The True Meaning of Self-Awareness (& How to Tell If You’re Actually Self-Aware)

Self-awareness is a critical tool to help you reach higher levels of job satisfaction, become a better leader, improve relationships with colleagues, and manage your emotions better. However, only 10-15% of people are truly self-aware. Luckily, self-awareness can be practiced and cultivated — it’s not a fixed trait

Benefits of self-awareness

Improve skills by recognizing what you do well and what you need to improve

• Raise happiness levels by aligning your ideals with your actions
• Become a better leader by understanding how employees perceive your behavior
• Strengthen work and personal relationships by managing emotions
• Increase work motivation by seeking out your true passions
• Decrease stress by identifying emotions and lessening tasks you don’t enjoy

Self-Awareness Test

The iNLP Center self awareness test is a free online test that provides you with a score and interpretation of your level of self-awareness, and which areas you should focus on improving.

• Other non-standardized ways to measure self-awareness
• Apply feedback analysis to your own life
• Write down a list of your strengths and weaknesses
• Check with someone you trust to give honest feedback

How to become more self-aware

Ask “What?” instead of “Why?”

• Spend time with yourself
• Practice mindfulness
• Become a better listener and ask for feedback
• Be present with yourself and observe your thoughts in a non-judgmental way

What is self-awareness?

Self-awareness was first defined by Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund (1972)

• When we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards and values, and become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves
• It is a fundamental tool for self-control
• Tasha Eurich, a researcher and organizational psychologist, and her team of researchers came up with two categories of self-aplications
• Internal Self-Aptitude: how clearly you see your values, passions, and aspirations, and how well those standards fit with your environment and your reactions
• External Self-Autonomy: the ability to clearly see how other people view you, and therefore be empathetic

Definition of Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards

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