Who are you? Who do you want to be? What’s important to you? What motivates you?

Do you know the answers to these questions? Whether you do or not will depend on your level of self-awareness.

Understanding self-awareness

Self-awareness is an understanding of who you are and how you interact with the world around you.

Anyone can cultivate self-awareness. It’s a skill that you can learn and develop over time.

When you have low self-awareness, you may feel overwhelmed by your emotions and find them difficult to manage. But when you’re more self-aware, you’re able to regulate your emotions and recognize why you feel the way you do.

Benefits of self-awareness

Self-awareness can be beneficial for your mental health because it helps you know and understand your thoughts and feelings, and what coping tools you need when facing challenges. It can help discover the type of jobs that you enjoy and build relationships that align with your values and beliefs. It can also help you identify which situations you thrive and which you don’t.

Being self-aware can also help improve your relationships. When someone acts in a way that bothers you, instead of reacting impulsively, you’re able to recognize why you’re feeling that way and cope with the feeling before responding.

Overall, being more self-aware leads to a better sense of well-being and happiness.

Signs that you’re self-aware

Here are some ways to tell if you’re self-aware:

You’re able to work through a situation: “this is the thought I had, this is how it made me feel, and this was my reaction.”

You ask more ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions instead of ‘why’: it places the focus on what you can and can’t do, rather than hypothesizing about why.

We don't always know why someone acted a certain way, so instead; ask yourself what was your role in the situation, how you could have reacted differently, and what you can learn about yourself from the interaction

Ways to build self-awareness

Whether you have low or high self-awareness, you can always work on improving it. Here are some ways to cultivate self-awareness:

• Set boundaries: boundaries are like fences around your emotional world – when you have a fence, you know what your limits are.

• Stay open-minded: avoid getting defensive – try to learn from different situations and be open to making changes.

• Determine your strengths and limitations are: at what point do you need to reach out for help? Notice when things have gone beyond the point of you being able to cope on your own.

• Identify what your emotional triggers are: pay attention to different patterns – when do you feel insecure? When do you feel unsure of yourself?

Self-awareness comes down to your values and your character; who do you want to be in the world? What are the things that are important to you? Your level of self-awareness will depend on things like how you were raised, your experiences in life, and the lens through which you see things. It helps you identify your strengths and can improve your happiness and well-being. Anyone can improve their self-awareness – if this is something you’d like to work on, we can help. Learn more about how counselling can show you the tools to thrive.

Information for this blog post was provided by registered social workers, Sarah Rosenfeld and Diana Izard. Learn more about our counsellors.