4 Things Self-Aware People DON’T DO | Mindshift 3

What if I told you there was one skill that researchers discovered leads to better relationships, less stress, and stronger leadership, but only 10% of people have this skill, but you could get it? Would you want to know more? Well, I'm going to cover that and more in today's episode.

In today's episode, I'm covering how self-awareness and emotional intelligence affects every single area of your life and how you can cultivate it for yourself, which would put you in the top 10% of people in terms of their wisdom and intelligence. Now, I talk more about this in my book, Think This, Not That.

So if you wanna dive deep— deeper, you can go to joshaxe.com or Amazon and get a copy to learn more on how to take your self-awareness and emotional intelligence to the next level. So self-awareness is the ability to recognize your emotions your thoughts and motivations and understand how and why they're impacting your behavior.

And I remember the first time I became aware that I wasn't self-aware or world aware or aware of others. And it was when I was on a mission trip that I went on to Ethiopia and Uganda. And by the way, have you ever had an experience in life where suddenly it was almost like a snap of a finger, everything changed? You were now aware of something you had never been aware of before.

Well, this was that experience for me. And so this trip to Ethiopia, one of the days we went to a place called the Dumps where people actually lived in a landfill. And if you've ever driven by a landfill, the stench is terrible, and this was so much worse than that. And so we went there and we decided we want to serve these people.

We're going to buy them food and share with them just a message of hope. And so we went there, And, and there, there were 2 organizations we partnered with on this. One was called Souls for Souls, so we brought everybody's shoes. And also another one was called Visiting Orphans.

And so we, we, we visited, uh, orphanages that Mother Teresa started in different areas in the, uh, in these, these countries in Africa. And so we went there to minister and care for these people. And I remember just walking in, the first thing is one person in our group started throwing up. That, that's how bad the smell was.

And I remember even before, though, I brought certain essential oils to help people maybe dampen their nausea during this time because the guide going in, the minister there, they said, you know, people obviously live in this, but if you are not used to it, it can make you actually physically ill, and several people it did, just started throwing up.

And so we went in there, and here is the experience I want to say and a few other things we did there. You know, we were able to You know, bring them food. We were able to give them shoes, uh, for their feet. One of the things we did, we practiced, we washed their feet and then we put shoes on them.

And we just wanted to, we just wanted to say, you know, we love you and, uh, and you're, you're worth more than— let them know they're worthy. Let them know they're valuable. Because I think that, think about this, if you lived in a landfill, how would you feel about your own self-worth? You're living with trash. You're living with things that people discard.

And so I think it really could, uh, be negative psychologically on somebody's self-worth and self-value, not to mention, of course, the psychology behind just trying to survive off of, off of trash. Um, but I think it really does something to someone's identity. So we really did our best to share with them their value and their worth and how God sees them.

And, um, but I'll say it was a very eye-opening experience. I remember I got home from this whole trip And that was the thing that struck me the most. I remember getting home and just weeping and crying because I had never seen such human suffering and such a lack of everything that these people had. They were living in cardboard boxes.

And here's the crazy thing to me, and one of the reasons why I think I just— by the way, I don't cry easy, but I remember this really kind of, I feel like, changed me and allowed me to become more empathetic and compassionate. Because if you think about it, it's just not right. Somebody living in a landfill, that's not okay. And having kids live in that environment, like, that's not okay.

So, I became very much more aware of the world and other people and the suffering of others, even myself, after experiencing that. And again, question for you, have you ever had an experience like that? Because it's so easy for us to— feel entitled or feel like we don't have enough or we need more.

But when you experience something like that, that human suffering and that lack of the essentials of life, um, it really hits you. But the biggest thing that impacted me about the whole thing was not the stench, was not the smell. It was that the people were still happy. It was that they were still so happy and joyful. Many of these people in Africa, I was just blown away with.

