Habit-Building Self-Awareness Exercises to Keep Yourself Accountable

We tend to think of self-awareness as hard, long-term facts about ourselves, but it’s also a cognitive state—a short-term mode of consciousness you can practice.

Being in this conscious mindset helps you stay accountable to your deepest values and most important goals. When you’re in it, you can catch yourself when you act in a way that’s not in line with your values, virtues, and aspirations. Sometimes you’ll realize it in time to change; sometimes you’ll learn from your mistake after. But you benefit by continually asking the question of whether your behavior is aligned with who you really want to be.

It’s often said that meditation is like doing mental push-ups: the process of bringing your thoughts back to the present trains your brain for better focus. What if you could do the same with self-awareness and train yourself to better notice opportunities for you to grow?

It turns out, there are such exercises. I’ve been collecting the ones that help me gain awareness of myself and stay more accountable to my goals of personal growth.