Wednesday 24 March 2021

Elements of Self-Awareness

Knowing oneself is the beginning of all wisdom.Self-awareness  is considered as a basic concept to life skills. It is considered universally as the “Mother of all skills”. Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Self-awareness is a comprehensive self-assessment of your potential skills and competencies. It is the ability to know what you are doing to understand your moods and emotions; and how they impact your life. The main aim of self-awareness is to create a meaningful life so that you can live in harmony with who you are really and what matters most to you. 

 Self awareness includes our recognition of ourselves, of our character, of our strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. Developing self-awareness can help us to recognize when we are stressed or feel under pressure. It is also often a prerequisite for effective  communication and interpersonal relations, as well as for developing empathy for others.

Bucher defines “Self-awareness involves the cerebral exercise of introspection. This attribute reflects the cognitive exploration of own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, behaviours, and the feedback from others.”

Significance of Self Awareness

  • It helps to create achievable goals because you can identify your strengths, weaknesses, and what drives you when ‘goal-setting’.

  • It allows you to guide yourself down the right path by choosing to pursue the opportunities that are the best fit for your skill-set, preferences and tendencies.

  • It makes identifying situations and people that hit our triggers and anticipating our own reactions easier.

  • It allows us to make positive behavioural changes that can lead to greater personal and interpersonal success building ‘Self-Awareness’. 

  • Research shows that self-awareness is directly related to both emotional intelligence and success.

  • It allows you to guide yourself down the right path by choosing to pursue the opportunities that best fit your skillset, preferences and tendencies.

  • It makes it easier to identify situations and people that hit our triggers and enables us to anticipate our own reactions. 

  • It allows us to make positive behavioral changes that can lead to greater personal and interpersonal success.

  • Self-knowledge is also considered an important quality for a mental health professional.

Self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion. Let's explore  the key elements involved in self awareness.

Innate personality

Personality is the totality of an individual’s psychological traits, characteristics, motives, habits, attitudes, beliefs and outlooks.Every person is born with an innate personality, it generally implies to all what is unique about an individual, the characteristics that makes one stand out in a crowd. An innate personality is different for every person, yet some things may influence that personality, such as circumstance, values, habits and lifestyle. The main determinants of personality are heredity, environments and situations.

  1. Heredity : The inheritance or the passing on of physical or mental characteristics genetically from one generation to another. That is the biological, physiological and inherent psychological makeup is determined at the time of conception like physical structure, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition etc  It is the biological inheritance or transmission  of traits from parents to their offsprings.

        2. The environmental : The environment to which we are exposed & engaged plays a substantial role in shaping our personalities.  The School , Family, Playground, etc plays significant role in moulding charismatic personality of an individual. Beyond heredity,the culture in which we are raised, our early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends and social groups, and other influences that we experience decides ones personality.

        3. Situation : An individual’s personality although generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The varying demands in varied circumstances call forth different aspects of one’s personality.

Motivators 

Motivators are something that provides a reason or stimulus to do something. that is psychological drives that impel you to action. The four types of self motives are  self-enhancement motive, self-assessment motive, self-verification motive and self-improvement motive. Lets check what each means

        1. Self-enhancement motive : Leads one to elevate the positivity of their selfconceptions and to protect their self-concepts from negative information.

        2. Self-assessment motive : Leads one to obtain a consensually accurate evaluation of the self. that is one diagnose the situation regardless of its positive or negative                    implications. Self-assessment is inferred from seeking feedback about performance, creating tasks that enable feedback, preferring diagnostic tasks, and blaming self for failure.

       3. Self-verification motive : Leads one “to maintain consistency between their selfconceptions and new self-relevant information

       4. Self-improvement motive : Leads one to “improve their traits, abilities, skills, health status, orwell-being.  That is actively approaching and coping with problems  and making genuine improvement for well being.

Cognitive intelligence (IQ):

Cognitive intelligence is the ability to handle reasoning,solving problems, applying tricks think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience It is the ability to reason, to build logical arguments from sensory evidence, to solve puzzles and problems, andto make sense’ of the universe. 

Emotional intelligence (EQ):

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. 

Blind spots

Blind spots are usually the negative  aspects of our personality -   The blind spot- where information is known to others, however we do not know about ourself. This information can be in the form of body language, habits, mannerism, tone of voice etc

Biases

Blaming external factors when bad things happen and to take ourselves credit when good things happen. It is a defence mechanism.

Moral beliefs, ethical code and passion

 Selection and the stand for genuine moral beliefs , preservation of code of ethics and striong desire, dedication and passion for well being and optimistic nature affect our self awareness.

Professional skills

The totality  of our educational qualifications, training, and experience that we  apply in our life influence ours self- awareness. The code of professional ethics and expertness in the field also affects self awareness.

Resilience

It is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness like a phoenix bird. It is our ability to sustain high-level performance under stress.

Capacity for service

The degree or extent  to which we utilize or dedicate our talents and skills  in the service of others.

Personal mission factor

The motto, the vision and mission of oneself, Who I wants to becpme ?  The inner and strong desire what we intended to accomplish.

Self Esteem

It is the confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect.  Self opinion about  oneself. High self esteem is a good opinion of ourself and low self esteem is a bad opinion of ourself.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave.

CONCLUSION

Self awareness is often defined as “as an ability to engage in reflective awareness.” It  is the ability to focus on ourself and how our actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with our internal standards. If you’re highly self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behavior with your values, and understand correctly how others perceive you. In this topic we the determinants or elements that constitute the self- awareness of an individual. 

Click Here to view  my  CONCEPT  MAP  on Elements of  SELF-AWARENESS



.

No comments:

Post a Comment