Why is Self-Awareness a Key to Your Success?

What does it mean to be self-aware? It's to genuinely get to know yourself through an accurate assessment of your values, emotions, perceptions, strengths, and weaknesses so you can live your life with a sense of purpose, authenticity, and trust.

Self-awareness is a form of emotional intelligence and lack of it may cause many problems, whether it's a student who becomes defensive after receiving constructive criticism or an employee who cannot meet set milestones. To know yourself, you need self-awareness, and to be able to understand others, you need empathy. Together, these traits lead to actions that generate results, build communities, and increase your positive influence.

So, how do you build your self-awareness? To begin with, let's break down the three competencies that are necessary to understand it:

1. Emotional awareness: Recognizing one's emotions and their effects

2. Accurate self-assessment: Knowing one's strengths and limits

3. Self-confidence: A strong sense of one's self-worth and capabilities

Our emotional awareness is based on our physiology and the way we perceive our emotions in the body. Being self-aware at the emotional level means that you are able to identify the link between your emotions and your thoughts or actions. Emotions are closely linked to our values so being aware of them can help you understand why you had an emotional reaction towards a person or an event.

Self-assessment is the meaning we derive from our actions, our strengths, and our weaknesses. People who can assess themselves regularly are reflective and have no problem learning from their mistakes, asking for feedback, and knowing exactly what they need to improve. They have a growth mindset and actively seek mentors they can learn from.

Self-confidence develops when we fully embrace the authentic self and disregard our ego. When we stop relying on others to validate us. Only then are we in a position to learn something new. We become humble enough to accept our limitations without being too self-critical or self-destructive. True self-confidence comes from objectively assessing our greatest strengths and weaknesses. When we feel self-confident, we understand what our priorities in life are and can let go of things that don't matter.

So, now that you understand the main competencies, you can try applying the following techniques:

First, understand your life story and our narrative identity. This is how we perceive the narrative that frames our actions and helps us set our goals. Dan McAdams, a psychology professor from Northwestern University, explains, "The stories we tell ourselves about our lives don't just shape our personalities—they are our personalities." Think about your life, past experiences, people that have had the most significant impact in shaping the person you have become? What was the source of your most immense happiness? What caused you discomfort? Through which experiences did you find the greatest passion? Understanding this will help you get to know yourself better and see what you need to focus on to improve.

The second way to enhance self-awareness is to create a daily habit of self-reflection. You can choose to meditate, practice breathing, spending some time in nature, embrace solitude or write a journal.

The third way is to ask for honest feedback from people you respect or admire. All of us may have certain assumptions about ourselves, and it may turn out that we are the only ones who think so. At the same time, getting honest feedback can help us see something new in ourselves that others may see but we cannot. Don't forget to act on the feedback you receive.

Finally, talk about your values to other people - your family, friends, and colleagues. Concepts such as self-awareness and finding a purpose are relatively abstract, so it's important to verbalize them to make them more understandable and tangible. Journaling certainly may help with this, but it's even more beneficial to have an open conversation with someone whose opinion you trust.

Bill George is a professor at Harvard Business School, suggests that you will not become fully self-aware in a day. Instead, it may take years of observation, contemplation, and challenging conversations. But as you continue, your views will change, and you will discover more ways to be authentic, true to yourself, and ultimately, feel happier and more fulfilled.

Self-awareness is the foundation of authentic and confident leadership, whether in the classroom, boardroom, or family room. Only as we examine our fears, hopes, and desires can we truly get to know ourselves, follow our passion, and discover our purpose - whatever it may be.

And isn't' that what we all want?