Anna Hans

· 28 Nov 2021

Follow Following

10 Benefits Of Self-Awareness And How It Can Impact Your Life

Have you ever been in a situation where you are conscious of what you do? How and you developed a solution to that particular thing, be it good or bad, and after the scenario, your subconscious mind just begins to think about those things and the way you handled them.

Furthermore, it may be that you are just alone in the house and your thoughts keep revolving about different things, and you begin to analyze yourself in different areas of your life, like the way you react to certain things, your actions, reactions, what you have achieved or yet to, and general daily living. It is simply the attributes of self-awareness.

Self-awareness simply involves being aware of different aspects of the self, including behavior, trait, character, and feeling. It is a psychological state in which one becomes the focus of attention, the recognition of that awareness, and how an individual consciously knows and understands his or her desires, character, and motive.

When you desire certain things in life, that will relate to your growth, self-awareness plays an important role, in that you take note of most things that happen directly or indirectly to you,  becoming observant of anything you do, helps you to see yourself more clearly. Which can be a starting point to the desired growth you need in your life.

Types Of Self Awareness

It may be classified into two forms which are; Private and public self-awareness.

1. Private Self Awareness: This correlates to things that happen in private places and how we tend to realize them. Such that it doesn't involve any large gathering or a public event. For instance, you feel an attraction towards a particular character while seeing a movie, and as such nobody or third party is aware of what you feel inward, just yourself. It's a form of private self-awareness.

2. Public Self Awareness: This type of awareness, majorly concentrates on what people feel, think, or understand about you. However, it may come in the form of a compliment which may involve dress code, comportment, or behavior in public. It may also come embarrassing, for example when one speaks poor grammar in a public place or does something that attracts the attention of people negatively. So in this case they may likely conform to social rules in order not to draw public notice.

Can Self Awareness Lead To Success?

When an individual is aware of things he/she loves doing, has a desire for, and holds in high esteem (values) it is advisable to align it to your skill which will lead to success in your endeavors. It can help to improve your career because it makes it easier to understand how others see you, this is the key to success, it is of great importance to be aware of the higher-ups, and also important to know how to handle leadership roles.

Additionally, it will help you to determine your strengths and weaknesses which will enable you to fix problems when they arise, understand how people see you, and how you see other people, which makes you work better with other people among others.

What Are The Features Of Self Awareness

If you want to be a positive beneficiary of self-awareness, you need to be aware of the characteristics or features of self-aware people. Self-aware individuals have the following features;

Honesty: A self-aware individual does not sell themselves short, they are honest with themselves on who they are, it makes you genuine, such that if you tell yourself anything that deviates from the truth your conscience will never be at rest. A self-aware person values his/herself and other people and is also ready to heed to other people's contributions.
Confidence: Self-aware people expect reviews from other people, because it helps them check their progress and how they are coming along, being aware of their strengths and weaknesses, this in turn helps to checkmate them and boost their confidence.
Humility: A self-aware person knows there are certain things he may be lacking and not so good at, so they are aware that they need help from other people to achieve the desired result, so they never mind sharing major positions and lifting others side by side.
Wisdom: When a self-aware person puts in the effort to understand themselves and other people it opens them to continual learning and gives them more wisdom in doing and handling situations.

Demerits Of Self Awareness

"One of the biggest disadvantages self-aware people normally face is over analyzing and thinking, also some may discover they have overinflated opinions about themselves", this is the conclusion of the research done by Myers-Briggs Company on self-awareness. This often means that a self-aware person may think that other people do not see them as cool as they may see themselves to be, making them think they are not good enough.

How To Know If You Are Self Aware

Here are some tips to help you detect if you are self-aware;

You are barely ever provoked, that is you react to things calmly and sensibly.
You are very honest about things you love, hate, and every other thing.
Even if you don't have your complete life scheduled out, you are always backed with a plan and vision in regards to working towards your future.
You don't expect life to offer you special privileges.
A self-aware person never allows external circumstances to change before they do.
They usually don't get defensive when people talk bad about them or criticize them.

Do Self-Awareness Affect Other People

Yes! Self-awareness sure has an impact on others, a great one at that. This relates to how you treat and value people, which will in turn give them an overview of how you truly are and will leave them to their decision of judging you based on the character you portray before them and the way you handle things. When your level of self-awareness is high and you are vast and educated about different things but you don't give the impression like you know everything.

10 Benefits Of Self- Awareness

Having looked at an overview of self-awareness, we will be looking generally at the benefits of self-awareness.

