I challenge you to slow down to speed yourself up.“There are 3 things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self” — Benjamin FranklinKnowing one self or self awareness is the process of slowing down to become consciously alert about yourself, your feelings, actions, emotions etc.. and then speeding up to chase your dreams. It is critical for reaching our highest potential and personal effectiveness.So why am I taking about all this awareness stuff when it’s time for SWOT, the 2nd step in the 1–2–3 approach for SWOT to TOWS.Previous article — https://medium.com/@chandrakar.sakshi/the-essentials-for-swot-8451ba5aa3b4Well because SWOT is all about Self awareness and awareness about our environment. We have culturally been conditioned to define self-awareness as knowing about our strengths, living our strengths and strengthening our strengths.

“We don’t become enlightened by pretending to be perfect. We become enlightened when we have the courage to acknowledge and embrace our darkness” — Carl Jung

So, I want you to understand that if you truly want to grow and develop yourself you got to be willing to go deeper self and this will hurt. It will disturb and disrupt your comfort that is why most people often avoid it.

SWOT JOURNEY

Before you start on your SWOT journey , I want you to keep in mind the following :1- Context- Are you doing SWOT to evaluate a business , product, process, career switch or yourself. Do your SWOT keeping your context throughout in your mind.2- Purpose & Values — Know your purpose and values.3- Divergent thinking — keeping the context in mind while exploring all the possibilities.4- Futuristic approach — Think at least 10 years ahead and list down those things that will help you build and survive in the future.5- Feedback — Ask your family members, friends, colleagues and most importantly your mentors and teachers to do your SWOT. This will enlighten and give you a better perspective.I personally love to remember everything I would enjoy doing in my childhood that gave me immense happiness and so sometimes reflecting back on your past to look for your hidden strengths might also help.

SWOT — It is a planning tool to identify your key Internal strengths and weaknesses and External opportunities and threats.

Now start by taking a piece of paper and drawing 4 equal quadrants of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

The whole job now is to fill each category by asking several questions to yourself.

1. Strengths — What’s hot about you?

Qualities that can be used for your advantage over others. List down your -

• Skills / Talents
• Qualification / Certification
• Achievements
• Expertise that makes a difference
• Advantages you have over others
• Skills, values and ethics that set you apart
• Skills & talents that others see in you
• Strong personality traits
• Resources & assets that can help you
• Financial backup
• Network — people who can help you

2. Weaknesses — What’s not so hot?

Qualities that are a disadvantage over others

• Things you are less confident and uncomfortable about
• Development/ Improvement areas — skills, education or competencies
• Negative work habits
• Mental blocks
• Missing skills
• Missing qualifications / certifications
• Weaknesses according to others
• Weak personality traits
• Financial backup

3. Opportunities — What can make you hotter?

Elements that can be exploited for your advantage.

• Think about what different areas or fields you can apply your skills to
• Think about what different target segments you can serve
• Uniqueness in your products, services or skills
• Areas where you have advantage over others
• Areas where others are failing that you can take advantage of
• Trends and market opportunities you can exploit
• Advantage of your location or geography
• Think what and how new technology can help you
• Advantage you already have in current market or job
• Is there a demand of skills or talents you possess?
• See how strong your network of strategic contacts are, that can help you.

4. Threats — What might burn you?

Elements in the environment that could cause trouble

• What is it that your competitors are doing which could be a threat?
• Obstacles you face in current business or work or situation
• Weaknesses you are unable to overcome
• Political, social or environmental troubles if any
• Any changing technology, skill set demand, social changes or perception threatening your position
• Personal traits hurting your career advancements
• Changing market demand or product trends
• Economic pressure

USE your SWOT

Strengths — Use them to build and capitalize upon

Weaknesses — Use them to improve yourself or eliminate them

Opportunities — Seize them, anticipate or invest in them

Threats — Identify and eliminate them

We are here done with our data synthesis and in the next and the last part of this blog series we will prepare our action plan through the TOWS analysis. Happy SWOTingThanks for reading😊