(5 steps) How to Increase Self-awareness

 

source: Unsplash by Ava Sol

 

Self-awareness is the first step towards anyone’s success. So, if we want to be successful in our lives then we should know ourselves better and deeper. For us to know ourselves better that is where the issue of self-awareness comes in. In this post I’m going to give you 5 steps on how you can increase your self-awareness. Stick with me until the end to know more on how we can effectively get to know ourselves better.

 

In the previous post (The Importance of Self-awareness) I talked about the importance of self-awareness. We all know why it important we get to have it. If you don’t know yourself I’m sure it will be so hard for you to move in any direction. The main reason why I’m saying this is that most of the actions that we do in our daily activities are mostly based on what we know about ourselves. The type of decisions we make, the type of friends we choose to interact with, the type of places we choose to visit and many other things that I cannot mention here—all are determined by knowledge we have of ourselves.

 

So…up to now you have ample knowledge on why we need it so much for us to be successful. We all know that our lives are made of objectives and goals to be achieved. To move towards we have to make sure we understand ourselves better. Let me ask you a question, if it will be hard for you, you can just pass it. How will you know where you are going if you have no idea of your own destination?

Keep the answer to yourself. The question I have posed to you makes you think much on the importance of increasing yourself-awareness. You may have known yourself but the rate at which you have come to that knowledge is very much less than the required one. For you to make a recognizable step you will have to go even further knowing who you are. Without wasting so much of your time let me go directly to the points that I wanted to share with you.

 

I know you may be asking yourself what made me come up with this article. The past one month I had been mentoring some students who are so much in need of my guidance. I was appointed to teach them. I never wanted to accept that task because my schedule was filled with so many activities that never allowed me to leave home. After I talked to different people who were so close to me, they helped me to make a decision that was very worthy to me and to the people I’m aiding right now.

 

It is always better if you are helping someone in any matter, make sure you have enlighten them the importance of the activity you are about to do, let them know who they are and how significance their cooperation will matter to you. If you have outlined the above points to them, it will be so hard for them to turn you down no matter what the circumstances are. So, during this activity of helping these students in their studies, I was not able to teach them throughout the lesson, so I had to pause a bit and talk about something else.

 

 We both know learning span of teenager isn’t that much higher especially when they have made it clear in their mind that it is holiday “mood activated”. I found myself talking about my past life in high school and the things that I did. The things that I did some were good while others were a bit off the radar of morality. I’m not proud of the mistakes I did in the past. These mistakes helped me to realize that I had not known myself fully at that time.

 

Lack of self-awareness led me to such messes. I thought it would be much better if I help these students to increase their self-awareness. So, that they wouldn’t dare to indulge themselves in the mess that I was in.

 

Here are the five steps on how to increase on your self-awareness;

 

·         Reflect Daily on Yourself.

Take some time alone dig deep within yourself. What do I mean by “dig deep within you”? This is the act of thinking critical about yourself and the whole course that you are talking. It is not always a must for you to surround yourself with people. If you want to increase your self-awareness then you should do this. Find a cool place, a quiet one, far away from any kind of distractions. If you want you can lie on the ground and look at the sky or you can just sit and think of who you are, where you are going, what you are doing right, what are you doing wrong.  A Moment like this can help you so much to make things right.

 

A moment of silent and contemplation can help you also to come up with solution of your problems that you are facing. If you are a guy who never tries to take any time off alone and try to think of his or her course then it will be so hard for you to increase your self-awareness. When you sit down and reflect on your present and past you get to find some of the things that you never liked but you used to do them just because you saw someone else doing so. It is in this moment of reflection you will get to understand yourself much better.

 

When you get to know yourself much better is when you will have the capability of increasing your self-awareness. You can make a plan of isolating yourself twice or thrice a week. This will help you so much on increasing your self-awareness. Do it and thank me later. Let no one discourage you, you have to know that everyone has his or her own journey and in most cases the destinations will never be the same.

 

·         Keep a Daily Journal.

It is a good habit and helpful one of keeping your daily journal. I find it so much hard on keeping journal though. I remember I used towrite my journal when I was in high school. At first the pace was great but later on I found myself forgetting about it. It is normal for a human being to forget, but not extremely. I can say that it is a very hard thing for men to keep their daily journal but ladies find it very easy. I’m I wrong?

