Goal Mapping – How do you achieve self awareness?

Grant Leboff: Brian, one of the things that you talk about the in the Goal Mapping book is about self awareness and, actually, a lot of people don’t. How do you get in tune, in many ways, with yourself? Are there ways, are there mechanisms, that you can do to try and do that?

Brian Mayne Think! Self-awareness has been a teaching of philosophies throughout the ages and it’s no different in modern times. In fact Harvard Business School, a few years ago, identified this was the prime indicator for people who should be groomed for leadership and management training.

And without self-awareness they use the training in inappropriate ways. Think about yourself, question yourself, and your awareness rises. The more aware you are of yourself, the more effective you are because you can, literary, ‘turn on’ your motivation. When you know yourself, your own beliefs, your strengths… you know your weaknesses. When you’re honest with yourself you can choose to be at your best, even in the midst of a difficult day.

The other way to get it, of course, is to work with a coach, and let them question you to make you think more deeply and raise your awareness. Of course, a lot of people get it through a training programme. A good personal development training programme uses a combination of stories, exercises and information that again, triggers the person into thinking more deeply than the average daily surface level. And through that deep thinking is where the awareness comes from. Once you have it, you never really drop back down again. Once you are aware, it’s really hard to become unaware. Very often, people become aware sometimes through a difficult experience, when something goes wrong – sort of – stops them in their tracks, makes them think deeply and they realise things that they have been blind to before.

Grant Leboff: Probably, on the other side of the coin, one of the things with awareness, that partly comes out of that is this idea of a sense of purpose. A lot of people have goals, they have things they want to achieve, but not within any bigger sense of purpose. And then people are, I think, sometimes dissatisfied because there is no bigger vision for themselves – I don’t mean for the organisation or anything like that. Are there any mechanisms that people have when they are a bit lost without a sense of purpose? They may be achieving certain goals – they may be financial goals or others – but not within anything bigger than that. How do they transcend that for themselves and get something bigger when it’s, perhaps, missing?

Brian Mayne Again, it’s a bit of self questioning about what is it that makes you passionate, what is it that you would make a stand for, what is it that you would go the extra distance for?

I get a lot of people coming to my open public workshops and I always ask people ‘why have you come to the workshop’? The biggest percentage, in the UK certainly, is looking for a sense of purpose. Very often I find that like me, years ago, they actually already know it, but they are afraid to admit it to themselves, because it’s going to mean change. And change is scary. So rather than facing the fear and making the change, they blank it out in their mind and say they don’t know.

Grant Leboff: So how do you help people come to terms with it then? If perhaps innately they kind of know it already, where’s that line where they say okay I accept it now, perhaps its acceptance?

Brian Mayne I drip feed it over the day. I’ve got seven questions that I ask people that are all designed for them to give an emotional answer to. And then, when they look back at their answers, that helps them get in touch with their passions. If you imagine that your purpose is like a path that you are travelling in life, your passions are like the signposts pointing to the path. And so you look at your passions and you see where they’re pointing, and it’s going to show you your path. That path is your purpose, your goals, and then the milestones along the journey.

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