As I sit here reflexing on what I have learned along my journey so far, in particular thinking about Self-Awareness. I am reminded that Self-Awareness is a process. I have learned that who I was yesterday is not who I am today.

Everyday I wake up, I am a new person. Almost like I am a fresh save. It takes me reminding myself of the goals and person I was when I went to bed the night before.

Self Awareness is a consented growth metric that you must gauge when you examine who you were and who you want to become.

In this post I will share the five things I have learned about Self Awareness and the process to become self-aware. Come with me as I learn to grow more and more self-aware.

Self-Awareness is more of a Journey than a Destination

I have heard some people ask, “How do I know when I become Self-Aware”. This question always intrigues me. I believe that even asking the question leans itself to the notion that you are on the path of Self-Awareness.

In order to start down the path of Self-Awareness one must first have the desire to do so. Wither you have a reason to want to go down the path, or it has become a necessity due to the chaos around you.

Once you have the thought in your head that you need to become self-aware. Or a therapist has mentioned it and the thought stuck with you. The sheer desire to become so will lead you to the path.

The path or what I will refer to from now on the journey to become self-aware starts with the earnest desire to become so.

Now your probably asking, “Alright, you say I’ve started down the journey. How do I continue down it?”

I would say that comes down to four steps. Four steps that are on consistent repeat in your life.

Step 1 – Learn about yourself

In this step, I want you to take an honest and sincere look at not only where you are in life, but the thoughts and feelings that are going on inside you. You must fully gauge where your mind is.

This could be through meditation or simple taking some breaths and looking inside you for how you are currently feeling and the thoughts that are in your head.

What do you spend most of your time thinking about? What do you do when your scared? What is your life like, and how have your choices and actions lead you to where you are?

This step relays heavily on taking personal responsibility for where you are in life. Not only where you find yourself, but also the choices and actions that you have taken to get here.

So many people in life try to find excuses outside of themselves for why they are were they are. My boss doesn’t like me. The weather has been bad. The stock market is has been to flaky.

Self-Awareness doesn’t allow for outside excuses. Switch the outer excuses for inner responsibility.

I’ll give you an example from my life…I have been on disability for over the last fifteen years. What would you assume my response to this used to be?

I used to blame outside excuses for it. “My past messed up my brain chemistry”, “People don’t get me”, “Life is just too hard”.

Now that I have started practicing Self-Awareness, I have come to the realization that I just have not put in the effort enough to achieve my goals.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know plenty of people who are on disability because they 100% need to be. And to be honest that used to be me as well. I used to be so mentally unwell that disability was my only option.

But thanks to medications and learning how to cope with the mental health issues I have. I believe I can achieve my goals. And eventually come off disability. I also know this won’t be an over night thing. Which leads me to the second step.

Step 2 – Examine yourself

In this step, I need you to take an honest and sincere look at where you are. Look at where you are lacking and the things you can improve on.

For me I have realized that sleep is important, and that if I don’t have a balanced sleep schedule my mental health struggles more than normal. I have also learned that medications are a necessity.

But along the way I have discovered that it takes some personal will power to focus on what needs to be focused on, instead of following distractions.

What does it look like to examine yourself?

It reflexing on where you stand. Where do your thoughts and feeling seem to linger? What has 99% of your attention. If we remember step on we want to make sure we are making outer excuses for where we are.

We look to the deepest part of us and why we are the way we are. We take an honest measure of ourselves.

Why is this step of examining yourself Important?

This step is important because it leads to down the path of Self-Awareness. I means It’s pretty clear that in order to be self-aware you must examine where you are and where you’ve been.

Some might be saying now, “Examining yourself seems simple”. And I would agree if it wasn’t so nerve racking. Think about it, I’m not only talking about looking at yourself. But I am asking you to take a honest and sincere look at not only where you are but the thoughts and feeling going on inside of you.

It can be scaring to take such a none bias look at yourself without the outer excuses we normally use to mask the actions and decisions we have made. But this is a critical step. Without this unbiased look you can’t go on to step 3.

