“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” – Marcus Aurelius Picture Not Mine. Credits to the owner.

https://positivepsychology.com/self-awareness-matters-how-you-can-be-more-self-aware/

Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection.

While it may not be possible to attain total objectivity about oneself (that’s a debate that continues to rage throughout the history of philosophy), there are certainly degrees of self-awareness. It exists on a spectrum.

Although everyone has a fundamental idea of what self-awareness is, we don’t know exactly where it comes from, what its precursors are, or why some of us seem to have more or less than others.

This is where the Self-Awareness Theory comes in, offering some potential answers to questions like these.

Introduction to the importance of self-awareness

https://www.spiritualresearchfoundation.org/spiritual-practice/steps-of-spiritual-practice/personality-defect-removal-and-improvement/self-awareness/?gclid=CjwKCAjwjqT5BRAPEiwAJlBuBTzlofGLNUluncvY8Gr-BY53ctZv5ZJyIxwWezu_4PG14SSwY47LWBoClhMQAvD_BwE

In our first section, we discussed important background information on what makes up one’s personality and why personality defects are most likely to reduce one’s capacity to grow and develop as human beings. Personality defects are one of the main reasons why we are unhappy. If due to one’s destiny one has to experience pain, then personality defects are one of the main mediums through which we experience this unhappiness. More importantly for those who are genuinely seeking spiritual growth, personality defects can severely restrict their capacity to grow regardless of which spiritual path they may follow. Once an individual experiences better mental health and stability (i.e., with less personality defects) it is easier for him or her to make rapid spiritual progress and achieve an ideal personality by practising Spirituality.

What is self-awareness?

Anyone who is dedicated to self-improvement, personal development or the higher goal of spiritual growth needs to actively seek to understand oneself. This is because only when one understands where one lacks, can he or she focus their efforts on what to improve.

Definition of self-awareness:

1. Self-awareness is the capacity that a person has to introspect.

2. It includes gaining an understanding of and insight into one’s strengths, qualities, weaknesses, defects, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, ideals, responses, reactions, attitude, emotions and motivations.

3. Thus introspection also includes assessing how one is perceived by others and

4. How others are impacted based on one’s behaviour, responses and conduct.

Psychologists often break self-awareness down into two different types, either public or private.

1. Public Self-Awareness: This type emerges when people are aware of how they appear to others. Public self-awareness often emerges in situations when people are at the centre of attention, such as when giving a presentation or talking to a group of friends. This type of self-awareness often compels people to adhere to social norms. When we are aware that we are being watched and evaluated, we often try to behave in ways that are socially acceptable and desirable. In short we display our best behaviour, which may not be reflective of our true personality. Public self-awareness can also lead to ‘evaluation anxiety’ in which people become distressed, anxious, or worried about how they are perceived by others.

2. Private Self-Awareness: This type happens when people become aware of some aspects of themselves, but only in a private way. For example, seeing your face in the mirror is a type of private self-awareness. Feeling your stomach lurch when you realize you forgot to study for an important test or feeling your heart flutter when you see someone you are attracted to are also good examples of private self-awareness. Close family members and friends are privy to some aspects of our private self as we let our guard down in front of them. Hence, they become invaluable aides in helping us assess ourselves.

As we practice becoming more aware of ourselves and how we are perceived by others, we learn many more shades of our characteristics to a minute level. Hence we are in a better position to overcome our personality defects and understand where our strengths lie. In the following paragraphs, we will examine some of the ways one can increase one’s self-awareness.

How to increase self-awareness – By observing oneself

To understand our personality, we need to understand the nature of our mind. The mind is made up of two parts – the conscious and sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious mind is vast and the impressions that are buried deep inside are not easy to uncover and analyse. However, ever so often during the day one’s mind erupts and reacts to some events and situations negatively. As a result, one feels a certain amount of restlessness and emotions such as insecurity, fear or anger. Most of us plod on through our daily lives not taking a moment to pause and introspect as to why we experienced that emotion in the first place. In fact, through such situations in one’s day-to-day life, one’s mind, by reacting negatively to situations and events opens up a window and gives one a vignette into its nature. If one is alert and objective in one’s outlook, one can follow the pathway through the window that the mind opens up. As a result, through this process one begins to gain greater self-awareness as to how one’s mind works and how it responds to various stimuli. This is known as metacognition, which means having awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. This particular type of self-development pertains to becoming conscious of one’s own body and mental state of being including thoughts, actions, ideas, feelings and interactions with others. It is therefore the first step in overcoming negative emotions and reactions.