 

So, let me tell you how keeping daily journal can help you to increase your self-awareness. Keeping daily journal helps you to keep records of the things you did during the day. The things are always different. Most of the things you did in the day required you to make decisions of every kind that would be appropriate and helpful. So, when you have this daily journal it can help you understand all the decisions you made during the day, it will also enable you to understand why you made such decisions. This will aid you to know why you made such decisions and why. The same journal will help you get to understand yourself better thus increasing yourself-awareness.

 

For instance, during the day you fought with someone over a joke that he or she made to you in a friendly manner but you ended up reacting violently to it. You will understand yourself that you are a short tempered person ad you cannot do well with jokers. This will help you to avoid them so that you stay out of trouble. So, if you have the capability of keeping a daily journal just do it, it won’t cost you a dollar doing so. It is a good thing to do but for me I always find it so hard to do it.

 

·         Ask for feedback.

Feedback is the immediate response given to you after doing a certain task or giving any kind of information. This is always an opinion from the people around you. It can be fact sometimes though. A feedback can be either positive or negative. On my side I find feedback helpful. So far the feedback I received from the people reading my blog helped me to figure out how to write my articles even in a better way. Though not all the feedback I received from them were pleasing. The good thing is that I never responded to them negatively.

 

Let me tell you how asking for feedback can help you increase yourself-awareness. The feedback you get from people around you may help you to understand yourself better. The feedback always contain information on the area that you are good at and the areas where you are doing poorly. Using this information you have been given, can enable you to work on your areas of weakness and make them better. Without this feedback you would have not acquired any knowledge of your strength and weaknesses.

Understanding yourself better helps you to increase your self-awareness. Never get annoyed whenever you receive a negative feedback. No one is perfect…

Just learn from the feedback you have been given so that you understand yourself better and improve on the areas of your weaknesses. Though, we have to accept the fact that we cannot change some things within ourselves. Let’s work on solving the things we can and leave the unchangeable the way they are.

 

·         Observe Yourself on How You React on Different Situations.

We both know that we always change our behaviors and actions on different circumstances. This is normal for any human being. As long as you are thinking you will always respond differently to different situations…

This can be a very effective way of intensifying your self-awareness. Do you want to know why I’m saying so…then stick with me.

The way you react to different situations gives you a clear view of who you are. You can filter wisely your actions from the situations you have come along. So, here you will be able to know in which circumstances that you react foolishly or weirdly.

 

Maybe, you may be asking yourself, “How can I observe myself yet I’ll be the owner of the actions?”

If you want to observe yourself engage in an activity with your friends that involves a mixture of feelings of happiness, sadness, pain and suffering. In this activity you have to act as the victim receiving all these kind of feelings and let someone write your actions of different feelings that you received. Later on, pass through the notes that were taken from the activity. This will eventually help you to increase yourself-awareness. You will be at a better hand understanding which feelings you will be always be better at handling hence increasing your self-awareness.

 

·         Peer Comparison.

Peer comparison is a way of comparing yourself with your age mate. I find this a least way of improving on your self-awareness. I can say this way helps you to have an internal motivation. Let me give you an example which I know it will help you better to understand what I’m trying to mean.

If you have a friend who is always the best in a certain area and you constantly find yourself failing on this area. You can decide to observe your peer on what he or she does best than you. You may find that your friend does better in that field because he or she is committed than you. It may be that your friend spends so much time in reading the course than you do. That is the main reason to why he or she always out does you.

It is through him or her you have been able to understand yourself to why you fail and your peer passes. This will be enough to increase your self-awareness.

 

To conclude, it is very essential to learn how to increase your self-awareness because it may help you to understand what you need in your life. This can help you achieve happiness in your life. You have to know that the things we choose to do in our lives are always contributed to our self-awareness. So, if you want to make the best choice in your life, first of all learn to understand yourself.

My Previous articles 

• 5 Things You Should Do In Your Early Twenties 
• Does Age Really Matter In The Current Life? 
•  List of Music That Never Gets Old to Me
• Why Some People May Be Ignoring You 
• How to Stop Addictive Habits