What Is Self-Awareness? How to Be More Self-Aware

Self-awareness is a form of cognition by which you bring your sense of self into conscious awareness. For instance, you might increase self-awareness by giving attribution to how your own emotions on a given day might color your self-perception more holistically.

Monitoring your internal state in this way gives you a better understanding of who you are as a person and how others perceive you. Ultimately, the definition of self-awareness might differ for each person—as everyone’s experience of self is unique and distinctive.

Some of the benefits of self-awareness include increased emotional intelligence, more job satisfaction, improved mental health and well-being, and a greater ability to live life to the fullest.

A well-balanced, self-aware person realizes the value of self-knowledge without allowing that self-concept to drive them to the extremes of either haughtiness or self-consciousness. While a total lack of self-awareness might make you more unpleasant to be around, too much of a focus on your self-image can be damaging to your own psyche and off-putting to others as well.

Self-awareness manifests itself in myriad different ways. Consider these three main types of self-knowledge:

1. 1. External self-awareness: When you feel keenly aware of how people perceive you in social situations, you’re experiencing external self-awareness. Strive for objective self-awareness especially in this regard—too much focus on how others perceive you can cloud your individual decision-making abilities and make you cave to peer pressure. Understand how others perceive you but maintain your own individuality, too.
2. 2. Internal self-awareness: Metacognition—thinking about your own thoughts and sense of self—is another term for internal self-awareness. When you pass from dwelling on what it means to be a human being in the abstract to what it means to be you specifically, you enter the field of internal self-awareness, or metacognition.
3. 3. Self-consciousness: Occasionally, self-awareness can tip over into self-consciousness—an overabundant amount of negative self-reflection and rumination. If you find yourself dwelling on your own feelings and insecurities to the point it feels crippling, you’ve become more self-conscious than merely self-aware.

A greater degree of self-awareness can help you unlock your true potential. Keep these tips in mind as you strive to increase your personal level of self-awareness:

• Ask others for input. Hearing how a trusted person perceives us can help us better know ourselves. Ask a life coach, therapist, or a loved one if they can help you see any discrepancies between how you see yourself and how others see you, so you can bring your sense of self-awareness to a more objective and honest place. See if they can help you notice any weak spots and biases, too. Ask them to strive for honest but compassionate and constructive input—too much negative feedback can put a damper on your self-esteem.
• Be compassionate toward yourself. Self-awareness and self-acceptance go hand in hand. As you become more self-aware, it’s possible you might develop higher and higher internal standards for yourself. This can get in the way of developing self-confidence to go along with your increased self-knowledge. Instead, have grace for yourself and learn to love both your strengths and weaknesses.
• Evaluate your experiences. Throughout the course of your day, ask how you feel about each specific situation in which you find yourself. This increases your sense of self-perception while also helping you to better understand your core set of competencies as an individual. Focus on both your own emotional states and how you perceive other people reacting to you.
• Practice mindfulness. Sometimes the best way to practice self-awareness is to practice mindfulness. Rather than spend too much time ruminating over your past or becoming anxious about your future, take a moment to examine your sense of self in the present moment. Check in with how you feel emotionally, mentally, and physically. This comes with the added benefit of greater self-control and self-regulation as you become more aware of how your mood and emotions can shift and why.
• Write about yourself. To move forward into deeper self-awareness, consider journaling about yourself. This can manifest as filling out a questionnaire or self-assessment or simply writing up a stream of consciousness self-report at the end of each day. This sort of exercise helps you to draw correlations between different aspects of your life and gain a deeper understanding of self.

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