And, and so for me, it made me realize I am so Even though I feel like maybe comparing myself to others, I'm not. But if I'm comparing myself to those people, I am so entitled. I am so ungrateful. I am so, uh, so blessed. And so it just, it just really struck me. And so I want to go back to self-awareness here. Self-awareness is key to be— to, to having character.

Self-awareness is a form of wisdom. If you're not aware of things, you're unwise. You don't have knowledge, which is part of wisdom. And so it's really important that we cultivate self-awareness. Again, if you don't have awareness of yourself and others in the world, you're, you're unwise. You can't make good decisions.

And once I was in a situation to where I became more aware of human suffering and the needs of others, I was able to operate with more wisdom of knowing the way that I should spend my time, The way that I should have a mindset of absolute gratitude and positivity, and also knowing part of my mission and purpose in life is to fulfill the needs of others. So self-awareness is really key to wisdom.

In fact, when you look at clinical study, when you look at studies on this, self-awareness or emotional intelligence is more important than IQ.

They've done studies to find what's more important for someone being successful, whether it be in business or having great relationships or anything in life, success, the number one thing was emotional intelligence was much, much more important than IQ or how good, you know, how well you would do at school or finishing a puzzle or problem solving.

Here are some other reasons why self-awareness is just critically important. Number one, you become more mindful of what is happening to you and inside of you. Rather than letting it consume you and overwhelm you. I mean, I see this constantly today with people emotionally.

Um, rather than being aware of, for instance, if, if somebody says something negative to you, what you tend to do is try and punch back. This could be on social media metaphorically, or it could be in person. Uh, but we tend to hit back with our words.

If you're emotionally intelligent, and by the way, a group of people that were incredibly emotionally intelligent, are the mystics, whether that be in Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism. We see mystics like Gandhi or like Saint Francis of Assisi or people throughout history where these people, they're very, very self-aware.

You could do almost anything to them, and they're emotionally unchanged unless they choose to be. Right? And so we even see Jesus, for instance, Jesus being emotionally unmoved unless he really wanted to be, such as Flipping over the tables of the tax collector with his passionate plea, and along with weeping when Lazarus died.

And so all that being said, we know that emotional intelligence is very important, but because it allows us to better control our emotions. And again, emotions should never control us. They should make us more aware of what's going on with us internally.

Another reason why self-awareness is important is it allows you to recognize weakness, including your own weaknesses and the weaknesses of others, so you can better meet those needs of those people. It can make positive changes. And so if you're self-aware, you become aware of opportunities in life or threats that allow you to change for the better in the future. Self-awareness, of course, is key.

To building strong relationships. Now, I will say, generally speaking, women tend to be slightly more emotionally intelligent in certain ways than men and in other ways not than men. For instance, women are more keen on having empathy and compassion for others. That's a form of emotional intelligence, but also oftentimes have a harder time controlling those emotions.

And so we see both in men and women, there's a difference in the type of emotional intelligence That one that the feminine has versus the masculine. But either way, it's incredibly important. So for instance, if Chelsea is having a bad day and I'm unaware of that, that's a big deal. I'm not aware. Okay?

And if versus if I'm aware, I know how to meet the needs and how I can best serve her and love her and make her day better. Right? And same thing for myself. If I'm having a bad day and I don't realize that I'm struggling with something like some sort of frustration and I'm not aware of it, then I may lash out at her or at others at work.

And so versus I realize, you know what, I'm really frustrated today. That means I need to go and pray and meditate and go on a walk and maybe even share that with Chelsea or a close friend. And so it's really important that we understand that awareness is one of those key elements along with trust at building Relationships.

Um, it reduces stress when you are self-aware and have emotional intelligence. Just stress starts to fade away. When you look at, as I mentioned, the people that are most self-aware, it tends to be the, the spiritual mystics. You know, those— think about certain pastors or priests or rabbis that you might know, or monks. There is a level of serenity.

