“Know thyself” – Socrates.
Self-awareness is the act of being fully perceptive about one’s innermost self;
an essential part to one’s life.
How does one really know themselves? You
could recognize the exterior and know your own reflection. Sure you are 6'2
with brown hair and eyes. Not a bad-looking individual. But you are not your
physical characteristics but your spiritual ones. If you could look into
something and see your internal reflection would you want to? What would you
see? What would you learn? What would that something be? What could possibly
dig deep into your soul and reveal your innermost person? In ancient Greece, “Know
Thyself” are other ways of saying self realization , or self knowledge .
Knowing thyself is being able to know about everything, and by doing so it makes
us knowledgeable all creation.
Self-awareness and its accompanying egoism
profoundly affect people's lives, interfering with their success, damaging
their relationships with other people, and undermining their happiness.
“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is
Enlightenment” – Tao Tzu. This introspection surpasses the ordinary
understanding of life and grasps the aspect of one’s innermost self.
Furthermore,
the thought process one engages causes judging based on self-interest and major
distortions in one’s view of others and ultimately of one’s self. These
distortions one has over one’s self and others help him or her lose sight of
who one actually is or who someone else could be. All the people we interact
with, effect, influence, and touch regularly reflect who we are. We are who we
love, hate, admire, help, and lean on. Every little action, emotion, or word
brought out by various people in various situations are characteristics that
are instinctual. They are what you do without thinking and therefore are roots
of your personality. One may believe that he or she can
make “reliable psychological ascriptions to himself immediately” based on fact
or of past experiences, which may or may not be accurate. However, how others
choose to view another person can be surprisingly differentiating from how one tends to view
one’s self.
Knowing yourself is not about the skimming
the surface like finding a favourite colour or music you like. Knowing yourself
is about delving much deeper. Knowing yourself is a journey. It is about discovering
who is about discovering who you are as a human being. The journey is
unpredictable and engages you deeply as it brings you face-to-face with your
deepest fears, self doubts , vulnerabilities and insecurities. The journey
around knowing yourself can be challenging and scary, however it also changes
over time. Coming to understand how we appear to
others is a key aspect of reflection. Self-knowledge can be divided into four
areas: what is known to us as well as to others, what is known to others but
not to us, what we know and others don’t, and what we don’t know and others
don’t either. Discovering what no one knows takes time and intensive tactics.
However, our biggest gain in self-improvement can be had by simply finding out
what others know about us that we don’t. And they know more than we think they
do. Knowing the self implies a deep level of
understanding. It means arriving at a point where we can predict how we’ll do
in specific situations and the effect our actions will have. It also means that
we can be fairly sure of how others would describe our strengths and weaknesses.
