In the last blog, I have talked about Thinking for Self and How it is important for Self Knowledge or Self Awareness. And from there arises the question, “What this Self-Awareness is where the idea of Self-Awareness came from?”.
Let’s break the word into two terms; Self and Awareness
Self means 'a person’s nature or qualities' and
Awareness means 'noticing stuff in the world’ or ‘ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events occurring around'.
Hence, Self-Awareness is about focusing your awareness on yourself.
We are merely thinking, feeling or acting, and spend our days without giving any extra thought to become Self-Aware, we never think that we can give our attention to ourselves; however, it is possible and must be done by every individual.
And for that, we must know what self-Knowledge is. Although everyone has a basic idea about it, we don’t know exactly where it comes from, what its antecedents are, or why some of us seem to have more or less than others.
This is where the Self-Awareness Theory arrives, proposing some conceivable answers to questions like these.
Self-Awareness Theory is based on the idea that you are not your thoughts, but the entity observing your thoughts; you are the thinker, separate and apart from your thoughts - Duval & Wicklund
In philosophy, self-awareness is the understanding of one’s own identity or personality. Do not confuse it with self-consciousness as consciousness is being attentive to one’s environment and body while self-awareness is being aware of that attention. Self-awareness is to know and understand your character, feelings, motives, and desires.
You have a self-image of how you want others to perceive you. Apart from that, you also have a self-image of how you see yourselves and thus you tell stories about yourself to yourselves and others. But self-awareness is about focusing on the reality of your behaviour and not on the stories you tell about yourself.
In another way, we can say that self-awareness is your ability to notice your feelings, your physical sensations, your reactions, your habits, your behaviours, and your thoughts, or the ability to see yourself. You are aware of these aspects of yourself as if you were another person observing you.
Self-awareness has been divided into two broad categories.
Internal self-awareness
External self-awareness
Internal Self Awareness
Internal self-awareness simply means how clearly and objectively you see yourself. It defines your ability to know your values, temperaments, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, strengths and weaknesses.
When you are self-aware internally, you see transparency in your relationship with other people, there comes a clear image of what and where you are and what and where you want to be in terms of relationships, career or attitude.
External self-awareness
External self-awareness means being aware of how other people perceive you. It defines your ability to understand the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs of others towards you.
When you are self-aware externally, you understand other people’s feelings and emotions, their principles more clearly and thus form a better connection with them.
Conclusively, self-awareness is the ability to be aware of yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can manage your emotions, behaviour and understand correctly how others perceive you.
So, we can say that self-awareness is a tool to monitor your stress, thoughts, beliefs and emotions and ultimately to self-control.
With my blog, I tell you how each feeling is important for self-awareness and how it is helpful in different aspects of your life. Because your feelings are your truth.
So stay tuned. ❤️
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