A level of stress being gone to where you could do something harmful to them, or the world could be crashing down, and they're not running around scrambling. They are walking with this level of peace and wisdom and self-awareness that most of us have not cultivated even close to what they have. And so it is stress-reducing and increases your lifespan. Big health benefit there.

Also, you become a better leader. When you were more self-aware? Because here's what self-awareness is in part. A lot of us spend time goal setting and we say, I wanna go here. Here's my dreams, here's my vision, here's my goals, here's a finish line. I'm going after it. So most people know where they wanna go. Most people don't know where they are currently.

And it's very hard to get where you wanna go when you don't know where you currently are. That's so, so important for growth. So if you're a person saying, I wanna grow in business, I want to grow in my relationships. I want to grow my character. I want to grow as a leader. You cannot grow to your maximum if you don't know where you currently are.

You'll get lost along the way because you'll think wrongly about yourself. You might think, oh, I'm very compassionate when you're not, or you're very wise, or you may think you've got a vice under control, an addiction, but you don't. So you need to know where you are. You need to be self-aware in order to grow as a leader. Now, here's the big problem. 90%. This is according to a study.

90% Of people believe that they are self-aware. In actuality, only 10 to 15% of people actually are. Think about that. This is one of the— I mean, this is one of the most skewed things I've ever heard. 90% Of people believe that they are self-aware. They know what's going on inside of them, their emotions, and they know their strengths. They know their weaknesses.

Yet only about 10% of people are actually self-aware. And I'd ask you the question, are you self-aware? Do you know the emotions and you're aware of them every day, those emotions that are cropping up in you, controlling you? Are you aware of why you have the need to be a people pleaser? Are you aware of why you have an achievement mentality where it's never enough?

You're just trying to achieve, achieve, achieve. You know, like, for instance, if you're a people pleaser, is it because you didn't receive enough approval growing up from your parents or coaches or teachers? So now you spent your entire life seeking for that paternal improvement from other people, right?

So there's an instance is, are you aware of that thing that happened in your childhood, that event that happened sometime in your life, that trauma? And that's why it drives almost every single action you have, almost every sort of emotional imbalance, every addiction, because of this thing that happened. That's what I'm talking about.

And if you're not aware of those things and then not working on them, then you are completely unaware, right? Why do you have and suffer with a lot of shame and guilt in your life? Why is that? And are you aware? And not only aware, then once you're aware, then you start working on that and improving that. We're gonna get into that some in today's episode. So here are some other problems.

There are 4 common barriers that I see in self-awareness. Number one is pride. Most people assume we already know instead of staying curious and hungry to change and humble, right? So pride is the number one reason why people are not self-aware, whether it could be as extreme as narcissism or it's just you feel like, I know, right?

People always say that, well, I know, and you generally know, and maybe you have a hint of knowing, but you've stuffed things really deep down. As well and don't wanna let them crop up because you don't wanna experience the pain of knowing you have weaknesses, you have messed up in life, you do have regrets.

And so you just continue to walk around with pride, uh, in ways, or you just believe you're that great. I wanna give you an example of how pride really hurt me. And because I was not self-aware, I experienced a major back injury from deadlifting the wrong way. And the thing is, I thought I knew how, I thought I knew great lifting form, and I was wrong.

In fact, I had Chelsea, my wife, Tell me, hey, you're not doing that right. And it was soon after that I hurt my back. And then one, by the way, from then on, anytime Chelsea gave me any lifting instructions, it was like, yes, babe. Yeah, yeah. You know, let me know what I need to do better. I became more self-aware that I wasn't doing things right. I experienced an injury and said, you know what?

I gotta get better at that. And so it's really important that we don't walk around and live with this pride because again, listen, pride comes before a fall. If you have pride, If you have pride, you already know it all. You know everything. That's your mentality. If you have pride, you already know, you're already perfect, you're already great. You don't have any room to grow or get better.

And so, if you have pride, it actually sort of skews and blinds you to the awareness of what's going on in your own life and the life of others and what's going on in the world. So, pride is the most damaging thing to self-awareness. The opposite is humility.

