Self- Awareness – A practical view
Self-Awareness is key for your Mental & Emotional Health, Building Resilience and developing Leadership quality. This article, I have discussed about some psychological aspect of Self awareness which we give seldom importance.
What is Self-awareness?
Self-awareness is an honest look of your life, your strength, your weakness, your nature, your values, your habits, your emotions. In simple, You as a whole.
It consists of 2 types
- Conceptual Self-awareness
- Embodied Self-awareness
Conceptual Self awareness:
It is an idea about yourself, how you see yourself from outside. It’s a concept which includes Judgements , Evaluation, Logical conclusions. Its like how you describe a character in a movie.
Embodied Self-awareness:
It includes various types of inner state, Aware of your movements, coordination, know your responses and reactions to internal and external stimuli, your emotions, your needs, your wants, your impulses. Its like you are living in that character in a movie.
Let me tell you one Example..
If I described myself as, “Raji is an active fellow, people oriented personality, Optimistic Person”. This is an idea about myself.- Conceptual Self-awareness
But, Not every time i am active, people oriented and optimistic, there are some times, I do feel lazy, I too think negative, I too want to be alone. Depends upon the External and internal environment, my reactions, responses, moods, emotions varies. – Embodied Self-awareness.
Practicing Embodied self-awareness is a key!! i.e Ability to understand yourself in the current moment, just as you are, not how you think you should be!!!
People are nowadays have a conceptual self-awareness and practicing the same which results in various forms of stress like Emotional distress, conflicts in personal and professional relationships, over confidence, low level of acceptance and resilience.
In that, you need to understand two more concepts when you know about Self-awareness.
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Shadow & Projections
Shadow:
This part is something you are not seeing in yourselves. It is your inner unconscious part but your conscious ego not identifying it.
Let me tell one example,
In our society, Anger is considered to be an OK emotion. Whenever you ask someone about their weakness or negative quality, they proudly say that they used to get angry easily. Because, people who used to get angry think that they are morally right. It is absolutely non-sense.
Anger is also an another emotion like jealousy, Envy, sadness, Disgust. Have you ever explore the reason behind your anger?! Sometimes, your selfishness, jealousy, envy, sadness, disgust express through Anger.
Shadow is something that you consider a negative or immoral things which is present in you.
Exploring your shadow leads to greater
- Authenticity
- Creativity
- Consciousness
- Energy
Self- awareness is a key to identify and explore your shadow.
Projections in Psychology:
Whatever quality you deny in yourselves, you will see in others!!
Read it again..Yeah its true!!
If seeing & accepting your insecurities, selfishness, envy are challenging to you, you perceive yourself as a very good person. When someone evokes an emotional charge in you, it is a sign that you are projecting a disowned quality from your shadow on to this individual.
“People who feel inferior and have low self-esteem can also fall in to the habit of projecting their own feelings of not being good enough on to others. Racism & Homophobia as examples of this type of projection on a broader scale”- Michael Brustein, Psychologist
When you start accepting your weakness & failures and you are comfortable in reflecting your good & ugliest part, you don’t need or tend to project because you tolerate enough to recognize and experience the negative aspect of yourselves.
Have you wondered?
Some people accuse their spouse that they are unfaithful without any relevancy.
Likewise, Someone in office accuses you for regularly left the office before the working hours. But fact is that they are the one who used to leave the office early and not meeting deadlines.
We can see many people who used to “accuse or blame people” by advocating patience, listening skills but the fact is that they don’t have the one!!
Just start acknowledging your weakness, understand that how you feel, what are they?. Self-reflection plays an important role in Projections.
Self- refelection means “Viewing yourself with detachment and curiosity, never judgment”- Koenig.
Self-awareness
- Tool to your success
- Key to Mental & Emotional Health
- Basic Quality of Leadership
- Higher level of Happiness
- Increases creativity & Confidence
- Increases Decision making skills
- Improves both Personal & Professional relationships.
An experiment explains the topic
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