Developing Self Awareness

Developing Self Awareness is the first step in your self improvement plan. It makes you understand your feelings, your behaviour and your actions. It gives you the clarity and freedom to change all those characteristics you want to change to achieve your goal.

Simply put, it is knowing who you really are.
Why should you be self aware? To modify yourself the way you want to create the life you desire.

To be more clear: if you want to go to a place, it is important for you to know where you are at present. This knowledge of your present location helps you in taking some important decisions like the mode of transportation, the starting time etc..

Knowledge of your true self

Knowing about your true self- your personality, your internal standards and values, likes and dislikes- is developing self awareness.

Through awareness, you can understand your feelings, your behaviour, your actions and the way you respond and react to external stimuli. You can also understand the way you see others. This understanding gives you the clarity and freedom to change all those characteristics you want to change to achieve your goals.

Without fully knowing your true self, self acceptance and change become impossible.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
- Tao Tzu

Your mirror image

It is like standing before a mirror and looking at yourself- your appearance. Do you like everything you see? You may like some features and some you may not like.

There are a few which you may not be able to change and learn to like them. But, there are other features which you want and can change to make your appearance more acceptable.

Awareness mirror

In a similar way, you can look through the awareness mirror in which you can see yourself closely, observe and understand the real 'you' and initiate changes, if required, in your behavours, attitudes and habits.

This process helps you to identify your-

• Talents
• Strengths
• Weaknesses

You will be able to identify the areas which you need to-

• Develop afresh
• Improve
• Change
• Remove from your life

Once you have these inputs, you can set goals and work towards realizing them.

Having clarity about who you are and what you want (and why you want what you want), empowers you to consciously and actively make those wants a reality.

What are the other benefits?

• You will also be able to understand the feelings and behaviours of others- it helps you to make alterations, if needed, in your attitude and behaviour towards them.

• You can exercise better control over yourself, mastering over your past conditioning.

• You will be able to face more challenges with less stress.

• By understanding people around you, your communication skills and relationships improve.

Without awareness of yourself, you view yourself differently- the image created and conditioned by the inputs of people and circumstances around you.

Now to the most important topic- The process of developing Self Awareness

Return from Developing Self Awareness to
Self Improvement Success Home page