With humility, you know your flaws, you know what you're good at, you know that, uh, you know, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. You know, when you have— when you walk in humility, you also see the gifts and the strengths in others and their weaknesses and look at serving them.

But again, it's this walking in humility that is the opposite of pride that allows you to become more self-aware. And you'll see that I mentioned earlier, when you look at the spiritual mystics, the people that tend to be the most self-aware Uh, I would say, you know, again, psychologists, uh, sometimes counselors, rabbis, pastors, priests, uh, monks.

They tend to be very, very self-aware, and they all tend to embody a lot of humility. Most of them embody a lot of humility. Uh, the second main problem that is keeping you from being self-aware is busyness. We're just too busy. We constantly— we, we have our schedules are booked out from the moment we wake up.

Till the end of the day with just tasks, constantly doing tasks, which leaves a lack of time for self-reflection and time where you can actually think. You know, I have been at times in my life where I've just scheduled out every, you know, from 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM where I just had stuff all day long. And one, it wears you out emotionally, which is part of emotional intelligence.

You know, you just get to the end of the day and it's like you can't think. In fact, it's hard to even have a conversation with anybody. You just want to, Just numb out and watch a show, right? Because you have scheduled so many tasks in your day. Well, part of self-awareness is scheduling time for self-reflection, sitting there and thinking, what am I not doing right? What can I do better?

Where can I grow? How could I bless others? What are those things, those deep things that are in my heart right now that I'm not aware of? What are those emotions that are coming up that I just keep pressing back down? Busyness will keep us from doing this more than anything.

And so the key is scheduling time to reflect, to read, to meditate, to pray, to do some of those spiritual practices, to get in touch with ourself and deeply with those people that matter most in our life. But busyness is the second biggest problem keeping us from self-awareness. And remember, if you don't have self-awareness, You can't grow as a leader. You can't grow your character.

You can't have great relationships. Without self-awareness, you are unwise. None of that happens. Number 3, character sabotage. That's the biggest reason why— the third biggest reason why people today don't have enough self-awareness. So here's what character sabotage is. You have certain vices in your life that are overwhelming your character and your self-awareness.

Um, you know, it could be, uh, you know, one vice could be— it could be in the realm of addiction, right? And so you don't realize that, uh, you, you have a shopping addiction. You're on Amazon constantly. You buy something every day, multiple times a day on Amazon. Or social media addiction.

Uh, it could be something like, you know, uh, you know, adult content, uh, which no one of any age should watch, right? Being addicted to pornography, those sort of things. Those can sabotage— those, of course, destroy your character. And maybe you're unaware of how having a drink every single night or multiple drinks, where that's leading you in life, and you're not seeing down that path.

So these vices we have, the addictions, the pride, the lust, the gluttony, the overeating, right, that we've talked about, all of those things start to damage our character and in turn also our self-awareness of what's going on in our life. And number 4 thing that destroys our emotional IQ, our self-awareness, and our character is the need for constant entertainment.

We live in a culture today which prioritizes being entertained over almost everything, and this limits the time and energy necessary for increasing our knowledge, our wisdom, and our self-awareness. Rather, throughout history, most people that are the most successful, they prized education over entertainment. And I would ask you which you prioritize more, entertainment or education.

Education will make you more aware. If you're reading the right things, more self-aware, but definitely more aware of others in the world and gathering more knowledge and wisdom. And so, Here's a test to know this. Count how many hours a day you spend just scrolling social media, your friends' accounts, accounts you like, those sort of things. How much time do you spend scrolling those?

Plus the amount of time you spend watching TV, okay? Plus maybe doing some other form of entertainment, okay? How many hours a day do you do those things versus how many times a day are you watching an educational YouTube video? Or listening to a podcast or reading a book or listening to an audiobook, whatever it is? Okay. How many times a day do you do this versus this?

