Self-awareness can sound like an obvious term. After all, everyone is aware of themselves to a certain degree. We all know that we exist; we are usually aware of the space we take up. We have a voice, we see, hear, feel, touch, taste. What is the knowledge of this experience if not awareness of self?
Well, there is a discrepancy. What we described above is simply being aware of our experience, whereas true “self-awareness” describes the state of truly and objectively knowing who you are. Simply put, self-awareness is an objective sense of identity, removed from ego or inhibition.
It can be a struggle to achieve self-awareness. Between negative life experiences, the demands of a capitalistic society, and expectations of our social circle, we often only look at ourselves through the lens of how much we have achieved, earned, or the things we own; rather than defining ourselves by our values and character. In the meantime, here are some exercises and strategies you can do yourself to start the journey of self-discovery.
Journaling
One of the best ways to strengthen your awareness of self is to regularly engage in self-reflection. Take some time out of your day to look back at the day, what happened, how you reacted to them, and why. While some people are naturally more introspective than others and regularly reflect on things like this, some people require a more structured routine to engage in these kinds of thought exercises. A useful tool for doing so in journaling.
Journaling can often sound very…high school? For the lack of a better word. However, writing down thoughts allows you some calm reflection time, as well as a space of safety. After all, paper doesn’t judge, interrupt, or invalidate. You can truly write whatever you want in your journal, and it’s okay. More importantly, committing thoughts to paper allows you to take time with your thoughts. To deconstruct them and assess them. And through this deconstruction, you can find parts of yourself that align with the vision of you that you want to be, and identify areas of your psyche that you want to invest work into.
Identify your Core Values
You likely know some of these already, as you will have made decisions in your life based on them. But you may be surprised at how much of yourself you’re not actually familiar with. If your life has been dictated by financial concern, you may have made decisions based on profitability, but that’s only because you’ve never been given a chance to truly make a decision based on your own interest or intuition.
Some traumas can also mean that living or even identifying your core values is extremely difficult. Abusive family or partners may have meant that you’ve had to hide behind a veneer of conformity all your life for safety. There are many exercises to help people identify their core values, and you may even discover some yourself through journaling.
Read Fiction
Reading regularly is always good for the brain. It allows some time to relax, expands vocabulary, but most importantly, reading fiction stories was proven in a 2006 study to enhance empathy and social acumen.
Why? Simply put, stories allow you to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. When you have an emotional response to a story, it’s not simply a thing that happens. You’re feeling the struggles of the characters in the story.
This is more than just increasing empathy, however; it’s showing you parts of who you are. When you have an emotional response like joy or sorrow to something happening in a story, it provides you with information on what situations or what kinds of people cause certain feelings to arise in you. If you cry because a character has lost their family, you may resonate because you feel close to yours, or it may trigger memories of your own family that are happy or sad to you. It can open up new avenues of thought with which to examine yourself as a person, and offer insight into your emotional experiences and why you have them.
Examine Your Reactions
Reactions are rarely a filtered thing, and are often an impulsive gesture that can be very telling. For example, if you offer someone a high-five, but they flinch when they see your hand raised, what might that tell you about them? That they’re afraid of high-fives? Or maybe (and infinitely more likely) that they associate the raising of a hand with imminent pain.
Looking at yourself through this lens is important, too. When someone offers you a high five, do you instinctively shrug away from the raised hand? If someone buys you food, are you happy, or do you feel guilty that they’ve spent money on you?
Looking at your reactions to things can tell you a lot about your baseline assumptions of the world, and can also provide you with ideas of what you might like to work on as you take this journey of self-discovery.
If you want to learn more about self-discovery, there are plenty of courses that you can complete to gather a better understanding of yourself and to help others on their journey, like a Doctor of Counseling course that would give you more skills than this article can.
