4 Steps to Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is not inherently good.
It is a tool, and it’s usefulness depends on how you use it. In its simplest form, self-awareness is gathering information about your actions, emotions, and thoughts. What you then choose to do with that information is important. It can be useful in relationships both at home and at work. It can help improve your craft and hone your skills.
However, it can also give you reason to criticize yourself. It can cause you to isolate yourself from relationships or cause you to freeze in your tracks. Self-awareness is like a hammer, it can build you up, or break you to pieces.
There is a healthy method to increasing self-awareness, and it starts with acceptance.
1 - Acceptance
Acceptance is not approval.
When you accept that you feel a negative emotion, it does not mean you’re settling in it, not striving to feel something better. Acceptance is the simple acknowledgement that your feelings and actions are exactly what they are in a moment in time.
For example, if you see a fight break out in the parking lot, acceptance does not mean approving of the fight. You accept the fight because it's happening in reality, which leads you to the decision of what to do next. Similarly, you don’t have to approve of your current habits or thoughts, but they must be accepted if you plan on changing them.
Once you’ve accepted your current condition in a non-judgmental manner, you then have room to reflect.
2 - Reflection
No action, emotion, or thought occurs in isolation.
Reflection is taking a look at all factors in a situation. This includes causes, context, and consequences for everything. Reflection is identifying the weight of all the different factors involved in your actions and thoughts.
For example, if you want to manage your temper when having political discussions, then you must consider yourself, your intended audience, your context, and your shared history. Only with this information can you effectively plan how to manage the emotion you expect to feel.
Similarly, it's vital to have all the relevant information surrounding a certain habit to give you guidance on how to reshape it.
3 - Action
Now you can turn your self-reflective thoughts to actions.
These actions must have specific targets and goals in mind. Sometimes these goals are not one step away but several, like a game of chess, thinking multiple moves ahead. Changing behaviors is a complex game, but it only gets easier with practice. Either today or next week, I encourage you to start reshaping behaviors you believe need to change.
Like all other behavior changes, being receptive to feedback is a crucial step in making your efforts sustainable and effective.
4 - Accountability
Taking account of your actions is a daunting task.
This is especially true if you tend to have a defensive reaction to failure or imperfection. if you interpret feedback as criticism or shaming, then it defeats the purpose of self-awareness. Accountability is a necessary component of interpersonal relationships, as well as your relationship with yourself. Openness to feedback allows for humility.
However, humility is not self-belligerence. It is accepting your mistakes and missteps in a nonjudgmental manner, but still acknowledging them and promising change. If you make mistakes, that's okay. Mistakes are what make us human.
Taking accountability opens your eyes to your mistakes, not a broken self worth beating up.
Final Thoughts
Self-awareness is helpful, as long as you don't use it to torture yourself. Many of us don't like what we find in the mirror, but it's how we respond to what we see that makes the difference.
The healthy exercise of self-awareness is a necessary and helpful tool for improving relationships and quality of life. If you can accept your actions, emotions, and thoughts (#1), reflect on the context of your experiences (#2), act to make a difference (#3), and be open to feedback (#4), you can truly become self-aware.
Please remember, it’s not about becoming perfect, it’s about doing the best with what you've got.