Well, let me give you some averages. I know if you count social media time plus TV time, most people are at least 4 hours a day. Some people on average closer to 8 hours a day. There's a lot of people doing, which is sort of mind-blowing. You're like, how could that be 8 hours a day? Well, let me just give you an example. 1 Hour in the morning.

Even if somebody goes to work or school, they're still somehow scrolling about 2 hours a day to 3 hours a day. So even by the time the workday is over, people do 4 hours a day, and then they get home and somehow from on the way home from work or, or whatever it is, once they get home from work, then maybe watching TV for the average is about 4 hours.

So, so now listen, it might only be 4 hours for you, maybe it's 2 hours, but again, I just want you to say, What are you spending? What is the amount? Calculate this right now. How many hours a day are you spending on entertainment versus how many hours a day are you spending on education or growth spiritually, meditation, prayer, or just thinking? And change that ratio.

If you just change that ratio of education to entertainment, you will become more self-aware and wise immediately. It's the biggest game changer of things you can do. I want to give you a few other things you can do to help become— to help you become more self-aware. Before I do that, though, I want to talk about a groundbreaking study called the Batman Study.

This study was done on children between the ages of 4 and 6 years old, and they were given a project and separated into 3 groups. And the project was this: they told kids to essentially do this work to maybe build something. Okay? As an example. And they, there was 3 groups. One group of kids, they said, just act naturally, go in and build, you know, build that castle or do this thing.

The second group, they said, hey, think about yourself in the third person and be extra self-aware of your actions. So for instance, hey Johnny, um, hey, go in there and do your best to build this house, build this block, and be aware of how good of a job you're doing of it. Okay? The And then the third group of people, they did what we'd call an identity swap with their favorite superhero.

For instance, some of the boys said, I'm Batman, which is where the name came from. One of the boys said, I'm Batman, for the Batman effect. And some of the girls might have said, I'm a Disney princess like Elsa or Moana. Okay? And they said, go in there and do this job or this task.

Well, at the end of this study, basically this study found that first group who were just not self-aware, did the— had the poorest performance. The children who were self-aware, and this practice is called self-distancing, where they asked them to step outside of themselves and see how well that they were performing, that group saw a 13% improvement in their work ethic. Now, here's a crazy thing.

The children with the superhero identity had 23% greater performance than the first group and, as evidenced, more diligent, also demonstrated more diligence and perseverance, 23% greater than the first group, 10% better than the second group. Now, now this study gets a lot into self-awareness. The first group was not self-aware. The second group was self-aware.

The third group though, their self-awareness was a higher level in that their identity was tied to the greatest version of themselves or the greatest version of their greatest hero. So, think about this.

If you were going in and doing something and I told you, listen, you're as wise as Elon Musk, or going into an effort and you literally thought in your head, as some kids might do, you're Batman, you're Superman, you're Wonder Woman, the performance was even greater. What an amazing study. This shows your level of self-awareness and your identity.

If you believe you're capable— let me ask you this. Do you believe that you are capable of great things? Do you believe that you are capable of being one of the most loving people of all time? Do you believe that you are wise? Do you believe that you are smart? Do you believe that you're worthy? Do you believe you're capable of doing great things and impacting the world and adding value to others?

Well, if you don't, you're not self-aware enough. We were all made in the image of God, and knowing that we're divine beings that all have unique giftings that no one else in the world has, When you know that about yourself, you become powerful. So you need to be aware of that.

And let me say this, there's really this very critical combination of you becoming your best self, of being aware of all of your faults and weaknesses and how minuscule you are in the grand scheme of things, but also holding that in one hand and in your other hand also knowing that You have the capability with sometimes speaking a word to somebody that could literally save their life.

Like, most people are walking around and they're just having bad days, you know? And, and, and they have— some people have not had a kind or encouraging word said to them in years. And knowing you could go and say something to somebody and stop a school shooter, you could go and say something to somebody that literally saves their life.

