Self Awareness and Self Development

Are you self-aware? Have you ever introspected yourselves?

“Self awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any
attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.”

What is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness is the first step to personality development. Self-awareness is

understanding who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, our drives and
personalities, our habits and values. Through understanding our own
strengths and weaknesses, we become aware of the areas that we may wish
to focus on or develop, to ensure that we maximise your existing skills. It also
includes gaining an understanding of and insight into one’s qualities, ideas,
thoughts, beliefs, ideals, responses, reactions, attitude, emotions and
motivations.

Benefits of Self Awareness

 Enriched emotional intelligence and great empathy and listening skills
 Improved critical-thinking and decision making
 Strengthened communications and relationships, and
 Enhanced leadership capabilities and capacity

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 Psychologists often break self-awareness down into two different types-
either public or private.

1. Public Self-Awareness: This type often emerges in situations when people are
at the centre of attention, while giving a presentation or talking to a group of
friends. When we are aware that we are being watched and evaluated, we
often try to behave in ways that are socially acceptable and desirable. In short
we display our best behavior, which may not be reflective of our true
personality. It can also lead to ‘evaluation anxiety’ in which people become
distressed, anxious, or worried about how they are perceived by others.
2. Private Self-Awareness: This type happens when people become aware of
some aspects of themselves, but only in a private way. For example, seeing
your face in the mirror is a type of private self-awareness. Feeling your
stomach lurch when you realize you forgot to study for an important test or
feeling your heart flutter when you see someone you are attracted to, are
also good examples of private self-awareness.

Why is self-awareness important?

Developing self-awareness skills is important for learning about yourself and
discovering your true capabilities, which may be vital for a successful career.
Following are some of the significant implications of self-awareness skills:

 Improves emotional intelligence. Developing self-awareness skills is the key

to developing emotional intelligence as a skill. The self-analysis that you
conduct will help you be aware of your own values which, if touched by any
event or action, will generate certain emotional responses.
 Gives a direction to your efforts. Knowing your strengths enables you to
utilize them more effectively and in appropriate situations. Whereas, knowing
your weakness helps you figure out when you need to draw on the strengths
of others. Also, acknowledging our weaknesses prevents us from reacting
inappropriately at any point in time and from making disastrous decisions.

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What do you mean by Self Development?
Self development is a lifelong process takes place over the course of a
person's entire life. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities,
considering their aims in life and set goals in order to realise and maximise
their potential. Self Development covers activities that improve awareness
and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate
employability, enhance the quality of life and contribute to the realization of
dreams and aspirations. Self Development includes the following activities:

 Improving skills and/or learning new ones

 Building or renewing identity/self-esteem
 Developing strengths or talents
 Improving a career
 Identifying or improving potential
 Building employability or human capital
 Enhancing lifestyle and time-management
 Improving health
 Initiating a life enterprise
 Defining and executing personal development plans
 Improving social relations/emotional intelligence

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Methods of Self – Development
After developing awareness about self, if the person analyses his weaknesses,
he adopts measures to convert them into strengths. This can be done in the
following ways:

1. Constructive behaviour
The manager should engage in constructive behaviour which leads to goal
attainment. This can be developed by managing stimuli that affect his
behaviour. He should remove stimuli that evoke undesirable behaviour and
promote stimuli that evoke desirable behaviour.

Once the stimuli are created, rearranged, reduced or increased, the manager
measures his behaviour arising out of that stimuli and reinforces it in order to
achieve the goals.

2. Time management
The manager is usually constrained by time in achieving the organisational
goals. Time management reduces the elements that lead to waste of time.
Internal organisational factors resulting in waste of time are improper
planning, overwork, failure to delegate, postponing work etc.

The external factors are noise, unnecessary meetings and travelling,

incomplete information about the environment etc. He should reduce these
elements and manage his time properly to understand himself, others and
relate his knowledge with organisational goals. Various techniques of time
management are critical point control, management by exception, delegation
of authority, proper planning and scheduling etc.

