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What is Self-Awareness?

Do you want to be happier, have more influence, be a better decision-maker, and be a more effective leader? Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their character, feelings, motives, and desires. Self-awareness, then, is the most important muscle you need to develop. It's what will keep you on target to be the best version of yourself and the best leader. Research suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we are more confident and more creative. We make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships, and communicate more effectively. 

What Is Self-Awareness?

The basic self-awareness definition is the ability to see and evaluate yourself consciously and objectively. Building self-awareness should be your top priority. Self-awareness is about focusing your awareness on yourself. Self-awareness is your ability to perceive and understand the things that make you who you are as an individual, including your personality, actions, values, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts. Self-awareness is a fundamental tool for self-control.

If you're highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you. When people are self-aware, they understand their strengths and challenges and know what helps them thrive. They also understand that how they see themselves may be different from how others see them. People with strong self-awareness skills can:

  • Recognize their strengths and challenges
  • Understand and talk about their needs and feelings
  • Recognize other people’s needs and feelings
  • See how their behavior affects others
  • Develop a growth mindset and learn from their mistakes

Self-awareness is about focusing on the reality of your behavior and not on the story you tell yourself about yourself. Self-awareness allows you to improve every area of your life by taking responsibility for your emotions, thoughts, and actions. 

There Are Two Types of Self-Awareness

External factors you cannot control can determine your mood, and one thing that self-awareness can help you control is how you perceive your own life. This typically requires you to interpret both mental and emotional states. In general, there are two types of self-awareness internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.

The first category - internal self-awareness, 

Represents how we see our values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. Internal self-awareness can be described as how we perceive ourselves to our values, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and environment. Not only can internal self-awareness help us make better decisions and be a more compassionate people, it also helps us achieve our goals.

We’ve found that internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness. Internal self-awareness can also lead to anxiety and depression 

The second category - external self-awareness, 

External self-awareness is how others perceive you. Rather than introspection, external self-awareness requires you to gather insights from the world around you. 

In terms of those same factors listed above. external self-awareness is also more likely to demonstrate higher levels of empathy, allowing them to better relate to others. For leaders who see themselves as their employees do, their employees tend to have a better relationship with them, feel more satisfied with them, and see them as more effective in general. Before you walk around and ask others for feedback, there are other steps you can take to improve your external self-awareness.

  1. Choose your focus. Rather than trying to improve everything, start with an area that seems most relevant.
  2. Write down your assumptions. Your assumption should be a statement that includes your actions, the impact of those actions, and how others perceive your actions.
  3. Begin gathering insights. Insights don't have to be direct feedback.

Benefits of Self-Awareness.

Self-awareness allows you to clarify your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and values and recognise the effects that others have on you and vice versa. Understanding how others view you allows you to empathise with those from different backgrounds and those who have different perspectives. Self-awareness can also help you to:

  • Improve your skills by understanding your strengths and weaknesses
  • Improve your happiness at work by aligning your actions with your ideals
  • Become a better leader by understanding others
  • Strengthen personal and work relationships by managing emotion
  • Improve your decision-making by being aware of the significance of your actions

In a nutshell, self-awareness is the ability to clearly and objectively see yourself and everything that makes you who you are, and how all of them fit into your current life. In other words, self-awareness can be seen as mindfulness towards yourself.

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