So there's this combination we should all walk around with when we're operating at our highest level of self-awareness. Where we know the incredible goodness we're capable of and how much we matter and how meaningful we are, but also at the same time, how meaningless certain things are, how maybe unimportant we are in certain instances, and how in the evil we're capable of.

So we both should be walking around with a level of humility and also You know, um, uh, positive thinking about ourselves and our future at the same time. The wisest people walk around with both of those things, this sort of confidence and courage and this, this humility. So self-awareness does this. It, it puts us in a position that allows us to identify our areas for growth.

We also become aware of the positive changes we can make. We know our strengths. And we know our weaknesses. We know threats to us, these vices, and we know opportunities. And so, but it's knowing. And let me ask you this, do you know what your greatest strengths are?

Like, if I asked you right now, what are your 3 greatest strengths in life, your 3 greatest character qualities, and your 3 greatest talents or skills that God has blessed you with? What are those? And then what are your greatest weaknesses, those things that threaten your character and those skills, those things that you're just not good at? You should know those immediately.

If you're not, you're not self-aware. And really even the basic, most basic of levels. The other thing about self-awareness is it helps us build our character. As I mentioned, when I went to that mission trip, I became more self-aware and therefore I became more empathetic and compassionate for others. I cried for other people.

I don't know that I'd done that before where I just sat down and just— now, you know what, going back, I did this with my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer. I think that was probably the last time before that when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I just wept for her. But this mission trip, I wept for these people that I hardly knew.

And so I think becoming self-aware is so important for empathy, for compassion, for building character, for growing as a leader, and for wisdom that then guides your actions and lets you know what's morally right and what you can be doing in this world. And as I mentioned earlier, it's important to remember Emotional intelligence in this form of awareness is even more important than IQ.

It's more important than how smart you are from a knowledge standpoint. A few other things I think that can be good for helping you develop self-awareness. One is sitting time alone and meditating and just thinking about what are your strengths and weaknesses? Okay? What are those childhood traumas or those emotions that constantly crop up? Uh, what was the event and how can you deal with that?

So I think one is meditation makes you more emotionally intelligent. That's number one. Number 2 is prayer and reading, reading a spiritual book, whether it be, um, you know, the Bible or the Torah or another book of spiritual wisdom. But sitting there and reading, um, a book that makes you more spiritually aware of the things you should become aware of. Okay, it makes you more aware.

Reading that. So I would say meditation and then prayer and reading is very important. The next thing is writing. Jordan Peterson says this: writing is the closest thing we have to thinking. Most people don't think. They just hear something on social media or news media and they just repeat what's popular.

They don't actually sit and think for themselves, so they're not aware of themselves or others or the world. But if you sit down and write down, here's what I believe about this, then you also can know what you stand for. But writing, write, write about things that still bother you today. What are some things that bother you that have happened anytime from now throughout any time in your past?

What are some things that bother you? Write down your strengths, write down your weaknesses, write down the problems, the biggest problems you see in the world, and then figure out how can you help solve those things. So I think there's a lot of benefits of spending time writing.

Do a personality profile for you and the people you care about, your spouse or your kids or other, or close friends, whether it be Enneagram or the Big Five or the DiSC profile or Myers-Briggs. But doing those, that allows you to become more self-aware as who are you in terms of your identity and personality.

So those are some things I would do to start fostering more Again, meditation, prayer and reading, writing, those personality profiles can all help you become more self-aware. And the other thing I would say is self-aware friends, friends with a high level of emotional intelligence and having conversations with them, asking them, hey, what are my strengths and weaknesses?

What are some things I can get better at? Is there anything you've noticed that you think I can improve on? What are my giftings? And then having those deep, meaningful conversations with other people, I think, can also make you more self-aware. So here are some key takeaways. Self-awareness allows you to discover where you are now so you can get to where you truly want to be in life.

