Self consciousness has long been thought of as an anxious way to over criticize everything you do, but it’s actually a great thing that can improve your life. Find out how self-awareness can be good, how it can be bad, and easy ways to become more self-aware.
Some people just seem to do everything right. They have a great grasp of who they are, where they are going in life, and they make decisions they act deliberately on. What’s their secret? Self-awareness. Self-awareness has a bad reputation for making people feel overly conscious, and overthink everything they do, but it doesn’t have to. Join SpiritualBlossom to learn all about self-awareness. Find out how it can be a bad thing, but how it can also be a great thing. Find out how to become more self-aware, and learn to use it to your advantage. Nobody knows you better than you do, especially if you are self-aware!
What is Self-Awareness?
Self-awareness is defined as the ability to understand yourself. It means that you understand what you think, feel, believe, and how you act. It means taking the time to reflect on the things that go through your mind and observing why you do the things that you do. A lot of people prefer to just focus on what other people do, trying to control other people. However, you have more power if you focus on yourself and what you are doing. If you are self-aware, you understand how you affect the things around you because you understand that what you say and do holds great power.
Self-aware people watch how their actions influence others. They pay attention to the results that certain things get, and they have the ability to adapt their behavior to get the results that they want. It's not easy to be self-aware. It means that you have to constantly be paying attention and evaluating yourself. That takes a lot of self-confidence to admit that you have imperfections and to be ok with that. While we are more likely to behave in ways that reflect our values, and habits that we have learned growing up, to be self-aware means that you will change those habits if you feel like they're not benefiting you and other people. It is one way to work on being your best self. Read more about being your best here: How to Be Your Best Self
How Self-Awareness Helps
Self-awareness isn't something everybody practices but it's something that everybody should practice. It's a big help. Knowing our feelings and how we react to those feelings helps us to know what we're about to do in a certain situation. Knowing our emotional triggers is especially important and knowing what motivates us to excel is also extremely important. Self-awareness can help us to battle our bad habits and replace them with better habits. It also helps us to influence what is going on around us. Best of all, it improves us in countless ways.
It Helps Battle Bad Habits
Nobody is perfect, that's for sure. It seems like some people are proud of their imperfections, but the fact is a lot of people are simply unaware of them. Our bad habits are just that- bad. They're bad for us and they're bad for the people who we’re involved with. If you are consciously aware of your bad habits, you recognize them before you repeat them. That will give you an opportunity to stop yourself and make a better decision. Our bad habits are things that we can say no to if we're aware of them. Learn all about the magical power of the word no and all of the great things that happen when you use it well: How to Say No: Reclaim Your Power
It Helps Influence Things
If you are self-aware, you know how people react to you. You will know what actions get the results that you want and you will know which actions get the results that you don't want. For example, if you just naturally want to shout when you get frustrated, you probably know that people don't react well to that. If you are self-aware, you can feel the desire to shout coming on, and that will give you time to think of something else to do instead. Taking a deep breath and saying “ I’m really frustrated about this, and I need you to work with me to find solutions” will be a better way to handle your frustration than just automatically shouting like you want to. It will help you to get the results and influence things the way that you want to. One great way to influence things is by using magic in your everyday life. Read about how to use magic here: Using Practical Magic in Everyday Life
It Improves You
Being self-aware helps you to improve in multiple different ways. Not only does it help you to change your bad habits, it helps you to understand what your strengths are. Self-awareness also helps you to be aware of your limitations. If you have a terrible phobia of heights, self-awareness will let you know that it's a bad idea to go mountain climbing with friends on the weekend. Self-awareness will also help you to know if you are the best driver in your group, so you can drive them to the resort and wait at the hotel to go to dinner with them after they get done with their climb. All of us are distinct individuals and none of us are just like anybody else. Being self-aware helps you to know what you're good at, what you're bad at, and what you can improve. It also helps you to know how to use your strengths to benefit yours and the lives of those around you and it makes you the best person that you can be. Self-awareness will help you to know how to do your own thing even if other people hate you for it. Read all about finding the courage to be hated or even just a little disliked here: How to Have the Courage to Be Disliked
When Is Self-Awareness a Bad Thing?
Self-awareness can go too far sometimes and be a bad thing though. When you overthink things you can become overly critical or paranoid and it can emotionally cripple you. You can spend too much time comparing yourself to others and your self-esteem can take a nosedive. You can focus so hard on being consciously aware that you can completely shut off your instincts and forget how to do the things that you do automatically.
