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Leverage your biggest superpower

What?

> Self-awareness

Why?

Everything starts with being self-aware, being successful, living a happy life, not giving up when things get tough.

You need to know what motivates you when you should double down on something or simply correct course and do something else

Life is all about knowing what you want and why you want it.

What can you do?

Do whatever works for you but here are a couple of things I like to do:

  • Schedule regular check-ins with yourself, ideally every day, at least once a week maybe on Sunday when things are calm. (I do this in a Journal twice a day)

  • Find someone to talk to every week that you share and exchange things that are on your mind with, this will force you to reflect on what's going on in your life and if things are headed in the right direction. (I do this with 2 of my close friends back from school and with my girlfriend)

Why are you telling me this?

I’m writing about random thoughts every Sunday (Monday if I procrastinate 😵), most of the time about something that I read or think about during the week, and this week I was reading about self-awareness and noticed the lack thereof with a couple of people that I have in my life so I thought someone might sit in the same boat 🚢 and can gain something from this post.

Let me know what you do to stay “on top of your s**t” in the comments 😳😏

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    Hey @nafetswirth! I also talk to people I'm close with to have a mirror effect and check if I'm still on track. And on Sundays, I write my goals for the week and reread my mid/long term goals.

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      Nice 🎉

      How did you get started with it?

      Btw I'm jealous that you're already that on top of your stuff with 23, it took me so much longer but I can't imagine going back to flying blind 😳, with my first company I build a product nobody wanted for 2 years because I never took the time to check in on what I'm doing and why I was doing it. 😢

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        Appreciate it man!

        When I started my first internship, I had a lot going on between class and work and writing things down helped me to unload my mind. And being far from the usual social life of school it gave me time to reflect on myself (what I wanted to do, where, how, who am I...).

        At the end of the day, everything is experience and as long as you learn from them that's what matter!

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          Good for you, can't start early enough 🤙

          At the end of the day, everything is experience and as long as you learn from them that's what matter!

          True to an extent, it taught me a lot but I should have been smarter than that because I knew about the pitfalls of startups and products yet I didn't learn from the mistakes of others only from my own.

          “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” 😛

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            “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

            I agree! I think that regarding the startup world, it is so unique and very complex that even though we can learn about the general guidelines, it's also very hard to navigate our own journey. The sheer amount of knowledge and information that we have to digest may easily make us lose focus on the key aspects even though we're aware of traps.

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              it is so unique and very complex that even though we can learn about the general guidelines, it's also very hard to navigate our own journey.

              You're right it's never black and white but I think in my case it was the typical mistake that a lot of people are doing and that could have been prevented with some reflection time.

              We recently made this mistake again albeit less bad and here it was because things were running on the side so that a quick 2-3 week MVP turned into a very long project that consumed a lot of resources and not enough validation.

              So even when you think you're on top of stuff, well you're sometimes not 😳 but at least I learned to be honest to myself and take better measures to prevent this from happening again (for another 5-10 years at least hopefully haha)

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                So even when you think you're on top of stuff, well you're sometimes not. For real!

                I think you have the most important qualities, self-honesty and introspection. I'm sure you'll do very well!

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    Simply put, and in my case I am still working on my job that has nothing to do with web development or so.

    What I do is to think on the freedom to be at home and spend time with my daughter and wife when I get there and the chance to leave that job...

    So I just look forward...

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      What I do is to think on the freedom to be at home and spend time with my daughter and wife when I get there and the chance to leave that job...

      Sounds like a powerful motivator, best of luck with that 🤙

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        it is, for my case.

        Danke Schön, same to you!

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    My career coach recommended a practice that I've stuck with nearly every day for the last 2 years along the lines of the regular "self check-ins" habit you're describing

    At the end of every day, I asked myself 3 questions:
    +What went well today?
    +What didn't go so well?
    +What will you do differently tomorrow?

    This practice (and the coaching engagement) was so impactful I built an app around it so you can do these check-ins virtually 😊

    I updated the check-in prompts a bit and added some stats & analytics so that the insights from your reflections could be aggregated and tracked over time. Check it out if you're interested - would love to hear your thoughts! Blossom.team

    (PS: the 'daily check-in' part of our app described above is totally free; we also have a paid subscription that matches you up with a 1:1 coach for regular monthly sessions)

    1. 2

      Cheers, I'll check it out.

      I do ask myself similar questions when I Journal morning and night and I also use two different colors (green + red).

      I do enjoy doing it with pen and paper and have yet to find an app where I don't churn and revert back but maybe that's the one 🤙

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        Nice! I did the different colors trick too.

        Sounds good - looking forward to hearing your thoughts :)

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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      I think I used the term fairly loosely for awareness as it's become kind of a meme and was supposed to be meant as one in this context but actually reading up on it the history seems to be about awareness of social injustices (I also just learned that 😳)

      Edit: I removed it in case someone finds it offensive 🤷‍♂️

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        This comment was deleted a year ago.

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          I wish it was a joke but the internet is a wild place 😁

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