Step 3 – Take a step for yourself

For this step, I want you to pick one area of your life you have examined in the pervious step. We will work with an example for now, for me I want to work on my consistency. After taking a unbiased look at myself I have discovered that my consistency is lacking.

So now we have something we will be working on, how do we take the step for ourselves? Well, we find 1% changes that can lead to greater change in the future. For me this blog itself will be my 1% change. I will working on it daily to improve my consistency.

While I am working to take this step I need to always keep an internal look at myself and how I am doing. And when I have stumbled in my path I need to take personal but compassionate responsibility.

I need to not make outer excuses for why I stumbled, but understand that I am the one that stumbled. It was my choices and my actions. And when you stumble it will be your actions and decisions that caused you to stumble as well.

But… that’s okay. Be compassionate with yourself. Stand up and get back at it. Take another internal look at yourself, see the thoughts and feelings that caused you to stumbled make a note and see what you can do to avoid stumbling again.

Step 4 – Evaluate how far you have come, and the steps that have led to this point

If you have reached this step, first I want you to take a second and congratulate yourself. You have taken uncomfortable steps that have probably made you feel insecure, but the sheer fact you have made it is a sign that you have grown.

For this step we are going to take another look at ourselves, but this time we are not only going to take a look at where we are but at the thoughts and feelings that have lead to where we are. We are going make notes, wither that’s in a journal or notes app such as Obsidian.

We are going to keep these notes as a sign of future sign post. These sign post will show we are keeping tabs on where we are and where we have been.

Take the subject back to self-awareness again, we are going to take a moment and evaluate what’s going on in our minds right now.

These thoughts are okay, we are not going to judge them based on someone else moral code. They are our thoughts at as long as we are happy with them we are going to be okay with them. If they are thoughts we don’t want, we will go back to step one and work to change the thoughts.

How to put Self-Awareness into Action

The next thing we will work on is putting Self-Awareness in Action. That meaning, we will be self-aware as much as possible. We will learn how to always be aware of the thoughts and feelings going on in our heads.

Have you ever been in the situation where you are having a conversation with someone and they ask you, “what’s going on inside that head of yours?” but you are unsure of the answer. Well we are going to work on techniques of extracting those thoughts so we can communicate them when needed.

In 3 out 5

The first technique we will discuss is what I call the in 3 out 5 technique. We will take a three second breath in hold it for four seconds than breath out for five seconds. While we do this we will be looking inside for what’s going on in our heads.

What are the feelings we are feeling and the thoughts our brains have latched on to.

I feel _ and I am thinking _ .

This is a simple technique where we make our thoughts and feeling formulaic. We will use this template to explain in the simplest way possible how we feel and what we are thinking.

For example, I feel scared and I am thinking you are going to leave me. I feel happy and I am thinking it’s too good to be true.

While this template is simple it will start the conversation and give the other person a sense of what’s going on in our head.

Self-Awareness vs Mindfulness

Have you ever heard the term Mindfulness?

I think mindfulness and self-awareness are closely related and can be used in conjunction to live a emotional intelligent life.

The American Psychological Association defines mindfulness as, “Mindfulness is awareness of one’s internal states and surroundings. Mindfulness can help people avoid destructive or automatic habits and responses by learning to observe their thoughts, emotions, and other present-moment experiences without judging or reacting to them.”

Which is close to what I have described Self-Awareness to be. Mindfulness is more of the process of becoming self-aware. And is something you can discuss with your therapist about working on with them.

Living a life with Self-Awareness

Living a life with Self-Awareness can lead to a healthier more fulfilled life. It can lead to processing emotions and thoughts in a more constructive way.

Without Self-Awareness you go though life blind about what’s going on internally and can lead to miscommunications of thoughts and feelings.

Conclusion

Wrapping everything up in a nice clean package, I would like to tell you something very important. You are valuable loved and a wonderful human being. I believe if you practice self-awareness you can take a look on the inner workings of your mind and heart. I believe that you can achieve anything you set your mind too.

Today’s Journal Prompt is:

What area of my life should I take an honest and sincere inner look at and how can I improve that area using Self-Awareness?

I hope you all have a wonderful day. And that everyday is brighter than the one before.