5 The Importance of Self-awareness

Source: Unsplash by Jen Theodore

 I have come to realize that most of the actions that we tend to do are always based on our self-awareness. It is very important to understand yourself as an individual. In this post, I'm going to outline the significance of self-awareness.

You may be asking yourself, what is self-awareness?

Self-awareness is all about identifying yourself in and out. You have to know yourself based on your weaknesses and strength. Get to know who you are and know how to respond appropriately to what you have come to understand about yourself. If you get to understand yourself you will always pick up anything in your life depending on what best suits you since you are aware of who you are. 

I made many mistakes in the past. I involved myself with the wrong crowd of people, I have done things recklessly, I have done things that I'm even afraid to share with anyone. I have hurt people, innocent ones who don't deserve to be hurt. All those kind of mistakes I did was due to the fact that I was never fully aware of who I was. 

I went by the trend. If I had been fully aware of who I was these things would have never happened. Even if they would have happened, it would have been in a different way.

I want to let you know that most of the decisions that people take in life are mostly based on self-awareness. Once you have come to know who you are you will always be cautious about anything you want to do in your life.

I'm going to outline the importance of self-awareness. I hope after reading this article you would have known where to start with.

 1. Self-awareness helps one to understand his or her strengths and weaknesses.

No one is perfect. We all have areas where we are so good at. You may be a good writer. In this field of writing, you may feel you are the best. This may be based on certain indicators. You may be the topic of the year in different publishing companies. Everyone wants you to do your publishing in their companies. Your articles are marketable. With this view, you will understand that writing is your strength.

When you have fully understood yourself and get to know your strengths, this will help you to improve even better in writing. Not only in writing but anything else in your life. It may be your career, parenting, and many other valuable things in your life. Once you have become aware that you have this strength in a certain field it will also give you a way on how to push it to the top. This will also buy you more time to focus on areas of your weaknesses.

We all have weaknesses. We have to admit and appreciate that. Once you have come to realize your weaknesses you will have a better chance to improve on them. I want to be honest with you. You cannot completely eradicate your weaknesses but you can only improve on them. It is very rare to get rid of your weakness completely. You can do that maybe if only you are a robot..... Kidding.

Once you have become aware of your weaknesses this will also help you to accept the kind of person you are. Another thing is that no one will be able to intimidate or hurt you using your them. This is because you have become fully aware of them and you have accepted that they do exist in you.

 2. Self-awareness helps people to understand themselves better and accept who they are.

The community we live in is full of people of every kind. Every person is identified by his or her character traits. We have people who are said to be kind-hearted, generous while others cruel and arrogant. We have folks who find it so hard to change who they are. If they do, then it is by pretending. 

If you are an arrogant person then that is who you are. You have to appreciate and accept the form you are in. For instance, a liar is used to lying. It is very hard for a liar to tell the truth when he is used to twisting words.

It is his or her nature to lie. This may be due to where he or she was raised and many factors that I cannot mention here in this post. It will take time for somebody to change that. If you have known yourself to be that kind of person then the first step for you to do is to accept who you are. If you accept yourself then it will be a better chance for you to change that. At least you would have understood yourself.

Self-awareness is a great step forward to the success of anyone. If you want to be successful in your life then this quest starts by knowing yourself better. Accept yourself whether you are on the positive or negative side and then work on making it right. 

When you find that you are on the wrong side (negative side) don't look down upon yourself ---lose your self-esteem because that would be the end of your journey. No one expects the worst in his or her life.

 3. Self-awareness gives one the ability to minimize external influences.

You will only get carried by a crowd if you don't know who you are. In the beginning, I talked about getting along with a group of bad people, which was a mistake I live to regret.

Peer pressure is common amongst teens. Why is it common to teens? In most cases, it is common to them because they haven't become fully aware of who they are. It will be so hard for anyone to influence you if you know who you are, where you are going, what you are doing, and what you want in your life. 

If you are determined to be successful external influences should be the least of your problems. This can be achieved by self-awareness. 

Once you have become aware of who you are you will always choose the right people to hang out with, you will always choose the right kind of friends to associate with In your life.

"I have known who I'm, and this is what I want in life, hanging with this kind of crowd will hinder me from achieving what I want in life. So, I'll have to avoid this kind of people because they have negative influence on me."

No one will tell you what to do, because you have become fully aware of who you are. No one call show you what is best for you since you have already known what's best for you. Peer pressure will be the least of your concern. 

As we all know most people find themselves in a problem because of choosing the wrong crowd to get along with, which will result in negative influences. 

 4. Self-awareness enables one to accept feedback from anyone and respond appropriately to it.

Now let's talk about feedback. Feedback is any response given to you by the people around you after conveying a piece of certain information or after doing a certain task.

We will always receive feedback every day of our lives. Don't always expect the feedback back to be positive. If you want a positive response from anyone you will always have to work hard to earn it.

Self-awareness helps us to appreciate any feedback we get from people around us. As I said earlier that self-awareness helps us to figure out our strengths and weaknesses, in such a case you would have already understood yourself better so any feedback given to you will be based on what you are already aware of. If it's negative feedback will be based on your weaknesses, in which you are already working to improve on them.

Some people are sarcastic. They might say something negative about the areas in which you know you are best at. Don't be so hard on yourself. These people are there. They will say it with a serious note just to see how you will react to them. If you are short-tempered like me then you have to learn how to control it or else you might lose an important opportunity in your life.

 5. Self-awareness will help you to develop good relationships with people around you.

Once you have become fully aware of yourself it will be always easy for you to choose the right people to hang out with. For instance, you have outlined your goals. As we all do have goals in our lives. 

Let us say after 5 years you want to be a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, a successful businessman, or an architect. The relationships that will be developed will always be based on what you want to do. If you want to be a doctor it is a matter of fact that you will search for people with the same interest as you have so that you can help each other on achieving your goals.

When you choose the right people for the same course that you are in, it is obvious that the relationships that would be developed will be a healthy ones. Everyone will benefit from it, hence developing a good relationship. 

This is all possible because of your self-awareness. If you don't know who you are, what you want in your life it will probably be hard for you to choose which people to involve in your life. You will be just like the lost sheep that roams everywhere.

Self-awareness has many benefits that I cannot mention all. These few benefits I have outlined here will give you a clear view of why it is important to understand who you are. The quest for self-awareness is a long journey but if you start early enough you will eventually find what you are looking for. 

As you grow older the more you will find new things about yourself that you never knew while you were young. Life is full of wonders. You may think you know so much about yourself but in a real sense, you only know few things about yourself. As more situations in life arise the more new and strange things you tend to find about yourself.

Previously on life blogger

• 5 Things You Should Do In Your Early Twenties
  
• Why Some People May Be Ignoring You
  
• List of Music That Never Gets Old to Me
  
• Why I Chose To Be A Blogger
  
• How to Stop Addictive Habits