Elevate your level of self-awareness

Based on my own experiences, self-awareness leads to to self discovery.

But, before that, let’s first define what self-awareness is.

Accordingly to Wikipedia, Self-awareness is how an individual consciously knows and understands their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. There are two broad categories of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.

The first step to become self-aware is to start the process with an open mind and with an attitude of someone who is ready to learn. TO LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF.

Self-Awareness

The process starts with an open mind and with an attitude of someone who is ready to learn about themselves.

Take an inventory of who you are

With countless self-improvement programs, articles, books and videos out there, basically, they all aim at getting to know yourself through the four major areas:

1. Thought habits;
2. Physical habits;
3. Inner self dialogue;
4. Body reactions.

To know yourself, basically, you would start by paying attention to what content is in your mind and what reaction is triggered in your body at a given situation where you want to know more about yourself.  Without making a conscious effort, most of time it is not possible.  This is because 95% of our action is run on autopilot by our subconscious mind, which I will cover in a different post.

Personally, in my 22 years of searching for myself, I used the following 5 methods to increase my self-awareness to monitor the above four stated areas:

• Meditation & Yoga;
• Journaling;
• Self-development books and programs;
• Get clues from your living environment and from friends and family;
• Hypnosis.

For a better result, please go to a quiet place when you follow any of the above methods.

In my case, there is no ONE particular method that is the most effective;   I have found that different methods can help open up awareness in different areas at different stages of your life. As your self-awareness heightens with time, you might find some method works better for you or you might come up with your own methods.

Take a snapshot of yourself

Being self-Aware means being aware of your thought habits, physical habits, inner self dialogue and body reaction to situations in life.

Start Where changes are wanted

So, you might ask, where do I start the self-awareness practice? I would suggest that you start in an area where you want to know more about yourself or where you want to see changes in your life.  For example, say that you want to eat more healthy food and find it difficult to change your current eating habits.

I would recommend you first take a snapshot of your current habits.  Once that is done, you can then install new habits and (or) eliminate old habits.

Journaling is a practical way to start

Going back to the example on  a healthy diet. For practical and effective purposes, I would recommend that you start with journaling. Journaling gives you what is for your current diet.

In addition, when you journal,  write down not only what you eat, also track the four major categories stated above, which are your thought habits, physical habit, inner self dialogue and body reaction.For example, when you eat breakfast, you would journal the following:

• Date/time;
• What are your food choices;
• what is going on in your mind about your choice (eg. thought habit: come on, we are late again for work, we do not have much time for breakfast);
• What is your physical action towards your breakfast?(Physical habits: You rush to prepare your breakfast and you eat very fast to finish it;
• What is that little voice saying with your breakfast?(bad choice of food, eating under stress, no wonder you are not as healthy as you can be)
• What is your body reaction? (get tense the whole time)

You would do this tracking daily for at least a week with respect to your breakfast habit/lunch/dinner/snacks time to have a better picture of the  four categories in relation to your diet every time you eat something.  From this journaling, you can identify your physical and mental patterns in reaction to food.

Please make sure that you journal down everything honestly.  No one is here to judge you. You need to start at where you are before making any changes.

The purpose of this exercise is to identify your current thought pattern and physical behavior pattern.

Again, you can use this method in any other areas you want to know more about yourself or see improvements.

Journaling is practical

You need to be honest with yourself when journaling. No one is there to judge you. You start from the areas where you want to see changes

Practice Makes Perfect

As mentioned earlier, there is not one fixed method that can increase your self-awareness.  With meditation and yoga, they definitely enhance clarity in your mind, but it takes time to train your mind to get to some level of clarity. Personally, I have been practicing meditation for the last 16 years.  It is getting easier but it is not perfect. Nevertheless, they are an vital practice in raising  self-awareness.  I would recommend that you start practicing them whenever you can.  The key point is to START.  Once you start, it takes commitment to do it as often as you can.  But it really gets easier with time.

That is why I recommend to use journaling as a starting point as it is something that you can do it right away and it is very effective.  When you accumulate your journals, you become the observer of your own mental dialogue  and physical behaviors.  In addition, you get to see mental and physical patterns that you have formed at the subconscious level that you normally would not see at conscious level.

So happy journaling!!