Thinking about the self is not equal to knowing the self. Practising self-awareness in daily life is a way toward knowing yourself a little more each day with every passing life experience. We think we know a lot about ourselves, the problem is we ‘think’, do we actually know our inner ability and do things based on our set internal standards?
Self-awareness is your ability to understand your actions and reactions based on your thoughts and emotions. Things you can do and cannot do, duties you can perform and you cannot perform. The more self-aware you are the more you are able to manage expectations and communicate your thoughts in a much better way.
Practising Self-Awareness in Daily Life: Reasons and Benefits
No matter how hard we try we cannot escape from our thoughts and feelings, there is so much hidden beneath the layers inside us. The more I sit with myself, the more I dwell on the possibility of knowing myself. What else I can discover? And what else I can do based on my discoveries? The possibilities are limitless, but only if you are willing to be mindful and receptive to the outcome.
In the process of practising self-awareness in daily life, you might come across many limitations which will leave you rattling and loathing. You might even think, WHY me? We all do this, but as soon as you will start replacing the WHYs with WHATs you will begin to experience the life-changing outcomes in your daily life.
You can begin by, replacing, WHY is this happening to me? with, WHAT can I possibly do to overcome it?
Replacing whys with what’s gives you clarity in your thoughts and makes you solution-focused and not problem-focused.
Benefits to becoming more self-aware:
Being an NLP practitioner, I suggest you undertake this Self-Awareness Test to develop an understanding of yourself. When we practise self-awareness in daily life, we see ourselves clearly, we make better decisions, we are more confident and we communicate effectively. When we know our strengths and weaknesses as a result of deep introspection and self-reflection we perform better at work. Here are a few benefits of practising self-awareness in daily life:
+ Improved life skills by recognizing what you do well and what you need to improve
+ Increase in your happiness levels by aligning your ideals with your actions
+ Improved leadership skills by understanding how employees/co-workers perceive your behavior
+ Strengthened work and personal relationships by managing emotions
+ Increased self-motivation by seeking out your true passions
+ Decreased stress by identifying your emotions and decluttering tasks you don’t enjoy.
Self-awareness is also helpful when:
+ Working with others in a team
+ Coping with stress
+ Dealing with change
+ Managing and leading others
+ Dealing with clients
How to become more self-aware
1.) Explore your feelings: Stop ignoring your feelings, explore them.
2.) Track your habits: Make a habit of tracking your feelings. Keeping a journal is one method, and it can be helpful to write about your thoughts, feelings, successes, and failures each day.
3.) Self-reflection will allow you to better understand yourself.
4.) Ask for feedback: Ask for feedback from your friends, family, and colleagues, and take personality tests. Often, we are not aware of certain aspects of our personality, creating blind spots in our self-awareness.
To conclude, I would say many individuals find it really hard to accept the consequences of the choices they make in their daily lives, but with our level of awareness, we can not only take much more calculative decisions but can also enable our minds to be ready to face any consequence and work towards finding alternatives. We all need a level of awareness that can help to significantly boost our overall quality of life.
Additional Resources
- Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix | Tasha Eurich | TEDxMileHigh – Here
- Harvard Business Review – Here
- A longitudinal, mixed method evaluation of self-awareness training in the workplace. 2015 study by Sutton, Williams, and Allinson – Here
- Personality test- 16 Personalities
Lots of love and gratitude
