What Is Self-awareness?

People often say that self-awareness is a critical component to success in life and in relationships but what exactly is self awareness and why does it matter?

Self-awareness is one of the dimensions of Emotional Intelligence and an important step toward personal and professional success. Self awareness involves having a clear and moment-to-moment perception of what is going on with your body, mind, feelings, and behavior. It also involves being clear about your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, and assumptions, and how all of these things influence one another.

That may sound like a lot but the steps toward achieving self-awareness are straightforward and once you start your journey toward self awareness, it becomes a way of life.

WHAT DOES SELF-AWARENESS INVOLVE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

1)  Awareness of your body

Being aware of your body involves recognizing different types of physical sensations, breathing, muscle tension, gestures, facial expressions, body posture, and movement. Your body and your emotions are intertwined and by recognizing what your body is doing, you can identify your emotions more precisely.

Let’s say that you are leaving work and realize that you are clenching your jaw. You can ask yourself, why am I doing that? It may be that you are concerned or angry about something that happened during your work day. This will allow you to address the particular feeling that you are having, and to relax your body before you get home. Self awareness empowers you to identify your feelings sooner than you otherwise might and the earlier you recognize your feelings, the faster you will address them and resolve them. The result is that you will arrive home more relaxed and more present, equipped to successfully deal with the satisfactions and pressures of family life.

2)  Awareness of your thoughts (including beliefs and assumptions)

Noticing when your mind is racing and the types of thoughts that you are having is a key component to achieving heightened self-awareness. There are many reasons why you may have racing thoughts. Excluding a physical cause, your mental gymnastics could suggest the presence of a strong emotion, such as fear (anxiety). Whatever the cause, early detection is quite advantageous as it allows you to address the cause directly. If your racing thoughts are related to a physical cause, you will benefit from addressing it head-on, and if the activity is related to a particular emotion, being self-aware will allow you to figure out what that emotion is and address the cause.

Negative thoughts can be related to physical and/or emotional circumstances or they can stem from beliefs and assumptions that create negative feelings, regardless of your circumstances. Beliefs play a very important role in triggering emotions. For instance, if you believe that people are not to be trusted you are likely to experience fear, suspicion, or anger toward people when you interact with them, regardless of what their intentions towards you are.

Assumptions are beliefs that are not based on evidence or proof. They can stem from your beliefs or from other sources such as your mood, past experiences, being upset about something else, etc. Beliefs and assumptions are very closely related and (similar to the previous example) if you have the belief that people cannot be trusted, you will assume that whomever you interact with will hurt you in some way.

Making assumptions is natural and there is nothing wrong with it. We make assumptions all the time and this tendency can be very useful. For instance, when we are crossing the street and have a green light, we typically assume that the cars that have a red light will not proceed through the intersection. However, assumptions can often be wrong. So we have to be very careful in not taking our assumptions as facts. If we discover evidence that shows that an assumption is wrong, we must have the courage and humility to change our belief.  In general, assumptions and beliefs must be in line with reality; they must be accurate.  Self awareness empowers you to recognize your assumptions and beliefs, exerting control over your emotions. This will allow you to benefit more from your relationships and through self-awareness it’s likely that you will enjoy your life more fully.

3)  Awareness of your feelings

There are several components to emotional awareness. First, you must understand what triggers certain emotions/reactions in you (i.e., situations, people, dynamics, and thoughts). Second, you must be aware of what level of emotion is present within each situation. Third, you must be aware of how your emotions affect your body, your thoughts (or are affected by them), and your behavior. And finally, you must be aware of how your emotions impact others.
Being aware of your emotions can benefit you in the following ways:

• You can examine the beliefs underlying the emotion that you are feeling
• You can decide whether to express the emotion you are feeling
• You can regulate the intensity with which you express your emotion
• You can use the emotion to understand something that is probably important to you (for example, if you are upset about something, it probably means that whatever you are upset about has a deep meaning for you).