A person generally responds negatively to situations and events due to impressions of personality defects in the sub-conscious mind.

Let’s take an example. Annette felt restless when her boss praised her colleague. She kept on thinking of the incident throughout the day which only increased her restlessness. She was consumed with the negative thought that, ‘No matter how hard I try, I never get noticed.’ In short Annette’s day did not go well. After a good night’s sleep, she forgot about it and she went on with her life. Alternatively, if Annette had been alert to the feeling of restlessness and introspected as to why she had felt like that, she could have gained insight into her mind and understood which personality defect of hers was manifesting so as to cause such restlessness. Accordingly, in the future she would be able to be more solution oriented to avoid the restlessness caused by such incidents and gain stability.

As Annette becomes more alert to introspecting about her feelings and emotions in such situations, there will be further stages to her becoming more self-aware. For example,

● How long does her restlessness continue before she becomes alert to it?

● Will she then be able to put the brakes on it and control the feeling of restlessness?

● Does she try to go within and learn more about herself and her personality defects?

● Where else does this type of restlessness occur? Who else are involved?

How to increase self-awareness – Someone providing us with feedback or telling our mistake

“Turn that music down Raul”, Raul’s father shouted. “There is not a moment’s peace in this house with you continuously playing such loud music.” Raul cursed under his breath and sullenly turned the volume of the music down.

It is never easy to take negative feedback from others about our actions or our life. In such times, thoughts such as, ‘why can’t they understand me’, ‘I am not like that’ and ‘I do not want to hear about it’ will often cross our mind.

Suppose Raul stopped for a moment and looked at the situation objectively; he would probably learn a thing or two about how others perceived him. When other people give us some feedback however stern it may be, it provides us with a clue as to how we are perceived by others. If someone has experienced pain due to our actions, it is mostly due to some personality defect in us that is causing our action to impact others adversely.

5 How to increase self-awareness – Observing someone else’s mistake and then introspecting

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Jeremy and Ruth were arguing about household chores. Ruth insisted that Jeremy was not doing enough at home while Jeremy continued to provide lame excuses about why he was unable to do the household chores on time. When their friend Mark overheard their argument, he realised that he was the same as Jeremy. Now as a third person and not being emotionally involved, Mark could objectively see that Jeremey’s lame excuses were childish and illogical, and were exasperating his wife Ruth. Seeing the impact of this, Mark made a mental resolve to overcome his own laziness and help his own wife at home without making any excuses.

This is an example of how when one observes a situation that involves other people, one gains a greater understanding of oneself. As one may not be emotionally involved in the situation, one is more objective and hence the ability to learn is more.

Our dreams can also tell us about ourselves

Sometimes stronger impressions in our subconscious mind surface in our dreams to the extent that we are able to remember the dream and even learn about our mind.

One seeker had a dream where she was experiencing fear before going on stage to deliver a lecture. She woke up in a sweat and could not go back to sleep for over an hour. Such kinds of dreams are worth introspecting upon as they may shed some light on deeper issues in our sub-conscious mind.

In summary

● Becoming self-aware is the first step in overcoming personality defects.

● Self-awareness can be achieved through observing one’s own mistakes, asking others for feedback, observing others mistakes objectively and through some dreams.

● Whenever one becomes emotionally unstable, restless or upset one should become alert as on deeper introspection, it usually provides insight into some personality defect that has been triggered.

● We should be open to learning about ourselves and have the courage to take feedback from others. By this we can objectively analyse our mistakes and find practical solutions to change for the better.

5 Ways to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Now we have some clear-cut examples of self-awareness in mind. We know what it looks like to embrace self-awareness and grow. But how do you do it? What did our leading characters do to practice self-awareness?

There are many ways to build and practice self-awareness, but here are some of the most effective:

1. Practice Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness refers to being present in the moment and paying attention to yourself and your surroundings rather than getting lost in thought or ruminating or daydreaming.

Meditation is the practice of focusing your attention on one thing–like your breath, a mantra, or a feeling–and letting your thoughts drift by instead of holding on to them.

