Three Methods for Improving Your Self-Awareness
Many people think that they are self-aware, and the truth is, many people are not even close to understanding their true selves. Self-awareness is the ability to understand one’s feelings and emotions at any given moment. It can be challenging to figure out your feelings at times, but there are three methods for increasing your self-awareness that you should know.
Understanding your Self-Awareness.
Understanding your self-awareness is the first step to increasing it. Learning about yourself and how you think, feel, behave and react can help you increase self-awareness and understand those around you. Without self-awareness, we cannot improve ourselves or be aware of our emotions — this makes us less capable in social situations because we don’t understand why another person may have reacted a certain way with their behavior. By being more self-aware about who we are, what motivates us, and other things like that, we open ourselves up for growth by accepting where we need improvement (which leads to improving ourselves). We all want to grow; if someone doesn’t incorporate personal development into their life, they’re preparing themselves for a life full of frustrations and disappointments. The best self-awareness comes from studying people, places, and things, but self-assessment can also help. You don’t have to be 100% accurate with your self-assessment because it’s just a starting point for personal growth — you’re encouraged to change anything that isn’t true about yourself through self-reflection.
Self-Awareness vs. Self Reflection
It is essential to note the difference between self-awareness vs. self-reflection. Self-awareness refers to being aware of our feelings, emotions, thoughts, etc., whereas self-reflection means looking inward at ourselves instead of outwardly towards others. Some people are better at showing empathy than others; this doesn’t mean they lack emotional intelligence or that their empathy level should be lower. It is important to self-reflect because this allows us to understand whether or not we need improvement in how well we self-soothe, self-regulate and are self-motivated. The best way for self-reflection? Look inward. Write down your feelings when you’re feeling angry or sad about something instead of bottling it up until the point where you lash out at others — that’s unhealthy behavior and should be avoided whenever possible. Self-reflection helps ensure our thoughts are unbiased rather than being influenced by other people’s views on life.
How does Self Esteem work?
Although self-esteem isn’t a natural part of emotional intelligence, it can help improve one’s level of empathy if nurtured adequately over time with constant positive feedback. Self-esteem is self-confidence and self-assurance in one’s abilities to complete a task. Those with high self-esteem are more likely to be successful when compared with those that lack self-confidence or self-esteem because it gives the person an inner belief in their capabilities rather than constantly worrying about whether they’re good enough for someone else. High self-esteem can also help reduce anxiety levels which can lead to depression if left untreated long term. People who have low self-esteem will constantly seek validation from others, but, as already mentioned above, this leads to feeling unloved or unworthy. With these feelings comes resentment towards others who don’t give us what we need (which often isn’t true), leading to negative thoughts or emotions. With self-esteem, it’s important to note that we all have an inner critic and self-limiting beliefs. Self-awareness is vital because you don’t want these thoughts or feelings blocking your path forward — do not let them hold you back from achieving what you’ve always wanted in life.
We must also include self-awareness of our actions, emotions, behaviors, and those around us (other people). We cannot improve if we are unaware or ignorant of the issues affecting us daily; this leads to anger which can often cause frustration towards others when left unchecked for too long. It’s vital to improve our emotional intelligence to practice self-awareness regularly to gain insights into ourselves. This self-awareness doesn’t have to be formal, but it does need consistency for personal growth to occur.
Self-awareness is crucial because we want ourselves and others around us to feel respected, validated, heard, understood, and cared about — these feelings lead directly into self-care, which will help reduce our daily stress levels significantly.
Self-awareness is a vital skill that everyone should strive towards mastering one way or another; if you’re willing to put the time in then, then you can improve your self-awareness.
Good self-awareness is key to self-management.
Self-regulation means maintaining self-control over our behavior, emotions, and responses. If you’ve ever lost your temper before, then this is an example of poor self-regulation; it’s essential not to do this because you’ll probably regret whatever actions took place afterward. Suppose they were hurtful or disrespectful towards others which can lead back into anger issues that need resolving for the cycle to stop repeating itself. Self-management comes from having a sense of yourself — knowing your values and morals and what makes you happy or sad at any given moment will help determine how we react when faced with new challenges. Self-awareness helps guide us through life so we can lead a happy and fulfilling one.
Methods for Improving self-awareness
There are many different methods of improving self-awareness. However, the three that I have found most effective are: reflective journaling, talking with others, and solitude.
Reflective journaling is where you take time to self-reflect on your thoughts and feelings towards others or yourself, as well as what’s going on around you. Talking with others about self-awareness includes discussing personal values, emotions, and behaviors — this will help improve self-awareness because it provides us insight into how other people view themselves, which can lead to valuable feedback if done correctly. Solitude means taking not one’s surroundings without distraction from technology devices (smartphones) so that we can focus solely on our mindsets without any outside interferences.
These three methods are beneficial for those who lack self-esteem issues because they rely heavily upon the ability to understand oneself and be self-aware. Self-awareness is a skill that requires self-motivation and time to develop — it’s not something that magically appears overnight, so be patient with yourself if you feel as though your self-awareness isn’t where it should be. Practice makes perfect, after all, so the more self-insightful information we can gather from ourselves will help increase self-esteem by showing us our strengths and weaknesses and what they mean about how we perceive ourselves going forward.