5 Ways To Master Self-Awareness: Road to Personal Growth & Transformation

Let’s first unpack this concept of what self-awareness is.

Fundamentally, self-awareness is the ability to recognize your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors and understand them and what they are telling you about you. Simply put, it’s discovering yourself and knowing who you are as a person.

It requires the ability to analyze yourself from an outer perspective. Noticing the patterns of your thoughts and behavior, figuring out their underlying causes, and then resolving them if they do not serve you positively or you may choose to reinforce these thoughts and behavior practices if they do serve you positively. This gives a better viewpoint and deep understanding of yourself on various levels.

Self-awareness is a lifelong process. You keep on analyzing and discovering yourself over time as your motivations and preferences change in life. However, it’s you who can best analyze and interpret your feelings, and thoughts. Considering that no one understands you more than yourself.

Why must we be self-aware? Will it make any difference?

Yes, the ideology of awareness as a whole is the first step to creating lasting change, if we are not aware then we do not know and if we do not know we are unable to cause an effect…

Therefore, self-awareness is the key through which we can cause change and personal development in our lives. It has a huge impact on all aspects of your life.

Self-awareness helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses. So, you get to know what you are best at and the capabilities you hold. Also, this gives you a fair share of insight into areas of life that need improvement. Once you’re aware of your strengths and uniqueness you can leverage them to be successful.

Self-awareness can help you understand yourself more and get clarity with key questions like. What do you want to have in life? What motivates you? What is your driving force? These are some essential questions to ask before setting any goals.

When it comes to striving for your goals, you can think of self-awareness as your tool that helps you course correct you back on track when you go off track... bit like how a plane heading to its destination will auto correct its course thousands of times inflight to ensure you arrive at your destination.

The higher your self-awareness is, the higher your emotional understanding. The more you understand your emotions the more you can discover the underlying causes of your behavior. Thus you’re able to rectify your behavior accordingly. Research published in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry 2011 on self awareness suggests that humans can control their emotions and responses through practicing self awareness.

When you are at self-aware, you are better informed about your thoughts and actions and thus a much better place to make informed decisions and we all know it is the decisions and choices we make everyday that shapes our lives. You can already see how important this is right?

Self-awareness facilitates broadening your view. It improves your perception and understanding of others and our relationship with them including events that happen and things within our environment. You're better able to comprehend others’ behavior and see from their perspective and better able to respond proactively vs reactively.

Challenges and adversities are a part of life. And sometimes it becomes so hard to deal with it. Self-awareness comes as a savior in any such situation. It allows you to see beyond the current reality. You get an outlook on the situation with a different perspective. The one that’s more focused on the bigger frame of things.

Enabling you to be more resilient, and ready to face the circumstances. It will reduce your stress and liberate you from falling prey to depression.

In short, self-awareness affects our overall well-being and plays a critical role in our growth and development.

The machine of self-awareness runs on three key variables, thoughts – how and what we think, emotions – how we feel and lastly our behaviors – how we behave. These trio have direct relationships to each other that is to say what we think impacts how we feel and what we do but the inverse is also true.

Therefore, to become self-aware you need to know your emotions, tap into your thoughts, and finally observe your behaviors. These blocks will serve as a ground for personal growth.

The key life principle that governs the concept of self-awareness is:

Bring conscious and deliberate awareness through focus to the self with a mindset of curiosity, the self being your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. This can be done using the why and how questions.

For example... Why did I react like x, how did that make me feel... how did that create this situation etc. ...

This can often feel like you are always monitoring how you think, how you feel and how you behave and how they all affect the outcomes of your experience in your life.

Have you realized the significance of self-awareness? If yes, then the most probably next thought should be to improve it. So, here you go we have brought top ways to improve your self-awareness.

The best way to increase your self-awareness is through self-examination and reflection. You need to take time out regularly in a distraction-free zone to reflect. Journaling is an effective way to reflect on what happened, what was the reaction, and why that happened. Writing gives structure to your thoughts and helps in diving deep to clarify things.

Multiple mindfulness techniques are available. These techniques can increase your self-awareness. Mediation and yoga are good ones to start with. It could also be as simple as just practicing being present throughout the day.

Feedback from others is another way to discover yourself. It can be effective as they’re analyzing you from a different perspective. Take feedback from the people who truly know you, not from everyone. Sometimes it may not be correct so don’t rely on it completely.

Ask yourself questions and try to find the answers to them. Answers are already there; you just need to uncover them by focusing. Question your feelings, thoughts, and values. Assuming that you can’t do it by yourself, hiring a mental health coach for assistance could also support you through developing the practice of self-awareness.

Mistakes or failures are learning opportunities. It gives us an insight into ourselves. So take the time to sit with these opportunities and understand them to level up your self-awareness.

Undoubtedly, self-awareness is fundamental for personal growth and development. It helps you process the things going inside you and channels your energy in the direction of success. Essentially self-awareness allows a person to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. Which, secretly I think all human beings are seeking to some degree in their lives.

However, when you first start this practice, it may be difficult initially, but worth the reward if you stick through and develop these habits. This is also where you can seek support from professionals like life coaches. We often perform better when we are supported and have accountability especially when we are starting something new.

Good luck with your self-awareness journey.

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