When You Overthink Things
We have all overfocused on things at one time or another, so we all know that overthinking things is never good. It can create excessive worry to the point of paranoia. Overthinking things can make us imagine worst case scenarios that will never ever happen but we can upset ourselves so badly that we can't function. We can overfocus on our imperfections to the point that our self-esteem suffers. We can also become downright paranoid, and worry that other people are watching us with extreme disapproval when we become so conscious of ourselves that we overthink things. Anytime you catch yourself overthinking things, simply redirect your mind and think of something else. Focus on building confidence instead of overthinking. Find out how here: Being Confident and Improving Your Self Esteem
When You Compare Yourself to Others
It's only natural to compare ourselves to other people, but we can go overboard with that too. There will always be someone who is smarter, faster, better looking, more talented, richer, you name it. There will always be people who are better at some things than we are. That's okay. Being self-aware should be about improving ourselves, not competing with other people. Other people have their own struggles that we don't know about, and even if they seem superior or even perfect, they are dealing with troubles just like everybody else is. So don't compare yourself to other people with your self-awareness. It's all about being a better version of yourself, not competing. One way to become more self-aware is spending some time in solitude. Read about the benefits and joys of solitude here: Embracing the Joy of Solitary Time
You Can Shut off Your Instincts
Things like going upstairs, playing music, or even walking are things that we do without consciously thinking about them. If you start thinking about how to walk upstairs, your brain might shut off and you will be unable to do it. Some things like operating dangerous machinery require conscious attention. Overfocusing during other times causes problems. A different part of your brain is engaged when you function with your instincts. You should allow that to happen and not try to micromanage it. Something else that is instinctual is your psychic abilities. To use them, you have to take the time to develop them though. Learn how to develop your psychic abilities here: Developing Your Psychic Powers
Ways to Become Self-Aware
Since self-awareness is so important, if you're not already practicing it, you can learn how to. Some people just become self-aware by thinking about what they're doing, but other people need different techniques. Listing all of your best and worst habits as well as the way that you react to what happens is one way to become self-aware. Meditation, most specifically conscious meditation, is a great way to improve your self-awareness. If you're not quite sure how you do things, ask the people who know you for clarification.
List Habits and Reactions
The longer you live the better you will get to know yourself. What are your 10 best habits and what are your 10 worst habits? Listing those and writing out a little bit to elaborate about them will help you to understand yourself better. An extremely good way to become more self-aware is to think about how you react when things don't go the way that you expect them to. When there is tension on the job what do you do? Do you immediately start trying to think of solutions? Do you disappear because you are anti-confrontational, or you need to step away because tension overwhelms you? How do you react when you are angry, sad, scared, sick, or hurting? Stress and hurting calls for acceptance, not denial. Learn how to combat toxic positivity and accept your emotions here: Accept Feelings and Discard Toxic Positive Beliefs
Next, how do your habits both good and bad, and your reactions to things influence how people react to you? You may consider it a good habit to be generous, but are people taking advantage of your generosity? You may consider it a bad habit to raise your voice when you feel like people aren't listening to you, but have you learned to do that because that is the only way that you can get certain people to listen? If you disappear, basically hiding from your coworkers when there is tension on the job, is there a reason for that? Did you grow up in an angry or violent home and tension happened right before bad things happened? Are you always the one who starts offering solutions no matter what happens? That may be because you are a highly creative individual and you should make sure to use that creativity to solve whatever problems come about.
Meditate
Thinking deeply about things that have happened is a great way to become more self-aware. Those habits and unconscious reactions to things say a lot about who you are. If you are one of the people that automatically starts trying to solve problems no matter where you are, it could be because you are naturally an empath and you just want to make people feel better. If you automatically raise your voice if you feel like people aren't listening to you, is that making people feel like you just want to shout and perhaps you could find a better way to get people's attention? Thinking about what happens is a form of conscious meditation and it will help you to become more self-aware. One thing that meditation leads to sometimes is enlightenment. Learn all about enlightenment here: The Path to Enlightenment
Ask for Clarification
Maybe nobody knows you better than you know yourself, but while you are getting to know more about yourself by increasing your self-awareness, other people who know you can provide insight. The people who raised you, your close friends and family, long term neighbors, and peers will have observed you for years. They will know things about you that you didn't realize about yourself. They will be able to tell when you are nervous, or when you're really excited about a new person who you have met by nonverbal cues that you give. Your facial expressions, your energy levels, and whether you're getting enough to eat when times are bad will be things that they notice. You can always ask the people who know you things about yourself. Your friends love you more than can be expressed. Read about the love of friends here: All About the Love of Friends
Self-awareness won't fix every problem, but it will help you learn how to avoid them. You will become aware of your best and worst habits, how people react to you, and how to behave in ways that benefit you. Self-awareness can go too far if you overthink things, compare yourself to others, or shut off your instincts. You can become more self-aware by listing your best and worst habits as well as your reactions to things, meditating on the things that you do and the results, and if you don't know exactly how you are, you can always ask the people who know you well for clarification. Not everyone is self-aware, but you can be. Know yourself through your thoughts, actions, and beliefs.
Don't forget one of the people who can help you with self-awareness is your own personal psychic. We are here all day every day to help you with any questions you may have, so get a reading started now.
About the Author: Lady Saoirse has studied magic and lore for most of her life but started walking her own Magical Path after being spiritually reborn in the desert. Today she is a High Priestess for The Temple of the Goddess, she is a psychic advisor and spiritual counselor, she shares her gifts as a Psychic and Content Writer for Mysticsense and SpiritualBlossom, and she writes for The Green Egg Magazine and PaganPages.Org emag.
