Last week I was pleased to be invited to present a program to the membership of Michiana SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management). By the way, you might be interested to know that SHRM National Headquarters has named Michiana SHRM as one of the top 100 chapters in the United States. This is a great organization doing much good in our area.
My topic was about building self-awareness as an almost foolproof path to achieving emotional freedom, success, and deep fulfillment in life.
I began the program by telling about a Harvard Study created to learn ”What makes people happy, healthy and satisfied?” Begun in 1938, Harvard researchers selected 320 Harvard freshmen and 320 young volunteers from the tenements of Boston to participate in this life-long study. Each year researchers would give each participant physician exams and interview them in detail about all areas of their lives. The study continued for 78 years, at least to 2016.
Researchers discovered only one occurrence mattered when determining whether a participant reported living a fulfilling, happy, successful life. Had the participant developed strong, enduring, positive relationships. No other factor proved meaningful…not race, ethnicity, socio-economic circumstances, family upbringing, work success or fame! Only close, enduring, positive relationships mattered.
Since studies overwhelmingly conclude that characteristics of high self-awareness are key to fulfilment, self-confidence, affluence, health, and satisfaction in life, I wanted to compare the factors of high self-awareness with factors key to developing and maintaining close, enduring, positive relationships. Below I’ve listed how these compare:
| HIGH SELF-AWARENESS | CLOSE, ENDURING RELATIONSHIPS |
| Understand their values & goals | Trust & Trustworthiness |
| Excellent communicators | Non-judgmental |
| Frank & honest interactions | Honesty |
| Is open re their strengths & limitations | Transparency of interactions |
| Self-confident | Empathetic |
| Displays a good sense of humor | Share common interests |
| Non-judgmental | Holds each other in mutual respect |
| Builds excellent relationships | Sees life as positive and humorous |
| Genuinely optimistic & happy | Effective communicator |
The list of high self-awareness characteristics comes from books on high self-awareness by Daniel Golman, Ph.D. I Googled a composite of from various sites discussing close relationships. Still, it can’t be a real surprise how closely the characteristics of high self-awareness and close, enduring relationships track each other. The important thing to learn is these characteristics can be effectively taught and learned to a large degree.
Gaining these skills today is considered essential for business advancement and success, yet recent studies of executives and managers in the largest corporations show a distressing paucity of high self-awareness of these key employees as judged by their peers.
And these abilities in self-awareness (a key component in high emotional intelligence) are important in society not just as an element of profitability. Consider the following:
- The CDC released a study in August of 2020 showing 40% of adults in the U.S. suffering from significant mental healthy challenges, including anxiety and depression.
- A third of our total healthcare costs in the U.S., over $1 trillion, is spent on psychotropic drugs like Valium, Xanax and Prozac.
- Dr. Bruce Perry, well-known child psychologist states that childhood trauma over the last 3 decades is so widespread that approximately 40% of children will never be able live anything close to normal adult lives.
- Chronic health problems, obesity and suicide are all on the rise in the U.S.
The terrific news is that many if not most of the emotional problems these statistics confirm, can be minimized, or eliminated entirely through self-awareness education. The proof is undeniable. I don’t believe there is any challenge we face in the United States any more important than to create a laser-like focus at home, in our schools and in our workplace in developing strong self-awareness growth throughout our population. There is no good reason to ignore it any longer.
If even a small percentage of us chose to discover our greatest abilities, the transformation of our society would be enormous. Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we a capable of doing would serve to solve most of the problems in the world.” Why more of us won’t take this truth to heart is a bit of conundrum. However, it doesn’t matter if everyone does this work. It only matters that YOU do the work. You make all the difference.
Remember, a single discovery can change everything for you!
Tom Searcy, BCC
info@SpiritofEagles.com
574-850-9912
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