4 Habits of Self-aware People

21 يناير 2023

Most people think that self-awareness is a personality trait, something you either have or don’t have, but the truth is that there is a lot we can do to become more self-aware. Good habits develop self-awareness.

I work as a psychiatrist, and in my work I’ve noticed a few habits and common practices shared by self-aware people. You will definitely become self-aware if you can learn how to implement them in your own life.

Here are 4 habits of self-aware people:

1. Being curious about your mind:

Self-aware people are curious about their own minds and how they work, and they often reflect on their own thoughts and thought patterns. In practice, this is called the concept of “meta-cognition”. This means that you are aware of the fact that you are thinking about things, and you are able to assess the quality and usefulness of that thinking.

For example, people often say things like, “I got so anxious, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad things that could happen, and suddenly I had a panic attack."

In fact, anxiety is something you do, not something that happens to you. It’s a habitual pattern of thinking that leads to intense anxiety and stress, but if you’re not used to looking at thoughts, it feels like an event that has happened to you.

On the other hand, if you are used to reviewing your thoughts, you will notice that worrying is actually an activity and something you do, no matter how habitual it is. As a result, this is something you can -with practice- not do, or at least can not do often.

When you are interested in your thoughts, it is easier to deal with them than to fight them, as Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said: “He who looks outside dreams, but he who looks inside wakes up."

2. Asking for feedback, and taking it well:

People who are truly self-aware have the humility to understand that they can’t always see themselves objectively, and often the best way to be more objective about yourself is for others to see you.

The trick here is that there is no trick. If you want to see yourself as others see you, you have to ask for it. It’s that easy.

Do you get into a lot of conflicts at work? Ask a coworker you respect to give you their honest opinion of the situation.

Does your partner constantly tell you that you don’t listen to them at all? Ask someone close to you in your life such as a parent, best friend, or mentor if you really don’t listen well.

Perhaps the situation is more general. Maybe you feel a little dissatisfied with your life and suspect that you are the cause, but you are not sure. Find someone who knows you well in your life, and ask them if they see any patterns or tendencies that might be causing this.

The thing that stops most of us from asking for feedback is that we are afraid of receiving bad words. The direct way to overcome this fear is by asking yourself directly: “Would I rather receive small but harsh criticism now, or suffer annoying self-doubt and hidden criticism for years and decades, coming from avoiding my shortcomings?

However, even if you prepare yourself and decide to ask for honest feedback, you should be prepared to accept it well. Accepting feedback well means addressing the refusal to be criticized.

Regardless of how self-aware you are, receiving criticism will always hurt you, and any time we are hurt, we do one of two things: fight or flight. We either try to overcome our painful feelings by making the other person look bad (fight), or we reject their feedback completely as invalid (flight).

In either case, we do ourselves double damage.

You don’t really think about and understand the feedback, and if you don’t, what’s the point?
When you get defensive, you teach others that you can’t take criticism well, which means that when there is some piece of feedback that you really need in the future, these people are more likely to keep it to themselves, or lie and say something that will make you feel better because they are afraid that you will get defensive.

One of the best ways to improve your self-awareness is to get objective feedback from others. However, in order to do this, you must be willing to tolerate the discomfort of receiving criticism, and work to avoid defensive situations at all costs.

As the actress Janna Cachola said, “You cannot achieve excellence in life if you fear the opinion of others.”

3. Observing your feelings without judgment:

I’m always amazed at how much people make judgments about themselves, especially about the things they don’t have direct control over, such as their emotions. It doesn’t make sense to make a moral judgment about something you can’t control.

This is why in the legal system, no one is imprisoned simply for being angry. You are not condemned or punished unless you act on this feeling in a way that is harmful to others. You cannot control your emotions, but you can control your actions.

So, we all know theoretically that judging ourselves by how we feel is meaningless, yet we do this constantly:

We tell ourselves that we are bad just because we feel angry.
We criticize ourselves for feeling anxious rather than confident.
We judge ourselves as weak because we feel sadness and despair instead of optimism.

You will not judge the features other people were born with, and you will not judge addicts because they don’t have control over these things, so why do you judge yourself by how you feel when feelings are something you can’t control? Judging your feelings isn’t just irrational, but also it obscures your self-awareness. If you are constantly judging your feelings, you will have no energy left to understand them.

The key is to learn to observe and notice your feelings without judging them. Skilled scientists know that before you start creating theories and conducting experiments, it is important to observe things carefully. Likewise, try to observe those feelings before you rush to judge yourself on how you feel.

The best way to get started is to practice categorizing your feelings in easy, clear language. Any time you feel upset, instead of avoiding or covering up the feeling with vague language such as “I’m nervous” or “I’m tired”, try describing how you feel as children do:

I’m angry.
I’m scared.
I’m sad.
I feel guilty.
I’m lonely.
I feel proud of myself.

When you get used to describing your feelings in plain, straightforward language – rather than thinking about them – you will find that you have a clearer view of those feelings and how to respond to them in a healthy way.

As the American author Louise Hay says: “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked, so try approving of what you say and do, and see what happens."

4. Being realistic about expectations:

The problem with expectations is that we assume they have one job, when in reality they do a completely different job. Most people assume that expectations are a way to promote growth and achievement:

Having high expectations for employees encourages them to work hard, and to do high quality work.
Having high expectations for children encourages them to do well academically in school, and to succeed at work.
And of course, setting high expectations for ourselves leads to personal growth and self-improvement.

However, most of the time we use high expectations as a way to calm our fears and insecurities.

This is how it works:

Most people hate ambiguity. The idea that their children will not be successful and happy, for example, makes them anxious and worried.
But since they can’t actually control their children’s academic success, they accept something else, which is to expect these things to happen.
When you make expectations for something—which is really just an imagining of what you want to be true—it temporarily relieves some of the anxiety and ambiguity. It makes you feel more in control, and more certain that things will go well.
But in reality, your expectations are just fantasies that you have in mind, and often not based on much evidence, which means that these expectations are likely to be violated repeatedly, and the result is that you feel a lot of stress and frustration. Moreover, this interferes with your ability to understand yourself, especially understanding your fears and insecurities.

Expectations are often unconscious defense mechanisms that we use to relieve anxiety. This is not just a recipe for relieving chronic stress and disappointment, but also a form of denial, and you cannot be self-conscious if you live in denial.

Expectations are bound to exist, but it is very easy for them to weaken your self-awareness if you are not careful enough. If you want to be more self-aware, be sure to check your expectations, and make sure they are not far from reality.

Philosopher Michel de Montaigne says: “The greatest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself.”