for me’, ‘Everything happens for a reason.’, ‘There is no such thing as failure, only feedback’ are powerful examples of cognitive reframing.
Study Stoicism: The philosophy of stoicism includes many insightful principles that can help you to better regulate your behavior, such as the inner citadel (emotional resilience), the dichotomy of control (focus on what you can control), and key virtues.
Self-regulation combines emotional intelligence and resilience. Once you master the ability to regulate your thoughts and actions in all circumstances, you have a great asset to deal with life’s most challenging situations.
3. Self-Mastery
Self-awareness and self-regulation combined can support you in improving self-mastery
Self-mastery is the ability to hold yourself accountable and to manage your resources (time, energy, and attention) effectively. If you say to yourself that you will do something, you follow through with it.
Self-mastery is therefore intrinsically related to integrity, and living on your terms, according to your key values and principles. Once you master yourself, you are no longer dependent on your mood, the weather, other people’s actions and can instead act with clarity, perseverance, and consistency.
Self-mastery is not, however, forcing and pushing yourself for results. Though willpower and discipline are necessary, self-mastery also stems from compassion, inner drive, and passion, and not brute force.
To take your self-mastery to the next level:
Strengthen your self-discipline mindfully: Choosing to let go of certain emotions. Deciding to change your response. Taking action because it is linked to your values and goals, even if you don’t ‘feel’ like it. All of the above require self-discipline. Mindful self-discipline is the power to be proactive with great awareness and self-acceptance.
Be Focused: Knowing what you are striving for, taking aligned action, and mastering yourself along the way are directly linked to your ability to focus. The more clarity you have, the easier it will be to lead yourself.
Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-mastery are the three pillars that will contribute to leading yourself effectively. Once you have improved these pillars, you will take your leadership to the next level and reach higher performance in your work & business. High performance stems from great leadership!
Thank you for reading,
Katie
Katie Stoddart, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Katie Stoddart, founder of ‘The Focus Bee’ is an award-winning, international, high-performance coach, speaker and podcast host. Katie supports leaders and business owners to reach & sustain peak performance in their business. For her weekly podcast ‘The Focus Bee Show’, Katie interviews leading experts in high performance. Passionate about living intentionally; Katie challenges each and every person she works with to re-focus on what matters most. Katie works primarily with entrepreneurs & executives through 1-1 coaching & workshops on: Focus, Leadership & Performance.