Both practices can help you become more aware of your internal state and your reactions to things. They can also help you identify your thoughts and feelings and keep from getting so caught up in them that you lose your hold on your “self.”

2. Practice Yoga

Yoga is a physical practice, but it’s just as much a mental practice. While your body is stretching and bending and flexing, your mind is learning discipline, self-acceptance, and awareness. You become more aware of your body and all the feelings that manifest, and you become more aware of your mind and the thoughts that crop up.

You can even pair yoga with mindfulness or meditation to boost your self-awareness.

3. Make Time to Reflect

Reflecting can be done in multiple ways (including journaling; see the next tip) and is customizable to the person reflecting, but the important thing is to go over your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to see where you met your standards, where you failed them, and where you could improve.

You can also reflect on your standards themselves to see if they are good ones for you to hold yourself to. You can try writing in a journal, talking out loud, or simply sitting quietly and thinking, whatever helps you to reflect on yourself.

4. Journaling

The benefit of journaling is that it allows you to identify, clarify, and accept your thoughts and feelings. It helps you discover what you want, what you value, and what works for you. It can also help you find out what you don’t want, what is not important to you, and what doesn’t work for you.

Both are equally important to learn. Whether you like to write free-flowing entries, bulleted lists, or poems, writing down your thoughts and feelings helps you to become more aware and intentional.

5. Ask the people you love

It’s vital to feel we know ourselves from the inside, but external feedback helps too. Ask your family and close friends about what they think about you. Have them describe you and see what rings true with you and what surprises you.

Carefully consider what they say and think about it when you journal or otherwise reflect. Of course, don’t take any one person’s word as gospel; you need to talk to a variety of people to get a comprehensive view of yourself.

And remember that at the end of the day, it’s your self-beliefs and feelings that matter the most to you!

Importance in Counseling and Coaching

Self-awareness is a powerful tool that, when practiced regularly, can do more good for coaches and clients than anything else a professional can share with them. To make real, impactful, and lasting change, people need to be able to look inward and become familiar with that internal environment.

Building self-awareness should be a top priority for virtually all clients, after which the more traditional coaching and counseling work can begin. For example, you can counsel someone on their bad habits and give 1,000 ways to break their habits. Still, if they don’t understand why they tend towards these bad habits in the first place, it’s almost a guarantee that they will either never break those habits or will quit for a while and simply pick up where they left off when things get tough.

Self-awareness is not only vital for the coachee or client; it is also important for the coach or counselor. In fact, self-awareness is prioritized as a core standard in the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Standards (2009) for the profession, as both a requirement for counselors and a necessary skill to build in clients. It takes a good amount of self-awareness to give competent counsel and provide actionable advice.

Plus, self-awareness will help the caring counselor from getting too wrapped up in their client’s problems or seeing the issues through their own skewed lens. To truly help someone, it’s essential to see things from their perspective, and that requires being self-aware enough to put our thoughts and feelings aside sometimes.

Meditation, Mindfulness, and Self- Awareness

When we meditate or practice mindfulness, we are paying attention to the things that can often get ignored in our busy day-to-day: the present moment and our own internal experience. Those who get to know their thought processes and patterns are more able to adapt and improve them, both by simply being aware of their processes and patterns and by giving themselves a mechanism for practicing and improving.

Indeed, a program intended to enhance self-awareness (among other things) through yoga and meditation resulted in a range of improvements, including more positive affect, less stress, greater mindfulness, enhanced resilience, and even greater job satisfaction (Trent, Borden, Miraglia, Pasalis, Dusek, & Khalsa, 2019).

Self-Awareness & Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be defined as the cluster of abilities that allow us to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and others (Goleman, 2001).

According to the most popular theory of emotional intelligence from psychologist and author Daniel Goleman, self-awareness is not only crucial for emotional intelligence– it’s one of the five components.

These five components are:

1. Self-awareness

2. Self-regulation

3. Social skills

4. Empathy

5. Motivation

Other popular theories of emotional intelligence also include self-awareness as a core component, making it one of the factors that virtually all researchers and experts agree on (Goleman, 2001).

Self-awareness is a necessary building block of emotional intelligence; it is the building block upon which the rest of the components are built. One must have self-awareness to self-regulate, and social skills will be weak and of little use, if you are not aware enough about when and how to use them.

