My favourite guiding principle: be conscious and self-aware

Today a candidate I interviewed was very interested in The Cactus Way, our 8 guiding principles, and went on to talk about how in a previous stint at Amazon what impressed him most was how their guiding principles were actively used every day. He then went on to ask me: "Other than customer obsession, what is your favorite CACTUS guiding principle?"

Be conscious and self-aware, take charge of your emotions.

To me this is a fundamental building block to everything we do. The world around us is a reflection of how we feel and think; all our interactions and relationships with colleagues and customers are an outcome of this. Hence it is critical in work and life to be able to look at our own thoughts, emotions and actions like a researcher would, with objectivity. This one ingredient helps us evolve and grow as individuals in all spheres of life and have greater engagement with everyone around us. If we do this we find that we are able to listen better, collaborate more, be more accepting of others and quicker to bounce back from failure.

There is a 2018 HBR article that stated that in a study done by them, only about 15% of the people who believed they were self-aware, were actually self-aware. Cultivating self-awareness in the right way is important, else it just becomes a process of justification. At CACTUS many of us have benefitted from the Conscious Entrepreneurship Program. It was eye-opening in helping improve our understanding on how to build a better company and life for ourselves. Amongst many things, it also gave us tools for better self-awareness and management of our emotions through an incident diary, a limitation realization exercise, and two meditation practices.

I think it is extremely relevant for founders and leaders of companies to be able to navigate an increasingly turbulent world.

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