The Benefits of Self-Awareness and Self-awareness Hacks

  • What is self-awareness?
  • 6 benefits of self-awareness.
  • 4 Tools to develop self-awareness.
  • How has self-awareness helped me?
  • References

What is self-awareness?

Self-awareness is the ability to understand oneself; an individual’s attention is placed from the external environment to the internal environment such as thoughts, experiences, and emotions to actions.

“The ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad”

Debbie Ford.

Self-consciousness and self-awareness are terms that often interchanged but there is a difference. Self-consciousness can be defined by awareness of ones thoughts and environment; however this may be associated with a constant judgement of oneself which is can be related to the feeling of shyness and embarrassment.

Self-awareness differs as you are NON-JUDGMENTALLY aware of your thoughts and feelings.  Self-awareness allows you to have a clearer perception of yourself and how other people perceive you. Think of it as if you were viewing yourself from a third person perspective. It can be often the first step to helping you direct and determine where you want to go in life.

Tasha Eurich, an organisational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author of “Insight further describes self-awareness as having two parts- internal and external self-awareness.

Internal self-awareness represents knowing your values and personality strengths and weaknesses. External self-awareness represents knowing how other people see you. The two parts are independent of each other. A person can be high or low on both scales, or high on one and low on the other. The image (Eurich, 2018) below shows this relationship.

Daniel Goleman an author and science journalist describes self-awareness as the cornerstone to emotional intelligence.  In his theory of emotional intelligence he describes three competencies involved in self-awareness which are stated below:

  • Emotional self-awareness – Recognising one’s emotions and their effects
  • Accurate self-assessment – Knowing one’s strengths and limits
  • Self-confidence – A strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities

Benefits of Self-Awareness?

The ability to be aware of our emotions and thoughts throughout the day is key to understanding ourselves better and being able to consciously manage our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. This can help us have more control of ourselves and not feel overwhelmed when life becomes difficult.

Below is a list of a few specific benefits of self-awareness:

1) Improved ability to deal with stress

  • Through self-awareness you can understand what triggers you to be stressed, angry or defensive. By understanding these triggers you will be better able to respond appropriately and have more control of your life. Furthermore, you will have a better understanding of what you need to do to reduce your stress and ensure you don’t burn yourself out.

2) Improved management of time

  • Self-awareness allows you to understand when and what you need to do, to perform at your best. This means you can manage your time accordingly, i.e. if you work better in the morning you can structure your day to do the most work in the morning.

3) Improved Emotional Intelligence- You understand the impact your emotions have on others

  • Psychologist Daniel Goleman lists self-awareness as a key component in emotional intelligence in his book “Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ”.
    • Understanding your moods and emotions well allows you to stay grounded and not carry away with the emotions that emerge from moment to moment. This will allow you to assess things objectively and create a rational decision, as opposed to feeling like you have no control of your choices.
    • Furthermore, through self-awareness you are able to understand other people’s emotions and empathise with them better.

4) You’re better able to take on feedback

  • With more self-awareness you’re likely to know your strength and weakness. Hence, you are more receptive/open to constructive criticism and willing to learn from the feedback.

5) Increased confidence

  • The ability to know your strengths and weakness is powerful as you understand what you need to improve and you feel more confident in your strengths. This also means you can create a plan to confidently improve your weakness and not become worried as to why you have those weaknesses or why you are not achieving your goals.

6) Self-acceptance

A study in 2016 by Sutton et al. found that the self-reflection, insight, and mindfulness aspects of self-awareness can lead to many benefits which include becoming a more self-accepting person. Through self-acceptance you can be more confident in your life and you can find it easier feel more grateful and happier.

Some tools to develop Self-Awareness

  1. Johari Window
  2. Take a personality test
  3. Journal- Take “what” questions and not “why” questions
  4. Mindfulness i.e. meditation

1) Johari Window

The Johari Window was designed to help people to understand their relationships with themselves and other people. There are 4 questions/areas investigated which are labelled below.

