4 Steps To Greater Self Awareness

Effective Leadership And Interpersonal Effectiveness Begins With Self Awareness. A proven way of becoming more effective in both your business and personal life is by becoming more self-aware. If you can become aware of your self – your strengths and your weaknesses – then, you can become aware of the affects you create in the world around you.

So, the big question then is “what is the self”? To many, the answer may be so obvious that they haven’t given it much thought. Others might wonder if the self even exists, or if it does can it be defined? Either way this is a question humanity has been asking for millennia, with answers from different eras often explaining what it means to be human at that particular place in time. Certainly, the answer is never a trivial one. However, for most of us we stumble through life and take only a restricted look at ourselves, our environment, or even the prevailing forces that shape our world. We find ourselves simply doing - as in human doings, rather than experiencing our lives as human beings.

Effective Leadership And Interpersonal Effectiveness Begins With Self Awareness.

Certainly - with a little effort we can do better, and we can be better. The first action we can take is to become more aware of who and what we are – to purposely explore who the self is. One constructive approach is to examine the self through the four facets or aspects, namely the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual self.

The Physical Self

Our physical bodies are probably the most obvious aspect of one’s self. Consider for a moment that when the body is in great pain or distress our awareness of our bodies is usually strongest. In contrast, when we feel physically OK, we tend to block our awareness of our physical body and raise awareness of the other aspects of our self, such as our thoughts or our emotions. Even though we may not be consciously aware of each level of self at any given moment, each level affects the other levels of self – independent of our awareness. For example, feeling physically uncomfortable can lead to feeling emotionally uncomfortable, as well as feeling emotionally uncomfortable can lead to changes in our physical feelings.

At a period of discomfort, examining one’s physical self requires an examination of one’s physical environment, such that what emerges is the recognition that the two mutually interact, transform, and reinforce each other. This aspect of one’s environment and one’s self interacting with and changing each other is important to remember not only in examining the physical self and the physical environment, but at all levels of self-examination.

Just as there is a physical environment that interacts with a physical self, there is a mental environment, emotional environment, and spiritual environment that interacts with each corresponding level of self. This understanding of the interconnectedness within our self becomes vital to the concept of interdependency among and between all human beings.

The Emotional Self

As human beings we are capable of being aware of oneself on an emotional level – which means that we are aware of our emotions. Frequently however emotion often gets undervalued or even ridiculed in our dominant culture that typically values ideas such as logic and reason. Consider for example how when someone becomes emotionally expressive a colleague may well tell them to calm down – or to get a grip. Being emotionally expressive is considered to be out of control. Consequently, many believe that emotions are things to be avoided, but such a response would be harmful. Emotions have a function in our life and have served our wellbeing – they serve an important purpose in providing the self with information about the environment around us, as well as motivation for what to avoid or embrace in that environment.

The Mental Self

The mental aspect of the self includes our thoughts and our imagination. Like the experience within the physical self and the source of emotional feelings, thoughts also have the capacity to come upon us without our control, but it is far easier to consciously change our thoughts, especially when we practice being more aware of them in the first place. When we think for example, we often think in sentences or words, but just as often, we can think in images or words and phrases that act as a kind of shorthand. In these “shorthand” moments, it is quite easy for thoughts to get distorted and not accurately reflect a true situation.

The Spiritual Self

Exploration of the spiritual self is not about any one religious’ belief, nor does it reject any religious belief, either. When we use the term spirit here, we understand that it is not meant in a religious sense. Instead, the spiritual self is about our continuing sense of identity. The spiritual self is the realm of what we as a human being value. For each of us it is our world view and the source of our motivation. If the emotional self and mental self are about the feelings and thoughts that we experience as a human being in a given moment, then the spiritual self is about the interconnectedness of thoughts and feelings over time that forms into a sense of our personal identity.

Wrapping Up

Systems theory is a recent mode of understanding information and the proponents of systems theory recognize that we can only look at things in terms of a framework and constructs. Anything we observe will be largely determined by what frame we choose to view it in. So – as we observe the self with the intention to become more aware of who and what we are – we recognize that if we examine the self through the four aspects, namely the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual self – we begin to understand how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

P.S. Our Master List Of Soft Skills Workshop Topics

What our society seems to be gaining in terms of both knowledge and technological advancement, we are losing out on basic soft skills that directly impact the bottom line of your business. I invite you to view our Master List Of Soft Skills Workshop Topics, which are suitable for various learner groups, including junior, senior, supervisors, and workforce development trainers. The aim of the Soft Skill Series Of Workshops is to introduce the skills needed to effectively address current work life and workplace issues. If you are interested in us bringing these topics to your organization you can reach us at [email protected]