The Power of Self-Awareness
For those looking to learn more about the what constitutes your own self-awareness and how it’s dictated, self-awareness is essentially the ability to see one’s self as a unique person who is different from the environment that surrounds them as well as the ability to reflect on ones thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Self-awareness is one of the harder concepts to influence due to the only real influencing factor on it being you yourself. Due to one’s own perception being what influences one’s self-awareness it’s actually quite difficult to change how a person views themselves. However, with that said if a person can manage to change their own perceptions then changing their self-awareness becomes rather easy due to the two concepts being connected to each other. According to sociologist George Herbert Mead (1934), self-awareness helps you to have a strong sense of your self because during interpersonal encounters you monitor your own behaviors and form impressions of who you are from such observations. For example, your best friend texts you that she has failed an important exam. You feel bad for her, so you text her a sympathetic response. Your self-awareness of your compassion and your observation of your kindhearted message lead you to think: “I’m a caring and supportive friend.” (McCornack, 2014, pg. 27, para. 3).
Increasing one’s own self-awareness is a process that will never truly be completed, this process is constantly changing and ever ongoing. Gamble and Gamble offer the following tips to assist you in improving your self-awareness (Communication Works 62). They suggest that you should:
- Watch yourself in action: This involves continuing to examine yourself and your interactions with others. When you are placed in a new situation or environment, see how you engage in conversations. Continue reflecting on your verbal and nonverbal messages and try to identify patterns of behavior.
- Ask how others perceive you: You ask your friends everything else; you might as well ask them how they view you. Others may observe strengths and weakness in your communication and shed light on things that you did not know. While you are listening to their feedback, know that you do not have to accept it as fact!
- Commit to self-growth: Once you’ve identified an opportunity for growth, capitalize on it. Employ the tools and techniques (which will be the final topic) you have learned and continue evolving into a competent communicator. (Valencia College, 2016, para. 14).
One Personal experience I’ve had involving my own self-awareness is viewing myself as useless or unneeded when it comes to group projects for college and high school. Despite knowing that I contribute to my groups whenever I’m a part of a group project for school I still can’t help but feel that I ultimately bring nothing to my group and just take up space. It doesn’t seem to matter what the project is or who the members are, if I’m a part of the group I feel useless, even if I’m the one doing the most work I always feel like my group would be better off with someone else. I think this is why I tend to dislike classes that require group projects because I never feel like I contribute to them. Now with all this said I did learn a lesson while struggling with this perception of myself all it takes is one quick change of your own perceptions to completely change how you view yourself, whether it be for the better or for the worse. As long as you can change your perceptions you can ultimately change your own view of yourself. However, even with that said changing your perceptions is hard enough as it is without trying to change you own perception of yourself, but that said it wouldn’t be worth it if it didn’t pose at least some challenge.
References
NSE — Interpersonal Communication: Self-Awareness (2016, August 5). In Valencia College. Retrieved from https://libguides.valenciacollege.edu/nseinterpersonalcommunication/awareness
McCornack, S. (2014). Interpersonal Communication and You (p. 27). N.p.: Bedford/St. Martin’s