1. Open Area- What is known by the person about himself and is also known by others?

2. Blind Area- What is unknown by the person about himself but which others know?

3. Hidden Area- What the person knows about himself that others do not know?

4. Unknown Area- What is unknown by the person about himself and is also unknown by others?

Key points about the Johari Window:

  1. The aim should always be to develop the ‘open area’ for every person- When the open area increases, people have more resources, skills and energy. An increase in these areas can mean a person has grown in their interpersonal skills.
  2. The blind spot is not an effective place to be and can be improved by listening and taking constructive criticism from other people such as a team member or a coach.
  3. The smaller the ‘open area’, the poorer the interpersonal communication.
  4. A large hidden area (unknown area) can be stressful and also be due to fears and anxieties that the person does not want to face- this is why this area is best explored with another person. As you become aware of the ‘hidden area’, then your ‘open area’ increases.

2) Take a personality test

This is pretty straightforward and probably one of the best ways to get started. The Myers-Briggs personality test is a common test that people often take but there are many others. These tests are a series of questions that help you to become more aware of your weakness and strengths in your life. In addition they can teach you about other factors such as your learning style or communication preferences.

See the following link for a free personality test you could do-http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

3) Journal- Take “what” questions and not “why” questions

Journaling is a super useful tool to self-awareness but is often is overlooked because people do not know how to start.  You can start by making notes on how you feel, stress triggers or behaviour patterns you notice every day. For example, at the end of the day if you feel stressed, you could journal “I feel stressed today because…” and write down everything you notice and then continue writing whatever comes up for you without judgement.

The more you judge what you write, the more likely you might stop yourself from continuing because you may feel uncomfortable with what you have written.

To make journaling more effective after you have written about your feelings and day, you could ask yourself “what” questions instead of the standard “why” questions. For example if you felt stressed due to increased work tasks and having less time to sleep, you could then ask yourself the question- “what could you have done differently or what would make your next day more productive”.

The answers to “what” questions help you be more objective, future-focused, and more empowered to act on new insights. This is because these questions help you fill in specific key details and develop a clear description of the problem (Eurich, 2018).

Although “why” questions can be helpful in finding your underlying motivation, they could also cause you to ruminate unproductively on the same questions. This is because many people do not have access to unconscious thoughts or feelings and hence “why” questions could result in people unintentionally inventing answers they feel is true but may not be the cause. Furthermore, if your “why” is fuelled by negative beliefs this could result in you thinking about these negative beliefs and feeling worse about yourself (Eurich, 2018).

The following paragraph from Eurich, 2018 (see references) where she talks about the “what” and “why” questions:

..People get caught up when asking “why” questions too much. “What” questions, on the other hand, get to the root of the problem faster. In this example: Why are you anxious about your relationship with your mom? Because I need love. Why do you need love? Because I need to feel secure and safe. Why…turtles turtles turtles… Instead, if you simply ask what you would need to not feel so anxious about your relationship with your mother, you quickly get to “I need love from my mother” and you’re both more self-aware in the situation and you have a tangible problem to solve instead of gazing at your navel in an endless turtle dive.

Eurich, 2018

4) Mindfulness i.e. meditation

Mindfulness involves focused, non-judgemental attention between the inner and outer self (see my Mindfulness blog for more information). Mindfulness is hence useful to understand and monitor emotions and how our experiences affect our feelings and actions. Ultimately mindfulness can teach you how to be more self-aware and less reactive to negative events or stimuli.

How has self-awareness helped me?

Increasing my own self-awareness had helped me to realise I have more control of my life than I thought and I don’t have to feel like I’m trapped and that I can become successful. It’s allowed me to appreciate my strengths and accept my weakness and this consequently has allowed me to move forward and overcome many of my weakness (whereas before I would have accepted them as not changeable). A good example of me overcoming or getting better at my weakness would be public speaking. Suffering anxiety I was barely been able to speak up in a room of 5 people but with increased self-awareness of how to improve and what I need to work I was able to become more confident and even spoke in a room of 100+ people.

Furthermore, as a physiotherapist, life coach and mindfulness teacher I have been able to see just how much increasing an individual’s self-awareness can help them feel more confident and really step up to take responsibility of their lives. I see this a lot in chronic pain patients who feel like they have no control of their lives and feel helpless but with more self-awareness, practice and consistency they slowly step up to take control of their lives, and take steps to get stronger and more confident with themselves.

References

  1. Eurich, T. (2018). What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It). [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it [Accessed 6 Feb. 2020].
  2. Sutton, A., 2016. Measuring the effects of self-awareness: Construction of the Self-Awareness Outcomes Questionnaire. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 12(4), pp.645-658.