What You Should Know About Self-Awareness

Self-awareness has become a business buzzword. It’s a topic often attributed to leadership and better business management. But self-awareness is more than just a business skill. It’s a critical tool for self-improvement and emotional intelligence. It’s an ability to clearly and objectively see yourself through introspection and from other’s perspectives.

Historically, it’s hard to trace the origin of the self-awareness theory and why it’s important. And philosophically, there’s still a debate in different fields of philosophy, arguing that it’s impossible to completely be objective about oneself. Even if there's no single truth about self-awareness, it exists.

Everyone has their own idea of self-awareness. You might not know exactly how you can attain such self-knowledge, but you understand your identity to some degree. Some of us might be unicorns; some of us seem to have less knowledge than others.

But self-awareness is a state of self we all should pursue to feel empowered and be able to empower other people. It’s a state of knowing your inner self and all of its aspects, from your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

But, what does it really mean to be self-aware? And why it is important? And how can you achieve women empowerment through it?

It encourages self-development. 

Women empowerment is about improving yourself for the benefit of everyone. It’s one’s responsibility to seek self-development. And self-awareness is all about that. 

Pursuing it means understanding who you are, how others see you, and how you fit into the world around you. To have that full picture, self-awareness encourages you to be open to anything that will make you a better person—not just for yourself, but for the world.

Self-awareness is key to good relationship building.

There are two types of self-awareness: internal and external self-awareness. These two factors are vital in creating a relationship with yourself (how you perceive and assess yourself) and building harmonious interaction with everyone (how skilled you are to be empathetic).

Internal self-awareness represents how objectively you define your values, patterns, passions, aspirations, reactions, and feelings (including your thoughts, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses). Research says that it’s associated with relationship satisfaction and social control.

External self-awareness means being open and understanding about how other people view you. It’s the ability to objectively accept their perspectives. People with great external self-awareness are more skilled at being empathetic and being open to other people’s opinions. 

It promotes the power of listening. 

One step to being empowered is to become a better listener. When you learn how to listen without any prejudice, you’re opening yourself to growth. It teaches you to become empathetic and understand people. 

Learning to become a good listener is critical to becoming self-aware. It also helps you to complete the picture of your true self. If you listen to the important people in your life and take it objectively, it can be a lesson to understand your own thoughts and emotions. That’s why it’s essential to ask for feedback from people. Gaining insights from different perspectives on how they perceive you will help you see a better and complete picture.