A Comprehensive Guide to Cultivating Self-Awareness

Awareness is knowing what’s happening around you, self-awareness is knowing what you’re experiencing. Self-awareness is the ability to know what we are doing as we do it and understand why we are doing it.

Self-awareness is:

  • knowing what we are doing as we do it

They are two sides to this coin:

  1. Awareness is knowing what’s happening around you

​Self-Awareness Theory is based on the idea that you are not your thoughts, but the entity observing your thoughts; you are the thinker, separate and apart from your thoughts (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).​

Two types of awareness:

  1. Internal self-awareness: How clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. Internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness; it is negatively related to anxiety, stress, and depression.

Why self-awareness is important:

  1. It can make us more proactive, boost our acceptance, and encourage positive self-development (Sutton, 2016).

Ways to cultivate self-awareness:

  1. Take personality tests like Myers Briggs and Enneagram as they provide insights into behaviors, patterns, personality types, etc.

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