Many people are disconnected from their emotions especially powerful or disturbing ones such as anger, sadness, fear, or jealousy. This may be in part the result of negative childhood experiences that taught you to shut-off your feelings. While it’s true that you can distort, deny, or numb your feelings, you cannot eliminate them. Whether you’re aware of them or not, your feelings will still be present. Unfortunately, without emotional awareness, you will be unable to fully understand your own motivations and needs, and therefore it will be impossible to communicate effectively with others in order to make sure that your needs are met. In order to be emotionally healthy, you must be in touch with your emotions, be comfortable with them, and be able to manage them effectively. This level of emotional awareness is the key to achieving overall self-awareness.

4)  Awareness of your behavior

Self awareness includes being aware of your behavior. This involves noticing what you are doing (or about to do). How many times did you do something while not being fully aware of what you were doing, such as putting the house keys away, dialing a phone number or even driving (you know you arrived at your destination but your mind was somewhere else during the trip)?

There are hundreds of things competing for our attention at any given moment. It is often very difficult to shut everything out except for what we have in front of us. This has profound negative implications in our lives, including broken or lost things, missed appointments or deadlines, conflicts with others, feelings of being overwhelmed, and depression, anxiety, or burnout. If we say or do things without self-awareness, we may end up with an unwanted result. For instance, if you feel irritated by a remark someone made about your work, and fail to notice that you are beginning to raise your voice in response, you may say something really hurtful or even abusive in retaliation, ruining a relationship that may be very important to you. On the other hand, if you are paying attention to both your emotions and behaviors, you will be able to prevent unproductive reactions and express your feelings and needs in a rational way that facilitates resolution of the conflict.

5)  Awareness of your strengths and weaknesses

One of the most important components of practicing self awareness is to be aware of your strengths and weakness. Paying attention to this will allow you to design personal and professional strategies that leverage your strengths and minimize the effects of your weakness.

For example, in the professional arena, if you are very good with people but not good at administration, you may look for work in a profession or career that requires good social skills (i.e., customer service, counseling, coaching, sales) and does not necessarily require you to have great administrative skills (e.g., filing documents, organizing, processing). It will also allow you to determine what kind of training you will need in order to improve your weaknesses.

For example, in order to improve your administrative skills, you could take classes in business administration. In your personal life, having full awareness of your strengths and weaknesses will allow you to choose the right relationship partner, to describe yourself more accurately, and avoid the problems that arise from having the other person have unrealistic expectations of you.

In summary, self-awareness is the foundation of change. Having self-awareness allows you to be aware of your body, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and to understand how they all interact. Self awareness allows you to change things to make your body, thoughts, feelings and behaviors making them work for you in a way that supports your physical and emotional health. Self-awareness also allows you to increase fulfillment, joy, and consistency in your life, and to accomplish your personal and professional goals.

Your comments are very important to me and help me guide future article choices. Please share your thoughts about Self-awareness with me! You can comment below or on my Facebook page. I will read all of your comments and make every effort to address your questions, struggles, and concerns in future articles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Georgiana Spradling, Ph.D., MFT, CDVC, is a multicultural and multilingual (English, Spanish, French) Emotional Intelligence and Relationship Coach with over 20 years of experience helping people choose the right partners and avoid the wrong ones, manage emotions and behaviors in self and others, leave unhealthy partnerships and move past old relationships. She is a Certified Domestic Violence Counselor and has a Certificate as an Anger Management Facilitator. Her e-book: Don’t Get Stuck With the Wrong Partner: Learn to detect unhealthy traits and behaviors in others is available on Amazon Kindle. In it you will find more dating tips:

• 60 questions that will help you determine who your current or potential partner may be.
• 10 dimensions that may reveal inconsistent, unhealthy or harmful patterns of behavior in another person.
• Suggestions on how to interpret inconsistencies in behavior in the person that you are considering committing to.
• Advice on what to do when you find traits and behaviors that make you uncomfortable or that suggest deeply rooted physical or psychological issues that are hard to manage and live with.

You can subscribe to her YouTube Channel and to her online news bulletin “Relationships On Fire” on her website at www.drgeorgiana.com.

Dr. Georgiana coaches on the telephone, online or in her office in San Francisco (USA) and offers a FREE 25-minute consultation. She can be reached through her website: www.drgeorgiana.com, by e-mail: gs@drgeorgiana.com or phone: 1-650-731-5105.