Concept Notes #1:

What is Self-Awareness?
Self-awareness is a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts,
beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self-Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they
perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.

Benefits of self-awareness:
1. Improve skills by recognizing what you do well and what you need to improve
2. Raise happiness levels by aligning your ideals with your actions
3. Become a better person by understanding how other people perceive your behaviour
4. Strengthen work and personal relationships by managing emotions
5. Increase motivation by seeking out your true passions
6. Decrease stress by identifying emotions and lessening tasks you don’t enjoy

Signs that you’re more self-aware than you think:

1. You’re very honest with what you love, what you hate, and everything else in between.
2. You don’t rely on or hope for external circumstances to change before you do. 3. You
don’t numb your emotions or try to escape from them.
4. You have a deep understanding of your own thought processes and how you best absorb
information.
5. You don’t get defensive when people criticize you.
6. You know how valuable it is to learn from your failures.
7. You don’t pursue anything you’re innately terrible at, even when you feel pressured to succeed at
it.
8. You’ve given up on many dreams and have only grown wiser from doing so.

How to increase self-awareness:

1. Keep a journal.
2. Write down your goals, plans, and priorities.
3. Perform daily self-reflection.
4. Practice meditation and other mindfulness habits.
5. Take personality and psychometric tests.
6. Ask trusted friends/family members to describe you.

Johari Window (by: Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham)

The self has four areas of activity: the public area, which is known by self and others; the private
area, which is known by self but not known by others; the blind area, which is known to others but
unknown to self; and the potential area, which is unknown to both self and others.

1. Public Area
a. Examples: name, address, age, and other information about the person which are known
to both self and others.
2. Private Area
a. The secrets of the person.
3. Blind Area
 a. Things about the person which is unaware of but seen by others.
4. Potential Area
a. Things about the person (talents/potentials/behaviours) which are yet to be explored.
Known to self Not known to self

Known to others Open/Public Area Blind Area

Not known to others Private area Unknown area

Points to ponder:
∙ For clear understanding of self and others, the person must make his public area bigger and more
open.
∙ The person must solicit or accept feedbacks from others to know more about himself. ∙ For others
to understand him better, the person must reveal some of his secrets through disclosure.
∙ To explore more of his potentials, the person needs reflection and perhaps interact more to others
to discover hidden potentials/behaviours.

References:

Ackerman, A. (2020, January 9). What is Self-Awareness and Why Is It Important?. Retrieved September
12, 2020, from https://bit.ly/32sY4rv
Forsey, C. (2018, May 11). The True Meaning of Self-Awareness & How to Tell If You’re actually Self-
Aware. Retrieved September 12, 2020, from https://bit.ly/3kfRxq5
Morrigan, L. (2019, January 22). 13 Signs You’re More Self-Aware thank You Think. Retrieved September
12, 2020, from https://bit.ly/3mjENka
How To Be More Self-Aware: 8 Tips to Boost Self-Awareness. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2020, from
https://bit.ly/3isrknB