What is Self-Awareness & Why is it important?

In the Context of CORE SMART, as defined in the article "Are you Future Ready?" https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/you-future-ready-venkatesan-sreenivasan/, the fundamental step to be taken, is to effortlessly and rapidly acclimatize to the future requirements or the changing demands. To make this Remodeling process seamless, the opening move is to understand our “self” in the perfect mode and this is termed as Self-Awareness. 

What is Self-Awareness? 

Self-awareness is a comprehensive assessment to have a sharp realization of the potential, skills and competencies of oneself. For that, we need to objectively and clearly look at ourselves without any biases and prejudices, and understand what drives us, as an individual. More than just an understanding of “who I am”, Self-awareness talks more about how a person thinks, feels and acts at the moment, as a realistic picture or as a mirror reflection. It is downright different from how a person wants to be or how he perceives himself to be. More than the perception, the “Actual Person behind the perception, his feelings and emotions” is what is to be engrossed, when we talk about the term “Self-awareness”. To be precise, Self-awareness means, not just finding, understanding and being aware of oneself, but also being honest and courageous to accept and come to complete terms with it.

As we already mentioned, to increase the degree of self-awareness, we have to closely watch ourselves and examine the thought process which is going on in our brain, the emotions that we are going through and the corresponding patterns of behavior under a particular stimulus. By this understanding of our pattern of behavior, we will be in a better state to evaluate and assess healthy Vs. unhealthy behaviors in a candid mode and the thoughts and emotions triggering this behavior. By this constant self-evaluation we will reach a point in which, we can tune our thoughts and emotions causing unproductive or non-progressive behavior, control them and thus can constantly refine ourselves as individuals to yield better outcomes or results in life.

What is Self- reflection and how is it related to Self-awareness:

The conscious process of careful introspection and analysis of our “self” to understand Who we are , what are the values we have set in life , what does our thought process look like and why do we act the way we do and comparing it with the standards or the desirable values is what we term as Self-reflection . As we mentioned above, this will give us a gist of where do we need to amend our course of action, to bring our results in alignment with our actual goals. For this process to be effective we need to be completely honest with our “self”.

Let’s understand , we have majorly two forms , Conceptual self-awareness: which depicts what do we think about ourselves which will essentially include the judgments, evaluations, logical conclusions, and other aspects that are easily expressed or more of metaphoric in nature, or rather, an idea that a person has about himself   . The statements like “I am a short tempered person”, “I am a happy go lucky person” are all examples of this. The second form is Embodied self-awareness, which includes registering various types of inner states. It focuses more on the sensorial experience at a particular moment or the emotions a person goes through, when he is put in to a particular situation and that can be accomplished by careful self-enquiry, self-observation and self-knowledge.

Why is self-Awareness important

 As Aristotle quoted “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

As we know, the journey to a person’s success starts right from within himself/ herself, by having an unblemished understanding of what their core strengths and capabilities are. By this, rather than not being overwhelmed by the core strength, he will be in a position to respect himself as a unique and separate individual and accept him completely. After this phase of self-acceptance, starts the journey of establishing a positive connection with himself and with others around him, which will undoubtedly have a positive impact on him and the society in which he lives. Pertinently, by being self-aware, we learn to accept not only our strengths and capabilities, but also come to terms with our weakness and improvement areas. It’s quite obvious that just by accepting the weakness and doing nothing about it, will not help anybody to prosper in life, be it any aspect of life. By having a sound understanding of oneself, he should reach a state, where, he is in a position to develop an all-inclusive plan to work on the weakness in his traits which stops him from going far in life. This is possible only when a person understands his worth and values he has set, in life. The journey of his success starts right from this point of Self -realization. Bottom line is that, If a person wants to be successful in life, it’s imperative that he understands and accepts the real person which lies within himself by all means and focus on eliminating the gaps in capabilities.

