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developing self-awareness
These are some examples and understanding of Developing Self-Awareness in ways to apply to your daily life. In this section, we hope to deliver a clearer understanding of and importance of increasing your awareness of yourself when dealing with challenging situations.
The Five Key Components
Practicing self-awareness behaviors provides you ownership of your emotions, a clear view of yourself and your self-concept, and the ability to assess your strengths and weaknesses—all while building confidence and executing behaviors to produce specific results. Below is a list of five key components that comprise the skill set and resource of self-awareness:
Identifying emotions
Identifying self-perception
Identifying strengths and weaknesses
Developing strong self-confidence
Implementing self-efficacy
Identifying Emotions
Identifying your emotions can be a strenuous process while paying attention to what bothers you about other people and certain situations. Relationships are based on awareness between thought, emotion, and behavior and what you believe, want, or need. This will invoke more effective communication and interaction with another person. Identifying and understanding your emotions and moods when you tend to act or behave in certain ways in response to certain situations, especially those that are difficult or uncomfortable, is crucial. It means paying attention to your default responses to things and why you may feel or act that way. It also means paying attention to and trying to learn about your own psychology. The more you practice doing this, the more aware you’ll become.
A benefit of self-awareness includes becoming clear about what we want and need and the level of importance each of those desires and needs truly holds—which may not always match the way we see their importance without the benefit of awareness. As we become more aware of ourselves, we feel less and less compelled to defend our interactions with others. This becomes easier because our mood should improve as we come to feel better about our behavior—chosen actions, rather than reactions. The more we improve our awareness of thoughts, emotions, and behavior, the easier it will be to regulate our feelings and moods.
Identifying Self-Perception
Identifying self-perception leads to clearer thinking and better decision-making. Many times, poor decisions come from disarrayed thinking and a strong emotional reaction. When we become more aware of our habits and how we think and feel, we will experience fewer short-term impulses and take more actions based on long-term values and netting healthier results. With self-perception comes a clear sense of decision-making that doesn’t respond to just right now. Self-perception is all attitude on how you see your behavior or others.
Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses
Self-perception leads to identifying and assessing your strengths and weaknesses. To assess your strengths and weaknesses, you must be realistic and optimistic. You must pay attention and develop a sensible idea of what can be achieved or expected in a disagreement or during a difficult or uncomfortable situation. This course of action must be practiced as often as recognized. The practice of identifying your strengths and weaknesses will help you become someone who has a good grip on the reality of a situation and understands what can or can’t be done.
There isn’t always a right or wrong outcome. Self-perception, most times, will expose a practical, achievable idea or reveal something that resembles the truth about the situation and sometimes not the person or vice versa.
This behavior also allows you not to always judge the people involved in a situation and, rather, focus on the issue. Self-perception creates more effective communication, making it easier to communicate confidently but not assertively. The better we know ourselves, our strengths, and our weaknesses, the better the approach we can take and the more productive we can be in effectively communicating and relating to others.
creating emotional intelligence
When one creates and elevates their emotional intelligence this improves confidence, leadership, getting along with others, promotes a better mood, and helps you understand other people.
Identifying Self-Confidence
Having a good attitude about bettering oneself is empowering and a foundation for healthy relationships. I believe a good attitude derives from good thoughts, which come from a positive belief system and the understanding that it’s not about control, and rather, about management. I say this because, if we focus on our attitude and never on the problem, we’ll improve how we deal with each problem and ourselves. A problem is just an opportunity and situation—regardless of how little control we may have or not, it may have been a possibility before a problem. We can focus on knowing that we can’t control a situation or a person, and we can always control ourselves and our response to the person and/or situation. Identifying Self-Confidence Having a good attitude will help you develop strong self-confidence and the ability to manage your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. A position of constant self-awareness can help eliminate many hidden obstacles and increase your strategies for becoming better at dealing with life’s challenges. Sometimes the things that irritate us in other people may reflect some quality we dislike in ourselves. One way to develop good self-confidence is to read high-quality nonfiction. That’s right. Read some self-help books. Most great readers, writers, and creators are very good observers of the world around them. Also, pay attention to the little details and functions of life. Learn how to describe people carefully and how to think about people with compassion. This will build your confidence. The better we get at observing others, the better we will get at observing ourselves in the same way.
Developing strong self-confidence starts with identifying what things trigger your emotional “red button.” Maybe it’s more than one button. We all have certain emotions that trigger us. Most people try to avoid feeling these emotions by substituting other emotions or behaviors that may lead to negative consequences in the long term. We must not try to avoid our emotions when they affect us in a negative way but, try to listen to what our emotion has to say. The first step in cultivating a system to think developmentally is to come from a foundation of self-awareness. Create new habits. The best approach in every situation is don’t respond right away. First, be calm and think. Is it the person or situation? And then reflect on your ability to choose your emotion and not let your emotion choose you (don’t respond right away). Developing strong self-confidence leads to becoming a good validator (that’s another book).
Implementing Self-Efficacy
Implementing self-efficacy begins with deliberately and carefully considering your weaknesses and aspiring to your strengths. It means developing your capacity to execute new behaviors and perform better with practice. Basically, plan and work it. You can practice this behavior by choosing a positive relationship in your life, like a relationship with a friend, spouse, parent, or someone else close to you. Start with some small things the other person can offer you criticism of; ask them to point out something negative to help build their confidence that you can take criticism well. Start working on those issues with feedback and work on the approach technique I noted earlier. The more you practice reflecting on your shortcomings, the more you will build up the other person’s confidence that you can take criticism. And they will be more likely to tell you about more major personality issues if there are any. Try to avoid defensiveness and anticipate that you won’t feel good about your flaws, but these exercises will help eliminate them. To get better at any problem, you must first find out what the problem is.
Make a daily journal of your encounters throughout the day and how you handled each one. Look at each interaction and categorize it to see if your behavior is different depending on whether you’re at work or with a friend. Constantly reflect on your views and choices and each reaction to challenging situations. Go back and review the self-awareness sections for tips. For more details or problematic issues in implementing these five key components, please seek professional help.