Self-awareness: What It Is and Why It’s Important
WHAT IS SELF-AWARENESS?
True growth and genuine happiness require that we deeply know and understand ourselves.
Self-awareness, or conscious knowledge of one’s own character, at its most basic level means understanding what makes you happy, sad, hopeful, angry, etc. It means you recognize and understand your thoughts, feelings, abilities, motives, and experiences as they are. You know your strengths and weaknesses and accept your faults. To have self-awareness is to know and understand what you feel and why you feel it.
Self-awareness is knowing your personal values and aligning your actions with those values, in addition to understanding how you measure yourself. Why do you consider something to be successful? What determines something has failed? What standards do you use to evaluate yourself?
WHY IS SELF-AWARENESS IMPORTANT?
Sometimes we are too hard on ourselves and believe we are not worthy of success. We underestimate our abilities, our importance, or our effect on others.
On the other hand, there are times in which we elevate our success in our minds around our performance and behaviors. We are convinced we are much better than we really are.
Or we blame our mistakes and failures on other people or situations rather than take responsibility for our results. We make excuses for why something didn’t work out as planned or for why we weren’t able to complete something.
Those who are highly self-aware can evaluate their actions, thoughts, and emotions in an objective manner. They are honest with themselves about their performance, their behaviors, and their abilities. They take action to make changes; they have an open mind; and they accept constructive feedback without beating themselves up.
Self-awareness is crucial. Once you are honest with yourself about what you want and why you want it, you can decide if you are really willing to put in the necessary effort to achieve it. Then take action to get it.
Self-awareness allows you to take responsibility for your results rather than blame others or make excuses.
When we see ourselves and accept ourselves as we truly are, good qualities and bad, only then can we make true progress in personal growth and in life.