Let’s talk about what is the importance of Self-awareness and why is it termed as a life changing skill :

AS we read above, a person with thorough self-awareness will always strive to analyze his emotions and behavior with the standards that he has set for himself. During this analysis, when he compares himself with the accepted standards, he becomes aware of the discrepancies and gaps. Based on this, he takes action in terms of focused work to change the discrepancy to improve the alignment with the standards. This helps him to become more proactive in his thoughts and actions and encourages positive self-development. This gap finding and improvement becomes a continuous process and an integral part of his life to keep refining our thoughts and actions. Researches have undoubtedly proven that Self-awareness can make us better at our jobs and to improve our interpersonal skills to collaborate with self-confidence and improve the quality of our life.   

From an organization’s stand point, the above theory holds good, across all levels in an organization, right from a layman who does transactional jobs till the CXO Level.  

Self-awareness is always gauged in relation to the internal and external environment that a person is subjected to, at work or in life. While understanding and accepting himself, he will be in a better position to manage his strength and weakness in the workplace which will help him become happy and productive at work.

Self-awareness as a skill, how it regulates & influences the different roles in an Organization. 

(picture source : Center of Leadership Excellence)

A   Leader who is meticulously self-aware of his skills and capabilities will always be able to manage himself better and craft a harmonious environment in the organization. He will be capable of controlling his emotions looking at the consequence and based on the others’ experience. With his high mental clarity & thorough knowledge of purpose in terms of organizational goals, he can easily motivate and empower his team members. His sound self-awareness will also help him enhance every experience by persuasively evaluating the situations, his behaviors & actions by looking at it objectively. This helps him  make better choices and decisions in every field of life. He will be more grounded and be able to relate better with his colleagues and subordinates. As he is truly aware of the objective and his role in achieving the objectives, he will be in a better position to set direction to people reporting to him as well. As we already discussed, a person who is able to manage himself better will be able to manage his environment and the group around him in an effective manner, Obviously Self-awareness is the first step towards maximizing management skills to leave a positive impact on people around him.

From the perspective of an employee in an organization, Lets understand the importance of Self-awareness:

Having said that human beings are complex and diverse, it’s vital that the employees are aware of their personality traits, personal values, habits & emotions. More precisely, they should be aware of what drives their behavior and what factor can possibly motivate them to stay productive at work or what can cause stress to them in a particular circumstance. Self-awareness becomes highly significant in this context because different individuals are motivated or stressed by different factors and no individuals thinks and acts alike. While employees at different levels and different roles are exposed to different levels of stress, they should be aware of what can be possibly done to avoid or cope the situation to avoid stress. This is also true for a person to understand the counterproductive emotions within himself, which causes the pattern of habits which stops his growth @ workplace. Self-awareness becomes an important factor at play, in understanding the above mentioned aspects. Obviously, For a person to choose the right profession matching his personality and to get maximum job satisfaction, he should be well aware of his competencies, skills, thoughts, pattern of behavior and his improvement areas. It will help him set priorities in life based on the factors which motivate him, and needless to mention, the guiding factors will be different for different individuals.

In short, a deeper sense of oneself will establish a greater connection to one’s life and goals. If we don’t get indulged in the self-examination process, it’s very likely that we get stuck in the pattern of habits which doesn’t help us to improve in life. It doesn’t mean that a person who is self-aware will always have high confidence to tackle with the situations, what is more important over here is that, as he is aware of his strength , he will also be conscious of the gaps in capability . Then rather than running away from his weakness, he analyzes it and accepts it as mere weakness. Then he finds out course of action to work on it and eliminate it. With his strong connection to the goals, he will always strive for self-improvement to match the standards that he has set for himself in life. Gradually he invents a better version of himself and this process goes on as an unvarying routine in his life.  

Most of the prominent Managerial Theories are influenced and governed by Self-awareness as a key “Skill” to a large extend. In the Grid Model, The “concern for people factor” is contingent on the self-awareness of the leader, his social and team awareness, his decision making style and how he interacts with his team which in turn is steered by his level of self-awareness. From the employee’s perspective, his self-awareness level and willingness to work on the capability gaps are very important to stay motivated and contribute to the productivity based on his capacity.

For a transformation leader, to have Individualized con)ideration, intellectual simulation, Inspirational motivation and idealized influence, to bring in maximum benefit to the organization, Self-awareness and sensitivity to the team & their collective capability is a highly significant governing factor. Without being self-aware, No Leader will be able to become a true visionary and empower his people to the optimum level. As you know, this is a critical aspect to contribute to the organizational success.

