Improving your self-awareness can seem daunting, partly because feels like such a strange concept. How is it even possible to become self-aware? What even is self-awareness?
Self-awareness is the habit of paying attention to the way you think, feel, and behave. More specifically, self-awareness is about observing Patterns of thought, Patterns of emotion, and Patterns of behavior. In more simple terms, self-awareness means learning to be curious about your own mind.
Becoming self-aware involves the practice of self-witnessing. This means, seeing yourself from an"overhead" perspective. Many of us lack self-awareness because we're constantly trapped in our thinking minds. Unable to actually see ourselves.
4 Beginners steps to self-awareness:
1. Notice when you're triggered
Most people get triggered and then go into habit reaction (autopilot.) Notice when your heart starts racing, your throat gets tight, or you feel immediate sharp anger.
2. Practice pausing
Before you habitually react, pause. Say to yourself "I am triggered right now." Breathe. The more you practice this pause, the more confident you'll become.
3. Practice asking: "WHY"
This step alone will create deep levels of self-awareness. By asking why you got triggered, rather than reacting to the trigger you'll understand yourself. This takes practice, stick with it.
4. Become the movie of yourself
Learn to witness yourself like you're watching a character in a movie. How does this character speak, think, react to people, and interact with the world? Self-aware people know how they behave and why.
Why should I be more self-aware?
It’s hard to overstate the benefits of self-awareness, as there are so many.
Better relationships are a huge main benefit of being more self-aware. It’s difficult to ask for what you want and need in a relationship or set healthy boundaries—when you’re not very clear about it yourself. For example, how well do you know your personal values? Often the best way to improve any relationship is by trying to become more self-aware. You need to get to know and understand what's in your own head before anyone else's.
Calmer moods. How you consistently feel emotionally depends on how you think. If you have a habit of worrying, for example, you’re very likely to feel anxious all the time. But when you improve your self-awareness, you learn to understand the relationship between your thinking and your moods. This makes it much easier to regulate your emotions effectively and balance your moods.
Clearer thinking and better decision-making. Poor decision-making often comes from muddled thinking and unchecked emotional reactions. When you become more aware of your habits of thoughts and feelings, you can more easily distinguish between short-term impulses or desires and long-term values and goals.
Increased productivity. The most common cause of procrastination and poor productivity isn’t a lack of effort or commitment… It’s interference from ourselves. When we struggle to get to work, it’s usually because on some level our own thoughts, emotions, or habits are getting in the way. Improving self-awareness can help eliminate many of these hidden obstacles to productivity. This way we can block all negative or interfering thoughts and as a result, become more productive.
Self-awareness is simply the habit of paying attention to our own minds—our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. And like any habit, it can be improved with time and a little practice.