The Power of Self-Awareness

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

-Aristotle

What is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one's character and feelings. This involves understanding your emotions, thoughts, and behaviour and includes the ability to reflect on topics like your strengths, weaknesses, values, goals, and beliefs.

There are two main types of self-awareness- internal and external self-awareness. Internal self-awareness is the ability to reflect and understand your inner states, such as physical sensations, feelings, thoughts, motivations, and reactions. In essence, internal self-awareness is how well you know yourself.

External self-awareness is your ability to understand how others perceive you. It involves recognising how your words and actions are experienced by those around you and your impact on others. Good external self-awareness allows you to strengthen your relationships and improve your communication style.

Why is Self-Awareness Important?

Self-awareness is an essential part of personal growth. When you know and understand yourself, you can make informed choices about your life and future. It allows you to make decisions, take actions aligned with your goals, values, and who you are as a person, and utilise your strengths and build on your weaknesses.

Increased self-awareness has many benefits, including:

-Emotional Regulation: People with good self-awareness are better able to manage their emotions as they understand what they are feeling and why. Understanding your feelings and the physical sensations attached to these allows you to be conscious of your reactions to situations and choose an appropriate response.

-Goal Setting: Knowing what you want and what motivates you means that you can set goals that are aligned with what matters to you. In addition, good self-awareness means that you can utilise your strengths to achieve your goals, leading to a greater chance of success.

-Improved Relationships: Having good external self-awareness allows you to strengthen relationships by recognizing the impact of your behaviour on others and being mindful of your communication style.

-Decision Making: Knowing your values, beliefs, motivations, and goals helps you make choices aligned with who you are as a person.

-Personal Development: Being able to recognise and acknowledge your weaknesses means that you can set goals to work towards strengthening and growing your skills in these areas.

Tips for Improving Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is a skill that can be developed through reflective practices aimed at developing a deeper understanding of yourself. Here are some ways to develop stronger self-awareness:

-Meditation: Meditation involves observing your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations with curiosity and without judgment. Practising meditation builds the capacity to recognise what is happening in your body and mind and to accept this with kindness and compassion. Regular meditation helps you to understand your patterns of thought and behaviour and to tune into your emotions.

-Journaling: Taking time to reflect on your experiences, feelings, and thoughts through journaling provides space for increasing self-awareness. It allows you to process your emotions, gain new perspectives, clarify your goals and values, and develop your emotional awareness. The process of writing your thoughts and feelings allows you to observe your thoughts and feelings from a different perspective.

-"What" Questions: When doing any self-reflection, it is useful to ask yourself "what" questions, instead of "why" questions. "Why" questions can lead to focusing on the negative and can produce limited answers. In comparison, "what" questions allow the opportunity to expand your ideas. For example, instead of asking "Why was I feeling that way?", ask yourself "What was happening to me in that situation?". Or instead of asking "Why is nothing changing?", instead ask "What is blocking me from moving forward?".

-Feedback from Others: Getting feedback from people that you trust and who have your best interest at heart can help to identify patterns that you may not be aware of and develop your external self-awareness by better understanding how others perceive you. It is important to be open to receiving feedback and understanding the other person’s perspective.

-Reading and Podcasts: Continuously learning through reading or listening to podcasts on topics related to personal development or psychology provides new ideas and perspectives to consider. It can offer different frameworks for self-discovery and present new insights which may help you to better understand yourself.

-Therapy: Therapy allows space for deeper introspection and reflection, as it is a safe space with the support of a trained professional who can assist you in gaining new perspectives and a deeper understanding of yourself and your experiences.

Developing your self-awareness is a skill that everyone can benefit from and which can bring improvements to many areas of your life. Dedicate some regular time for self-reflection, in whatever form works best for you, to build your self-awareness and attain the benefits associated with knowing yourself better.

If you need help navigating your thoughts and feelings, we are here to support you with our Team of Mental Health professionals. Contact us by emailing [email protected] or calling 01 611 1719. You can also fill out the Enquiry Form on the Top of this page and we will reach out to you shortly!