 (Picture Source:  Article titled "Self-Awareness: We Must Learn How to Listen to Ourselves Before Learning How to Listen to Others", by Iberkis Faltas in 2019)

Importance of Self-awareness for self-development – Case study

 Case study: Archery is a Prominent sport which involves shooting an arrow with a bow pointing a target. This sport is well known for the Precision, Control, Focus, Physical ability and Determination required for winning the game. In 1900 it was introduced as a Sport event in Olympics. For almost two decades, Korean Archers have been indomitable in this event. Korean Archers hold every available world record in Men’s and Women’s Event.

Kim Soo Nyung is considered as the best Olympic archer of all times in terms of the medal won, the records set and the performance in Olympics. She was declared as the “Female Archer of the 20th Century” by International Archer Federation. Not only her, Cho Youn Jeong and Lee Eun kyung are other top performers in the World Archers list. What could have possibly helped the Korean Archers create this culture of winning? How did South Koreans become the supreme power in Archery? Can we trace their Victory back to only the rigorous technical training that they receive since childhood? Let’s try and answer this mystery in the coming analysis

Challenges:

Is it a mere coincidence, that the Korean Archers are capable of this extra ordinary achievement in Olympics and other international events? Apart from the fact that Archery is considered as the National Game in Korea & played in schools & other regions across the country and the participants are given extensive technical training, is there any other secret contributing factor towards this winning culture?

 Analysis:

As we discussed, Archery gained prominence in Korea in 1900s and Since then Korean Coaches have been doing enormous research to devise a series of eclectic training and exercise for the Archers. Apart from the rigorous and extensive technical training they undergo a set of mind and self-controlling techniques were also introduced while training the Archers.

Kisik Lee was a famous Korean coach and he understood that one of the elusive qualities required for this sport is the ability to control the mind and emotions, to maintain the focus while shooting and that too with a relaxed mind. He also understood that this can be achieved my examining the emotions that a person is going through , analyzing it and then controlling and overcoming it to approach the game with intense attention to hit the target. The Training procedures were formulated keeping this spectacle in mind. He developed a continuous self-reflective meditation technique for the archers to aid them understand how their thought process governs the emotions and their behaviors by a non-judgmental approach. By this technique, they were able to maintain better connection with themselves, their emotions and eliminate the emotions like fear, anxiety, anger which are encumbering them from achieving high focus while shooting the arrows. This had a magical effect on the performance of Archers from Korea and this was the secret which helped them maintain the supremacy in Archery by transforming their complete perspectives. With good control of emotions they were able to participate in the game with a relaxed mind which gave them high focus and the results are obvious. Kim Soo Nyung has mentioned about her experience during the self-reflection meditation and how it helped her change the complete perspective

Conclusion: Through time and Practice of Self-reflection meditation, the Archers were able to develop high levels of concentration to maintain mindfulness and to circumvent unsolicited emotions which come in the way of high performance. For a game which required high state of focus, if Self-reflection and analysis could make this mystic effect to develop a skillful mind, imagine the effect it could have on the normal human being like us, if we are ready to spend some time of ours to examine our thoughts and feelings and learn from the series of episodes we happen to experience in life.

All of these bring us to conclude that Self-awareness is an essential skill that helps us to keep a check on our values, beliefs and behaviors. With an absolute determination to continually improve, Self-awareness will be an exceptional tool for both professional and personal success in our life. Exactly like any other skill, we can advance self-awareness with the right practices and measures. By observing at ourselves like how others see us, will help us focus better on our energy, emotions and personality to cultivate the productive ones and eliminate the non-productive ones . We should also be open and receptive to feedback from others, be it positive or negative, as there can be blind spots which we can’t apprehend by self-introspection. Being Self-aware can help us be proactive to manage our thoughts and behavior, rather than letting our weakness limit your growth.  Becoming self-aware is the first step to eliminate our defects and find better peace with ourselves, in our personal and professional life, be it any role we play. As we know, "what is necessary to change a person, is to change his awareness about himself". For this to happen it’s imperative that a person slows down at some point in life to listen and connect with the world inside him by digging deep inside and understanding how does it look like.

Always remember: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

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