Self-awareness
Self-awareness is about having insight into how you are as a person and why you react the way you do in different situations. It has to do with both your personality and your behaviors. With good self-awareness, you are observant of your needs and know how to satisfy them. You can identify and understand your habits, thought processes and emotional reactions.
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Emotional awareness
Emotional awareness means being aware of and understanding yours emotions and how they affect your behavior. It is a big piece of cake in the concept of self-awareness. A lot of people struggle with that part and it's actually not that strange. Evolutionarily speaking, it has had a survival value.
When man lived as a gatherer and hunter, the ability to RUN from a predator was far more important than understanding WHAT it was he was running from. Our brains are designed so that we automatically analyze what is important in a situation. We then use that analysis to determine an appropriate reaction, also in many cases automatic. In a threatening situation, the brain produces a stress reaction for a short moment. It is analyzed and registered as a need to escape, for example. It is secondary to understanding what we are running from. This is because the further analysis could potentially mean that we do not have time to seek protection. It explains why impulses, discomfort and feelings sometimes arise without you being able to put your finger on why.
You can practice emotional awareness. By becoming more aware of yourself, you can trace your emotions to different needs. You then better understand how it affects your behavior and can choose how you want to act. It's about acting instead of reacting.
Lack of self-awareness
A lack of self-awareness can negatively affect your relationships. It can also contribute to you prioritizing the wrong things in life. This is because you cannot follow your inner compass when you do not know how it is directed.
An example of a consequence of lack of self-awareness is when you transfer an emotion from one situation to another. When you get stuck in traffic on your way to a meeting, a stress is awakened in you that turns into irritation or anger. You then transfer the irritation to your co-workers or to your partner when you get home from work. This without understanding why you feel such irritation. With emotional awareness and self-awareness, you can address the emotion to what catalyzed it. You can then express it and take responsibility for it without letting it go out on others.
Inside and outside perspective
Having good self-awareness includes both an inside perspective and an outside perspective. Knowing yourself from the inside is about understanding all aspects of yourself as described above. An outside perspective is about understanding how others perceive you and how you influence other people. Self-awareness cannot therefore be practiced entirely on one's own. You need other people's reflection and feedback to develop.
According to the philosopher Martin Buber, it is in the encounter with others that we become. In the meeting with you, something happens in me. What feeling arises in me? Do I choose to let it be seen or do I hold it back? What do I awaken in you when we meet? When we become aware of what happens in us in the meeting with others, we can get to know ourselves.
How well do you know yourself?
It is easy to think that you know yourself when in fact you are on automatic and stuck in old ingrained patterns.
On Vitaliseras courses in in-depth self-awareness and inner leadership you get to meet yourself in depth. For a week, you get to lift rocks that you didn't dare lift. You get the opportunity to look at old skeletons in the closet. You get to express feelings that you have lost or repressed along the way and find love for yourself.