3. Self study
Managers should not only do the assigned task or formal organisational
activities, but also enrich their knowledge by reading good books, magazines
and journals in the field of management. Study of literature leads to self-
development and contributes to organisational goals. Attending seminars,
conferences and workshops is also helpful in this regard.

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 SWOT ANALYSIS

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a

framework used to evaluate one’s competitive position and to develop
strategic planning. A SWOT analysis is designed to facilitate a realistic, fact-
based, data-driven look at the strengths and weaknesses of an organization,
its initiatives, or an industry. This process captures information about your
internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and
threats.

S = Strengths (Internal) - simple, flexible, quick, can be in-depth

W = Weaknesses (Internal) - relies on those doing it to cover all factors,
appears simplistic, too simple?, appears
weak/ not robust
O = Opportunities (External) - helps see a business or organization from
different perspectives, to review the
“current state” on a regular basis
T = Threats (External) - how can you weaknesses that can make
Threats have a real impact?

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Self Esteem

“Believe in yourself.”

Self-esteem refers to a person’s overall sense of his or her value or worth. It

can be considered a sort of measure of how much a person values, approves
of, appreciates, prizes, or likes him or herself. (Adler & Stewart, 2004)

According to self-esteem expert Morris Rosenberg, “Self-esteem is quite

simply one’s attitude toward oneself” (1965). He described it as a “favourable
or unfavourable attitude toward the self”.

Why Self-Esteem Is Important?

Self-esteem can play a significant role in your motivation and success
throughout your life. Low self-esteem may hold you back from succeeding at
school or work because you don't believe yourself to be capable of success.

By contrast, having a healthy self-esteem can help you achieve because you
navigate life with a positive, assertive attitude and believe you can accomplish
your goals.

Factors influencing our Self-Esteem :

 Genetics
 Personality
 Life experiences
 Age
 Health
 Thoughts
 Social circumstances
 The reactions of others
 Comparing the self to others

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Signs of Healthy Self-Esteem
You probably have a good sense of who you are if you exhibit the following
signs:

 Confidence
 Ability to say no
 Positive outlook
 Ability to see overall strengths and weaknesses and accept them
 Negative experiences don't impact overall perspective
 Ability to express your needs

Signs of Low Self-Esteem

You may need to work on how you perceive yourself if you exhibit any of
these signs of poor self-esteem:

 Negative outlook
 Lack of confidence
 Inability to express your needs
 Excessive feelings of shame, depression, or anxiety
 Belief that others are better than you
 Trouble accepting positive feedback
 Intense fear of failure

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How to Increase Self-Esteem
1. Take a self-esteem inventory to give yourself a baseline
It can be as simple as writing down 10 of your strengths and 10 of your
weaknesses. This will help you to begin developing an honest and realistic
conception of yourself.

2. Set realistic expectations

It’s important to set small, reachable goals that are within your power. For
example, setting an extremely high expectation or an expectation that
someone else will change their behavior is virtually guaranteed to make you
feel like a failure, through no fault of your own.

3. Stop being a perfectionist

Acknowledge both your accomplishments and mistakes. Nobody is perfect,
and trying to be will only lead to disappointment. Acknowledging your
accomplishments and recognizing your mistakes is the way to keep a positive
outlook while learning and growing from your mistakes.

4. Explore yourself
The importance of knowing yourself and being at peace with who you are
cannot be overstated. This can take some trial and error, and you will
constantly learn new things about yourself, but it is a journey that should be
undertaken with purpose and zeal.

5. Be willing to adjust your self-image

We all change as we age and grow, and we must keep up with our ever-
changing selves if we want to set and achieve meaningful goals.

6. Stop comparing yourself to others

Comparing ourselves to others is a trap that is extremely easy to fall into,
especially today with social media and the ability to project a polished,
perfected appearance. The only person you should compare yourself to is you.

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