5 Reasons Why You Should Practice Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the knowledge and awareness of one’s personality or character. It is the ability to see one’s self clearly and objectively.
We are so used to ignoring ourselves and focusing on others when we are meant to focus on ourselves and glance at others. It is so easy to look at others and tell them their strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes when we know little or nothing about ourselves. We rarely take the time to look inward, objectively assessing who we are.
Self-awareness is a tool that can help counter the habit of always focusing on others, helping us discover who we are. As Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund puts it,
“When we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves.”
Why You Should Practice Self-Awareness
Self-awareness when practiced leads to self-improvement, I highly recommend it. You can download the Destiny's Odyssey's self-awareness worksheet here. Here are 5 reasons why you should practice self-awareness and not just add this pdf to your downloads folder.
1. It leads to better decision-making.
One of the hardest things we do as humans is decision-making. We don’t get to see a thriller on the decision we are about to make which makes it easy for us to make bad decisions. Fortunately, self-awareness makes this task easy to do.
Self-awareness makes us aware of who we are, what we want, and how we want others to view us. It makes us aware of our internal standards and consequently, helps us make decisions that align with our internal standards.
2. It increases work motivation.
Motivation is something we all need to complete a task, whether big or small. As much as it is needed, it is not always available.
If there is one way to gain motivation in any task you are doing, it is by doing what you love. The passion you have for it automatically changes to motivation. Self-awareness makes it easy for you to find out what you are passionate about. Being aware of your strengths and weaknesses makes it easy for you to choose a job that aligns with your passion.
3. It decreases your stress levels.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.” Alexander Den Heijer
Doing tasks you have no interest in increases your stress level. Your stress level is sure to increase when your job requires you to make a public presentation when you have trouble speaking in public or when the task you are supposed to do makes you go out a lot when you would rather sit in a cubicle. Remember, an increased stress level can lead to burnout. Knowing your strengths will help you make better decisions on what tasks to do which will result in decreased stress levels.
4. It makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses.
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Bruce Lee
Self-awareness is not only about knowing what you are good or bad at, or knowing your strengths and weaknesses. It is knowing what you are good and bad at, accepting who you are, and deciding to change or improve on things you can. It is recognizing your strengths and weaknesses and putting more effort into your strengths, reducing the work you put on your weaknesses.
5. It increases your happiness level.
Self-awareness gives you the happiness and fulfillment that comes from doing the things you love, improving on your strength, and working towards a better you. It gives you a sense of achievement, increases your self-control, and leads to self-love.
Are you still skeptical about practicing self-awareness? If you still are, the only way to clear your doubt is to do it. Download Destiny's Odyssey's self-awareness worksheet and let me know how your self-awareness journey went.
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Oh my God thanks for this
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent piece.
ReplyDeleteAlways an insightful and educative piece everytime from you dear. Keep up the awesome work you're doing. Self-awareness is really the way to go especially in this present world we live in. If you're not aware of who you truly are ant what you can be, the world will turn you into what they want you to be. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I love the blog. Well done ma