Self Awareness
Self awareness and what does it mean to be aware and awake? Every person has their own ideas, viewpoints, emotions and thoughts. Each are unique to that person making up a vast array of differences. Although we are very different we do experience the same style or pattern of self analysis which tells us who we are. We are our hardest critic. No one else analyzes us like we do to our self.
Self awareness can be considered the ability to come up with a summary of who we are that is based on our past and our current thoughts and our emotions. Awareness allows individuals to create and formulate a complete summary. We attempt to understand what is going on in our mind and why. We are responsible for our thoughts about self and others. Playing the role of the victim only prevents us from growth. We are responsible for who we are and what actions we take in life.
Self Awareness
Take Off The Blinders
The ability to have self awareness is to see yourself without the blinders on. You must first be willing to truly see yourself no matter how badly you want to avoid certain aspects or characteristics. This requires tremendous strength, patience, humility and self love. Humans struggle with the ability to see themselves as fallible. Each person take hits in life and take the wins. The most aware individuals are capable of seeing both ends of the spectrum and without placing judgment or blame, merge the two in order to create a more conscious and aware individual.
Humans tend to spend their lives playing out two roles of self thought. One side plays the martyr or victim. They may have had painful events in the past so they feel powerless and unable to confront obstacles. Victimization behaviors can look like the following for many people:
- Justifying happenings and events that occur and looking at how you were wronged.
- Complaining about difficult events in your life without being able to look at the part or role you play in the event.
- Obsessing in your mind about events you perceive as sad and justifying the negative behaviors as well as feelings of anger, shame and sadness.
- Vocalizing to others sad or depressing stories in order to gain the approval of others and to avoid their judgement.
- Believing that other people must change their opinion or thoughts in order for change to occur. You are not seeing any area that you play a part in.
On the other end we have thoughts of feeling self empowered. This requires self awareness. The following characteristics are indicators that your are coming from a place of self empowerment.
- Consciously you allow yourself to let go of the victim role.
- You take responsibility for your actions and the role you play in the difficult events from the past.
- Your able to respond proactively to your future events based on what lessons you have learned and benefited from in the past.
- There is not a need to rely on other people to fill a perceived void. You establish emotional maturity.
- Your taking full responsibility and action for your choices and decisions.
- Understanding that the only way change will occur is to work on the internal dialogue and become aware of our thought process.
Self Awareness
How To Achieve It
- Strive to gain emotional awareness. Take the time to fully understand what it is your feeling and what inside of you is being triggered. By doing this you accurately can assess what is going on and respond effectively. Understand that anxiety is not bad but rather a message being sent to you.
- Recognize your negative and your damaging thought process. This way your able to see your thought patterns and cognition’s so you can have the ability to censor them.
- Be able to recognize the tendencies you have to resort to negative thinking and past behaviors. These lead to being the victim. Make the appropriate changes before the negative action or the outburst before it arrives.
- Be able to see your expectations, your belief systems and the assumptions you make in life. These affect every action and reaction you have.
- Regardless of the past events and your patterns, accept full responsibility for the actions of yourself. Also for the roles in which you played.
Self Awareness in Therapy
For most people that enter therapy they are seeking to change their life circumstances. They want to understand themselves better and why they respond the way they do. Techniques that are helpful consist of the following:
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)
Understanding how your thoughts control your behaviors.
Mindfulness Therapy
Understanding how to track and be mindful of how we have the tendency to pull from the past to predict the future and dump it into the present moment.
Solution Focused Therapy
This approach is utilized to direct the development of a client’s vision to find solutions to their goals.“
Seek counseling today and see the many benefits that gaining awareness can do to enhance and completely change your life. It’s time to wake up and take personal ownership for the direction our lives are taking.