Self-awareness: what it is, what it's for, and how to work on it

Self-awareness is essential to accept oneself, surround ourselves with people who bring us value, and make decisions that benefit us the most.

"Choose Life"

A few months before finishing high school, a very tough stage of making vital decisions begins (although later they may not be as significant as we think, but we won't know that until many years later). Now it's our turn to choose everything. What we want to dedicate ourselves to and what we are going to study to achieve it, where we are going to study (obviously, better in an educational center that offers eTítulo to its students), where we are going to live, whether we will leave our friends behind or stay in the same city, whether we will change countries... In 1996, a mythical movie called Trainspotting began with a monologue that, in summary and cutting out some parts that are not suitable for transcription here, said:  Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a big television (…). Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electric tin openers. Choose health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of (…) fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who (…) you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing junk food (…) into your mouth. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do something like that? (…). If you haven't seen it, we can tell you that the option chosen by the protagonists (choosing not to choose) does not lead them to the best places, but while their life choice is completely destructive, we can understand their rebellion and feeling crushed by the cultural demand to fit abruptly into certain pre-established patterns, and it can overwhelm us at this crucial moment we find ourselves in. How can we make these decisions, choose our path, easier? Well, above all, by knowing ourselves. If we put into practice a series of guidelines to improve our self-awareness, everything we decide will be the best decision for ourselves.

Why don't I know myself?

Since we have been with ourselves since we were born, it may seem that we know ourselves well, but it is not true. It turns out that many of the things we do, we do them on impulse or because it is what we have to do. Sometimes our preferences are truly ours, but other times they are inherited or assimilated by "contagion" or social pressure. In reality, our day-to-day life is so full of distractions, trends, and chores that we rarely have time to stop and see what we really want, how we think about a subject, what things make us feel good that are not related to external approval, and those kinds of matters. How many times have we realized too late that we are doing something that we actually don't like? How many times do we experience palpitations or anxiety and don't know what's happening? It turns out that self-awareness, although it doesn't serve by itself to avoid all those things that harm us, does serve to identify them and seek solutions for those that have them or, at least, to understand why we feel a certain way.

Benefits of self-awareness

As we said, self-awareness allows us to understand ourselves better and evolve, giving us more tools to choose our path from a place of respect for our true selves and our authentic interests. Additionally, if we have a good level of self-awareness, it will be much easier for us to manage our emotions and not be caught off guard by any altered mood state. Self-awareness also helps us make decisions because we will know much better what we really want and what is best for us. We will know our strengths and weaknesses and can choose to enhance one or the other according to our true needs. It will also improve our self-esteem because, through self-awareness, we will accept ourselves as we are more easily and have greater emotional stability to face those things we want to improve. In simple terms, self-awareness is the foundation of self-acceptance. On the other hand, having a good level of self-awareness will improve our interpersonal relationships by making us take a greater interest in those that bring us well-being and pay less attention to those that harm us.

How to improve our self-awareness

Unfortunately, it is not an easy task (especially nowadays when social media constantly contaminates the way we see ourselves, others, and what is good or bad). Knowing oneself requires effort and hard work, and it also requires us to be able to confront those things we don't like about ourselves. That being said, what we can assure is that the effort is well worth it because self-awareness and self-acceptance deeply improve our lives and help us, as we have already mentioned, have greater emotional stability and be happier in general. There are a series of exercises and questions we should ask ourselves to improve our self-awareness. We propose the following:       1. Introspection As it sounds, it's not fun and it isn't, but it is very useful and enlightening. What we must do is dedicate time to ourselves from time to time. Get away from the noise, mobile phones, and any distractions and focus on thinking about different situations we've experienced and how and why we felt a certain way. For example, it's not about thinking about an argument with a friend to come up with a speech that proves us right, but rather to understand what feelings arose and why. It's good to do this practice from time to time to evaluate different situations that happen to us and generate a moderately intense emotional response.      2. Ask yourself often

• What feelings does thinking about the past generate in me?


• How do the people around me make me feel?


• How do I usually react to different situations (think of one each time)?


• What do I like most about myself? And what do I like least?


• How do I normally react to stressful situations?


• How do I usually manage sadness or anger?


• Which of my hobbies truly make me feel good?


• How do I see myself in the future?


• What is my predominant mood state?


• Do I tend to think positively or, on the contrary, do I tend to think the worst?


• How are my relationships with my friends, partners, and family? Is there something I would like to change?


• What motivates me to start working on something?


• What values are important to me?


• Where is the difference between what I project and what I am? What am I hiding from others and what am I hiding from myself?


• How do I react to fear?

And so on to infinity because there are thousands of questions we can ask ourselves, and the more we ask ourselves, the better.       3. Keep a journal Not one where we write down what we have done throughout the day, but one where we write down our feelings. That is, not what we have done, but how we have felt at different moments. An emotions journal provides us with an outlet, but that is not its main function. Its main function is that we can read how we felt days later and analyze our emotions with greater objectivity to understand ourselves better.       4. Ask to be described What others say about us is very useful to know what we project, what image we give, and if it corresponds to the one we have of ourselves. But for this exercise to be useful, it is better to find sincere people who know how to give constructive criticism, and it is also better for us to be ready not to take offense. Finally, we must remember that we cannot control the events of life, but we can control how we assimilate them and to what extent we let them affect us. Seneca said: "When we don't know what port we are sailing to, all winds are unfavorable." Well, self-awareness is exactly the compass we need to weather any storm.