Before you can make an impact on the world and the people around you, you must first understand yourself. Through self-introspection, you’ll be able to discern the personality, attitude, and skills needed to achieve your goals.
Knowing More About Yourself
Understanding your personality is a vital step in determining the compatible career choice for you. Missing this part of your journey of self-discovery can lead to a future that doesn’t meet your expectations.
Taking time to know more about yourself helps in acknowledging the behaviors, emotions, and triggers that define the way you think and act. These factors are very important, especially when you’re an entrepreneur running a business or handling a team that can be affected by your decisions.
Do you prefer working alone or with a team? Do you want to keep things organized or do you prefer spontaneity? Are you a people person or are you more of an introvert? Identifying the answers to these can be your guide on how to choose a career.
One of the suggested activities that can help in your introspection is to take personality tests. The most popular among them is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) which is also commonly used by companies in assessing the personality of applying candidates.
After completing the questionnaire, the MBTI will reveal your personality type according to the 4 theorized facets:
- Extroversion-Introversion (EI) – this tells about your energy level when it comes to interacting with people. It also defines how you focus on a certain topic.
- Sensing-Intuition (SN) – this reveals how you absorb information and the things going on around you.
- Thinking-Feeling (TF) – this shows your response in making decisions.
- Judging-Perceiving (JP) – this defines how you organize information that you come across with.
For instance, active listening skills, scientific capacity, and service orientation are some of the traits needed for healthcare professionals. For those working in the financial sector, great mathematical reasoning and logical skills, deductive reasoning, and administrative skills are highly sought after. These examples show how introspection and taking personality tests can help you choose a career suited to your abilities.
Outside of the business arena, introspection can also help you live a more fruitful life. By knowing the things that make you happy and fulfilled, you’ll be able to make better decisions that will give you satisfaction. On the other hand, you’ll be able to avoid or work on situations that make you feel uncomfortable and give you better control over your weaknesses.
Traits of A Successful Entrepreneur
Believe it or not, introspection is highly related to becoming a better entrepreneur. Knowing more about yourself will show you whether you have what it takes to become successful in your field.
The most successful people in their careers have several traits in common. See the list below and ask yourself if you’ve got the same DNA as they do to become the best in your niche.
- Passion
People often think that entrepreneurs’ passion revolves around money. However, money is just a byproduct of their thirst for innovation.
Your introspection should lead you to discover the goals that are vital to you; aspirations so important that you’re willing to put in the extra hours to achieve them. As an entrepreneur, your passion and belief in your vision should fuel you to rise to the challenges you’ll come across.
If you have no idea on how to find your passion, you can start by asking yourself the thing that you love the most. From there, you can learn more about it, give it a try, and never give up until you reach your goals.
- Motivation
Do you easily get frustrated and give up? If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have the drive to push through even when things aren’t going your way.
Your introspection should reveal how you motivate yourself to do things. Do you need a colleague or a boss to encourage you to finish your work? You have to work on your internal motivation if you have to rely on others to force you to do your job.
As an entrepreneur, you must always be driven to reach your goals. You have to be the one that inspires others and not the other way around.
- Resilience
Starting a business isn’t a walk in the park. The risk of failure is ever-present, and rejections are not unusual.
You’ll face countless errors and failures every step of the way. But through continuous adjustments, changes, and assessments, you’ll gradually get a step closer to your target.
As an entrepreneur, you shouldn’t be bothered by challenges, especially when you’re just starting. You should always keep a positive outlook and look at your project on a long-term perspective. You should persevere through frustrations and sleepless nights, believing that every obstacle is there to make you better.
Doing regular introspection can help you remain focused and positive in achieving your targets. The small steps you take daily pile up and move you closer to your goal. You just have to trust the process and maintain a positive attitude in overcoming the hurdles along the way.
- Organization
Being goal-oriented is a trait every entrepreneur possesses. Along with this is the ability to make plans and stick to them, so long as the situation doesn’t call for any contingency strategies.
Your self-discovery process should have revealed how organized you are as a person. Spontaneity is useful at times but having the ability to keep things organized is often more useful in attaining success. This trait can be honed with practice and deliberate habit changes.
- Creativity
You might get ridiculed for your seemingly impossible and impractical ideas, but this is what makes you a different breed from the usual businessman. You’ve got the guts to push through and realize the ideas you so strongly believe in even if everybody else thinks of it as absurd.
- Risk aversion
How aversive are you to risks? Are you too conservative to invest in a belief or idea and see it through to completion? Are you afraid to fail and hear what others will say about you?
If you’re too afraid to take risks and you focus too much energy on thinking about failure, then think again about running a business or even leading a team.
Taking risks is part of being an entrepreneur. You should be prepared to take the leap and overcome your fear of losing if you plan to achieve anything. Uncertainties and risks should be viewed as challenges and opportunities to reach your goal, and not roadblocks made to stop you forever.
Your journey of self-discovery should reveal how you handle risks and face setbacks. Your aversion to risks can still be resolved if you want to become a successful entrepreneur. Knowing your limitations is the key to overcoming them, which is why introspection is a vital part of choosing a career that’s fit for your personality.
How Introspection Helps in Building a Team
The demand for talented people will always remain high, so you must be able to find the right people to do the job and work with your ideas. But how do you spot the talent fit for the job?
Knowing more about yourself through introspection still plays a part in this case. Self-discovery gives you an idea of the kind of person you can and cannot work with. Hire someone whom you’re comfortable working with, but you should also consider those that have outstanding talent even if you feel like you’ll clash with them sometimes. Having a team that can work together despite differences is optimal in creating productive dynamics.
After self-introspection, you’d also have a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll see the importance of building a team that compensates each other’s weaknesses and highlights everyone’s strengths.
As an entrepreneur, you should be able to inspire people by being an example they can emulate. You can also mentor others who are willing to learn more about the trade. It will be easier for you to unlock their potential by teaching them the steps on how you did yours.
Conclusion
Introspection is a necessary step in finding your passion and determining the career path you should take. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, so you have to undergo self-discovery to confirm if you’re ready to lead the life required to be successful in your chosen field.
Self-introspection is only one of the aspects needed to become a successful entrepreneur and an overall better person. To unlock your full potential and live a holistic lifestyle, you should apply all the FELS ideals. By practicing each one of the FELS concepts, you’ll be able to live fully while making a positive impact on each person you meet.