1. Positive Feeling Towards Others

This is one of the most essential benefits of a self-aware person, such that the person has the ability and capacity to understand another person's point of view. When you possess the skill of being more empathetic, it helps you to build a better relationship with others. Since we live in a world where naturally humans want to be listened to, and also to have somebody to talk to about our feelings.

2. Good Listening Skill

Deliberate listening often helps to improve your communication skill and to avoid misunderstanding. People who have high self-awareness tend to be very good at listening, which is one of the most vital skills to live compassionately and meaningfully.

This listening skill enables you to; Learn more about people, Treat people fairly and with regard, Avoid forcing your ideas on other people, Build trust and avoid jumping to unnecessary conclusions, also to build positive relationships with other people, and lastly not practice it in a way of not wanting to listen to important things people have to offer.

However, it's usually not easy to give up your space, that is to have other people be in the spotlight to tell their stories, but it actually makes you live a more useful and wealthy life.

3. Enhances Sophisticated Thinking

Being self-aware you definitely possess the ability to think and reflect honestly about yourself, and the actions you take. There's work to be done in separating and analyzing work from emotions, to be able to come up with a nice idea and achieve your objective. These actions help you improve your thinking skill which will have a great impact on you even in the future.

4. Self Control

This entails when the self-aware individual can control himself as to take decisions and the manner he reacts to certain matters, it involves how you handle situations and how you separate work from emotions. People who tend to be more self-aware exhibit a feature of being emotionally intelligent, which enables you to be able to regulate your emotions despite the situation.

Therefore, you will be able to detect what you are feeling when you are feeling it, and what led to that feeling. And finding a solution to curtail it. Being more conversant with your emotions helps you learn about your thinking pattern.

So in a nutshell the greater the self-awareness the greater opportunity for self-regulation.

5. Personal Growth

Personal growth is one of the most important benefits of self-awareness,  that aids personal development and self-improvement. As living beings, it is often very difficult to conclude that you know yourself very well because many things are still undiscovered by a living being. But that's ok because that is how humans were created.

However, there's no limit to what we can discover about ourselves, such that we get to know about things we like, our strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings, and things we are good at. After you have discovered this thing, there's room for improvement which will have a positive impact on your life.

6. It Improves Creativity

It will often be of great importance when you are in the workplace and a problem surfaces. You will be able to come up with a very sophisticated creative solution that will solve that particular problem. This will also help you improve on creative things you like engaging in, which will lead to satisfaction and happiness about yourself.

Studies tell us that creativity is directly connected to optimism, such that when we are with ourselves we tend to bring solutions, but when we are not we often fall victim to pessimism. Self-awareness widen people's view about things it makes them see and adjust things in a more advanced and broader way

7. Enables Changing Of Unwanted Habits.

As a self-aware person, if you are conscious of things you do, such an individual will be able to checkmate and analyze his/her behavior. When you are doing something there is always a reason behind it and whenever there is a need for reversal or to change, it can be done/changed effectively without any struggle.

8. Enhances Good Decision Making

When you are self-aware it opens the door of information about knowing yourself better and enables good understanding about yourself also. So you can be able to differentiate good and bad, which will guide you to analyze problems and develop a solution to solve them. Allowing you to strike a balance with the advantages and disadvantages. Which will help in making good decisions.

9. Develops Leadership Features

Self-awareness, as earlier stated, gives confidence, humility, honesty, and love for others. I'm very sure any individual that possesses this character clearly has the quality of carrying other people along through leadership, a good leader should know how to carry his/ her own followers along and anybody that is self-aware can handle a  leadership position.

10. Aids Acceptability

Anybody that has a virtue of self-awareness normally accepts some things as they surface, it helps you to understand how you should handle things cannot not make changes o, and allows you to accept some situations and people the way they are rather than struggling to change it. In life we must learn how to accept and let go of something we cannot change  because if you try forcing a change it will bounce back and affect you negatively.

Take-Home Thought

Self awareness is something that is inbound in every individual but your ability to be conscious and take proper notice of them is of most importance. It entails being aware of what happens inwardly and in your physical environment.

It can make you reach your greatest achievement in life and also facilitate your growth. We have also seen that self-aware individuals have empathy such that they are concerned about other people's feelings and are good at maintaining good relationships with people.

Self-awareness also strengthens and makes the individual strong in handling situations and making decisions. I hope this write-up has been able to enlighten you on your self-awareness and the benefits that come with it.

#thoughtprovoking