Again, it's important to have goals and know where you want to end up going, but it's also critically important that you know where you are now. And part of knowing where you are now allows you to better know where you want to get in the future. Let me give you an example. Let's say you're saying to yourself, I want to be a great leader to lead an organization.

I want to be a servant-driven leader, a transformational leader that blesses everyone in my organization and builds an altruistic company.

If you're saying that and you want to go and hit that, but you don't realize you have this glaring weakness of being too critical of other people or lacking empathy, or you have another weakness of this immoral behavior, if you're not aware of that, You will never actually end up where you want to go. Okay? You'll end up somewhere else.

And so that's why self-awareness is the starting part and goals are the ending. Another key principle is when we are self-aware, we understand what we feel and can transform it into productive behavior. For instance, if the troll on social media or a parent or someone says something negative to you, here's what you do. You start to learn. Um, taekwondo.

You learn this form of martial arts where somebody punches at you and you take their own energy and you use it against them, but for their positive benefit. To give you an example, if somebody says something hurtful to you, you could respond with something like, you know, now don't say this because this isn't the best thing, but it's you being aware of hurt people hurt people.

You know they have a hurt in their heart, and so saying something like Hey, I want to let you know, I appreciate your feedback. I'll take that to heart and meditate on that. I do want to let you know, I want to do my best to serve you and make your life better. Let me know if there's other feedback you have or ways I could help you. Right.

If I have a troll saying something to me on social media like, Dr. Axe doesn't know what he's talking about, or whatever it is, by the way, it's probably a lot more negative than that, but if somebody says that to me, I can respond.

With compassion, understanding, and awareness of saying, what, what is the thing I can say to them that will actually help them transform and become— improve in their own behavior, right? It's probably not me saying, you don't know what you're talking about, you're a clueless troll, right? Versus saying, hey, I'm really grateful for your feedback.

I'll try and, you know, I'll try and do my best to better serve this community in the future. It's— it, it'll cause them to bring down their guard. And so, when you have self-awareness, it allows you to do that. I want you to think this, okay? By the way, my new book came out. I'm so excited about it, called Think This, Not That.

This book dives so much deeper into these topics of how do you overcome your limiting beliefs? How do you have a true purpose in life, build a strong identity? It's a book all about mindset. If you want to grow and build a stronger mindset, this book is incredible. You can get it at JoshAxe.com or Amazon.com.

But here's what I want you to— in the book, I go through some things like think this, not that. Think this: self-awareness can motivate me to change things for the better. Self-awareness can be the game changer you need in your life. Not that: it's easier to ignore what's really going on deep down inside me because I can't do anything about it anyways.

The reality is when you know what's going on internally, why you have those feelings, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, now you can start to change for the better. It's a key principle there. And so, as we talked about, create quiet time for reflection daily. Write down those thought patterns that come up regularly and seek purposeful exposure outside of your comfort zone.

That's one other action you could take is go on a mission trip. Go into an area in your city that's suffering. Go and talk to people that need help and become more aware of the suffering and the needs of this world. That will also increase your emotional awareness.

You know, again, I talk about this more in depth in my book, By the way, if you go to JoshAx.com and get the book, you're going to get hundreds of dollars worth of free content. In fact, I did a mindset masterclass. That's a $200 value you'll get for free if you go to JoshAx.com, along with some other incredible gifts there. It also comes with a workbook.

So, if you want to do some of the exercises I talked about, I have what I call a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Doing that exercise is the top thing you can do to increase your self-awareness. You'll also get that free workbook digitally today if you go and get the book at JoshActs.com. I really think this book is gonna help transform your life.

And hey, if you know somebody who needs to become more self-aware and can grow in this area, if this message would bless them, hey, share this with them via text message or email or on social media. I really believe self-awareness is key for us growing in character and having the biggest impact in our lives.

And I wanna say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe Show, where each and every week I uncover the truth of how to grow in body, mind, and spirit. And make sure to subscribe, like, and share this next episode. Hey, thanks so much for watching and listening.