If you’re looking to build your emotional intelligence, self-awareness is the first stop. Make sure you have developed strong skills in self-awareness before giving the other elements your all.

4 Tips for Improving Self-Awareness in Relationships

If you want to be more like post-reflection Monique than pre-reflection Monique (referring to examples of self-awareness skills in action above), or if you’re going to help your clients with their relationship woes, here are some excellent tips for introducing more self-awareness within the context of a relationship:

1. Practice mindfulness, especially when interacting with your loved ones. Pay attention to the words they say, their tone, their body language, and their facial expressions. We often communicate far more information with the latter three than we do with our words alone. Give your loved ones your full attention.
   
   

2. Have regular discussions about the relationship. It’s important to keep things in perspective and ensure that nothing is falling between the cracks. When you have regular conversations about your relationship with your loved ones, it’s much harder to avoid or ignore things that can turn into problems. It also helps you reflect on your part and come prepared to discuss your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, along with your loved ones.
   
   

3. Spend quality time together and apart. This is especially important for romantic relationships, as we often find ourselves spending most or even all of our free time with our spouse or partner. However, much you love and enjoy spending time with your partner, everyone needs some quality time alone.
   
   Make sure you and your partner are both getting some quality “me” time to think about what you want, what you need, and what your goals are. This will help you keep yourself from merging too much into your partner and maintaining your independence and stability. Then, since there will be two independent, stable, and healthy adults in the relationship, it will be even more fulfilling and satisfying to both partners when they spend quality time together.
   
   

4. Share your perspective and consider theirs. It’s easy to get too caught up in our perspective on things; however, healthy relationships require that we consider others’ needs in addition to our own. To know what our loved ones need and to deliver on those needs, we must first identify and understand them. We do this by practicing our self-awareness and sharing that awareness with our friends and family.
   
   If you never check in with your loved ones on their views or feelings, it can cause you to drift apart and inhibit real, satisfying intimacy. Ask your loved ones for their perspective on things and share your perspective with them.

Role in the Workplace and Leadership

As noted earlier, self-awareness improves our communication, confidence, and job performance (Sutton et al., 2015).

It’s easy to see how self-awareness can lead to these outcomes in the workplace, as better self-evaluation naturally leads to improving the alignment between our actions and our standards, resulting in better performance.

According to Tasha Eurich at the Harvard Business Review, self-awareness can be divided into two categories or types: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.

Internal self-awareness is about how well we see ourselves and our strengths, weaknesses, values, etc., while external self-awareness is understanding how others view us with those same factors (Eurich, 2018). Good managers and leaders need both to perform well in their roles.

Although you might think that more experience as a leader and greater power in one’s role leads to better self-awareness, that may not be the case. Experience can be positive or negative in terms of learning and improving the self. Even positive experiences can lead one to attribute success to themselves when it may have had more to do with the circumstances, leading to false confidence.

In fact, the HBR notes that only 10-15% of those they studied display self-awareness, although most of us believe we are self-aware (Eurich, 2018).

To improve self-awareness, Eurich recommends introspection–but with a focus on asking oneself the right questions. She notes that asking “why” might not always be effective, as many of our internal processes remain shrouded in our subconscious or unconscious minds; instead, asking “what” may lead to better introspection.

For example, instead of asking, “Why do I fail at this task so often?”, you might ask yourself, “What are the circumstances in which I fail at this task, and what can I do to change them?” It’s not a foolproof method, but it can aid you in improving your self-awareness and increasing your alignment with your standards on certain activities.

Self-Awareness in Students and Children

Self-awareness isn’t just for managers and employees; it can also substantially benefit students, children, and adolescents. The same benefits that make us more productive in the workplace can make students more productive in the classroom and at home: better communication with teachers and peers, more confidence, and more satisfaction with performance can all lead to happier, healthier students.

These benefits also apply to advanced students. Increased self-awareness leads to more self-care in medical students (Saunders et al., 2007) and a better understanding of one’s strengths and capabilities along with a boost to emotional intelligence in law students (James, 2011).

A Take-Home Message

In short, a little extra self-awareness can be of great benefit to anyone with the will to improve. This piece includes a description of self-awareness, an exploration of the theory of self-awareness, examples, and tips and tools you can use to boost your self-awareness. We hope you find this information helpful in increasing your awareness or the awareness of your clients.