Self-awareness is the ability to introspect and recognize
one's own thoughts, emotions, and actions as distinct from those of others. It
involves being conscious and cognizant of oneself as an individual with a
unique identity, including personal characteristics, beliefs, desires, and
motivations.
Self-awareness is also about knowing and understanding yourself in order to keep building yourself up to greater heights and sharing your goodness with the world around you. This gives us purpose and allows us to thrive. Finally, self-awareness is about knowing who you are not and knowing what you don’t stand for so as not to waste your time with unneeded exhaustion, frustration and confusion.
What
is the value of self awareness?
Self awareness means the ability to be confident, effective
and creative which in turn results in being interesting and attractive.
This results in having thriving relationships and gaining greater financial
success in our lives.
How
do I become self aware?
These
are the seven strategies I used with myself and highly recommend to
others.
Understand
your personality:
Use the Enneagram to understand your personality. Studying the Enneagram
through classes, videos and books allowed me to know why I do what I do or why
I respond in a certain way. Rather than thinking what is wrong with me, I
started to understand and appreciate myself. Self-understanding and
appreciation results in healthy self-esteem.
Know
your love language:
In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman, explains what needs
to happen in order for us to feel loved. For some it’s words of
affirmation, or praise, for some it’s gifts, for some it’s physical touch, and
for others it is quality time and for many others it is acts of service.
Knowing your love language allows you to be fed with lots of love and
appreciation. This feeding results in confidence and
radiance.
Acknowledge
your energy type or your communication and behavior style: In his
book, Surrounded by Idiots, Thomas Erikson, explains how people are
generally categorized into four different types of which are, red/fire,
green/earth, yellow/air and blue/water. Each has their own way of
communicating and behaving. Understanding ourselves and others and the different
types of people that exist allows us to improve our relationships and
communication skills. And better communications skills means being a more
effective person.
Know
your positive and negative character traits: This can be done through
self-reflection, journaling and interaction. Make lists of what you do
well. Acknowledge your daily victories. Recognize your character
traits. When others give you a compliment noting a positive trait about
you, accept it with gratitude; don’t deny it or reject it. You can also
ask your loved ones, those you trust, if they can tell you your positive and
negative character traits for your self-awareness.
Know
your strengths and weaknesses: This is important because it allows
you to know how you best contribute to yourself and others. It is our
responsibility to know ourselves and to know how we best contribute to the
world. Doing more of what we do best allows us to grow our confidence and
to have a greater impact on everyone around us.
Know
what your values are and what you stand for and what you don’t stand for: In a song titled
“Roar” from Katy Perry, the lyrics state, “I stood for nothing so I fell for
everything.” When we don’t know what we stand for we may waste a lot of
time being everything to everyone. Which may in turn result in lots of
confusion, exhaustion and frustration. Knowing our values will strengthen
us and allow us to spend our time developing and elevating ourselves rather
than spreading ourselves too thin to a point of falling apart.
Know
what is good in your life and what needs improvement. This can
be achieved through daily gratitude. The more good we acknowledge in our
lives the more aware we become of our blessings and what is going well for
us. (This knowledge gives us confidence to know that we can make
improvements.) By recognizing our own good we become skilled at
recognizing other people’s good and making them feel good about it. This
makes us interesting, effective and attractive to ourselves and
others.
When
I asked the members of my Facebook group, CookingTheConfidence with Vera, what
is important to note about self-awareness, many gave interesting
feedback.
Bella-Davydova-Wollan,
said: “Self awareness flourishes in a growth mindset. You should want to be a better
version of yourself.”
I
hope this article inspires you to want to be a better version of yourself and
that your self-awareness will only flourish. And I wish you to achieve
much success with your finances and relationships through this
process.
Which
of the seven strategies that I listed, did you implement already? What will you
implement next?
If
this is new to you, which one of the seven strategies can you start
implementing now?
Vera Borukhova
