Self-knowledge
Self-knowledge 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-knowledge, you are observant of your needs and know how to meet them.You can identify and understand your habits, thought processes and emotional reactions.
Emotional awareness
Emotional awareness means being aware of and understanding your feelings and how they affect your behavior. There is a big piece of cake in the concept of self-knowledge. A lot of people struggle with that part and it's actually not that strange. Evolutionarily, it has had a survival value.
When humans lived as collectors and hunters, the ability to escape from a predator was far more important than understanding what it was they were fleeing from. Our brains are designed so that we automatically analyze the important things in a situation. Then we use that analysis to determine an appropriate reaction, even in many cases automatic. The brain produces in a threatening situation for a brief moment a stress reaction. It is analyzed and recorded as a need to escape, for example. It is subservient to understand 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, discomforts and feelings sometimes arise without you being able to pinpoint why.
You can practice emotional awareness. By becoming more aware of yourself, you can trace your feelings to different needs. You will 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 help you prioritize the wrong things in life. This is because you can't follow your inner compass when you don't know how it's directed.
An example of a consequence of a lack of self-knowledge is when you transfer a feeling from one situation to another. When you get stuck in traffic on your way to a meeting, a stress arises in you that turns into an annoyance or anger. The irritation is then passed on to your co-workers or to your partner when you get home from work. This without understanding why you feel such irritation. With an emotional awareness and self-awareness, you can address the feeling of what has catalyzed it. You can then express it and take responsibility for it without letting it go out over others.
Inside and outside
Having good self-knowledge includes both an inside perspective and an outside perspective. Knowing yourself from within is about understanding all aspects of yourself as described above. An outside perspective is about understanding how others perceive you and how you affect other people. Self-awareness cannot be practiced on its own. You need other people's reflection and feedback to evolve.
According to the philosopher Martin Buber, it is in the meeting 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 visible or am I holding it back? What do I wake you up when we meet? When we become aware of what is happening in us in the meeting with others, we can get to know ourselves.
How well do you know yourself?
It's easy to think that you know yourself when you're actually on automatics and are stuck in old ingrained patterns.
At Revitalis courses in in-depth self-knowledge and inner leadership, you get to meet yourself in depth. For a week you get to lift stones that you did not dare to lift on. You will have the opportunity to look at old skeletons in the closet. You get to express feelings that you have lost or pushed away along the way and find love for yourself.
