The Benefits of Self Awareness
It involves three elements to get you where you want to go:
- Introspection: the process of attempting to directly access one’s own internal psychological processes, judgments, perceptions.
- Self-reflection: the examination, contemplation, and analysis of one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.
- Insight: the clear discernment of a solution to a problem. It’s the result of self-reflection and introspection.
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It means paying attention to yourself, knowing what’s going on in your life.
Self-awareness means understanding your personality. You also understand your values, your relationships, and your beliefs. Self-awareness includes understanding how you process your experiences.
- Don’t obsess: More thinking about yourself won't automatically lead to deeper knowledge.
- Don't ask the wrong questions: When we ask why questions, our brain points toward the most obvious answer. We usually land on the one that confirms our pre-existing beliefs.
- You should aim for what questions. These will help you to name your emotions, which has been shown to reduce negative feelings and attitudes.
- Ask questions that shift your focus to its possible solution. They will reveal potential answers to the problem and will also increase your confidence in solving future problems.
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- Introspection is simply looking in. Stopping there not only limits your perspective, but it can also diffuse it. It can lead some to pessimism, or even depression.
- Reflection is looking in so you can look out with a broader, bigger and more accurate perspective. Without reflection, your life becomes happenstance—activity without insight.
It means paying attention to yourself and knowing whether you're happy with what's happening in your world.
It means understanding your personality, your values, your relationships, and your beliefs.
- personality
- values
- passions
- aspirations
- strengths
- weaknesses
- the environment most conducive to your well-being.
They act as a framework, because introspection is key to building internal self-awareness, but aimless wandering through your own psyche probably won’t get you very far.