Self-awareness is one of those buzz words that gets thrown around in conversations quite often, and it's used fairly often in the corporate world. Self-awareness is the most critical part of emotional intelligence.
One of the most famous Delphic maxims is "Know Thyself", inscribed on the temple of Apollo. So, how is knowing ourselves still relevant in our times? Before asking this question, let's understand what is self-awareness.
I had a colleague come up to me the other day and asked me if I could help his mother handle a tough subordinate and that she was losing her temper on him every now and then. I had a long discussion with him, and we concluded that she needs to understand herself a lot better, her trigger points and how to manage them.
What is Self-awareness?
Self- awareness is the ability to understand one’s feelings and emotions and why we feel the way we do. Asking that “why” is as it helps us understand our trigger points.
Self-awareness can be broadly divided into internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.
Internal self-awareness is about understanding and clearly seeing ones own emotions, feelings, values, behaviors, strengths and weaknesses and the impact of the environment around us.
An integral part of internal self-awareness is understanding one's value system as it will help you fathom what is important to you in life.
On the other hand, external self-awareness is how others perceive you; it's about how others see all the above factors.
Why is Self-awareness Important?
Self-awareness is foundational for personal growth, increasing emotional intelligence and improving interpersonal relationships. Below are some of the benefits of self-awareness.
Self Regulate & Change if Needed:
Understanding our emotions on a deeper level helps us to manage them effectively; when we reflect enough, we know the changes that we need to carry out that will be beneficial in the long run.
Improved Performance:
Having a heightened sense of your strengths and weaknesses lets you use your strengths more often and work on your weaknesses; this will, in the long run, increase your performance.
Reduced Bias and Adaptability:
Self-aware people do not get swayed by other people's likes and dislikes and see things from different perspectives; they are very comfortable with yin and yang existing at the same time. They adapt to different situations and people with agility.
Have Stronger and Happier Relationships:
When you're not biased and that you adapt quite quickly, you empathize with others and develop stronger relationships. It also helps you understand the traumatic experiences you’ve had in your life, especially as a child. Once you acknowledge them, it helps you move past those painful experiences and live a happy and content life.
Better Decision Makers:
Lastly, when you’re aware of your value system, you start aligning your actions and behaviors to what really matters to you. The likelihood of you achieving success and fulfillment goes up.
5 Ways to Enhance Self-awareness
Self-awareness is a lifelong journey. It takes time, effort, and practice to become more self-aware. However, the benefits of self-awareness are worth the effort. By taking the time to develop your self-awareness, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you.
Here are 5 simple, yet simple ways of increasing self-awareness.
Spending Time with Yourself:
First one is simple yet the most powerful one is spending time with yourself. We live in a world in which most of us are either with someone or with a gadget or absorbed in thoughts about our past or future. At the end of the day, reflect on how your day was, and think about your past too. Not being judgemental about it, but understanding what were things that were under your control and which were not. Some traumatic experiences might surface up, especially the ones you had as a child.
When you sit by yourself, you start challenging your values and opinions. You start realizing that some of them are serving you well and others are a barrier to your growth, development and most importantly- peace of mind.
You might end up asking a lot of “why” questions, e.g., why did I act that way, or why did I not speak up for myself; these questions are a good place to start but swiftly move to the “what” questions as they will help you understand yourself better. Some examples are-
"What were the sensations that I felt when I was angry?"
"What did I learn about myself and my parent/ partner when I had a flight with him/ her?"
“What can I do to overcome my fear of speaking up?"
2. Keeping a Journal:
Another way to increase your self awareness is to journal. When you write down your emotions, you’re clearing up your cluttered mind, and the reasoning behind why you did what you did or said becomes vividly clear.
Here’s where the second technique- journaling, comes into play. There are different ways of journaling. You can write your thoughts down in a notebook or a word document. Bullet journaling is quite popular these days and requires less time. Try them out and see which one is beneficial for you.
3. Filling Out Personality/ Values Assessments:
Thirdly, There are a lot of tools available that will help you understand yourself, e.g., Johari window (https://kevan.org/johari), Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Products-and-Services/Myers-Briggs), Big 5 (https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/) and loads of other psychometric tests. Please know that some of them are paid services and some of them are free.
A word of caution though- don't just use them as the analysis because they tend to put people in boxes; they do provide you with reflection points. Use them in conjunction with other techniques.
The Values in Action (VIA-IS) is a great tool for you to use to identify your dominant strengths and is free on the VIA website (https://www.viacharacter.org/) It measures your answers across six broad categories with a total of 24 strengths. Take the assessment, and you'll generate a report identifying your top 5 strengths and how to begin to optimize them.
4. Seeking Feedback:
We all have blind-spots. Another way to increase your self-awareness is getting feedback from people you trust. This word called feedback gets thrown around a lot in the corporate world. What a lot of managers don't realize is that you can give me subjective feedback, but if I don't trust you, I will not take your feedback positively. I might hear you out, but I might just throw it in the dustbin because we’ve not built on a relationship. So, ask feedback from people you trust- both in personal and professional lives. Tell them that you won't take it personally. Reflect on what they said about you and make changes accordingly if needed.
5. Practice Mindfulness:
Lastly, practice mindfulness. Now, mindfulness is a very broad term. You can practice mindfulness in a traditional way by meditating, but it could also be spending time in nature or just painting or sketching; the key is to be present in the moment. This will help you connect with your body, mind and your surroundings.
Although I don't get time to spend time with mother nature as often as I’d like to, I practice meditation daily. I’ve been practicing it for almost 9 years now; I started meditating because I was going through a difficult time in my life and I wanted my monkey mind to stop overthinking. Fast forward today, I'll admit that it’s one of the habits that I've developed which helped me even during covid times and in other challenging situations. I’ll highly recommend you all to give it a try.
So, which tools have you used in the past or plan to use to foster self-awareness? Please feel to share your thoughts and ideas.
Remember that self-awareness is not a terminus, but a lifelong journey. Be kind and patient with yourself on this journey; stay curious and open to new experiences, and it will help you learn and grow. The more you practice self-awareness, the more connected you'll be with your thoughts, feelings, sensations and have a deeper understanding of yourself and those around you.
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