Top 10 Steps To Boost Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the idea of knowing yourself and understanding how others see you. Becoming more self-aware is a goal that you can accomplish to enhance your positive qualities and make sure people see you as you wish to be seen. These ten steps can help you boost your self-awareness to improve your confidence, strengthen relationships, and lead a happier life.

1. Start a Journal

Journaling is a great way to learn more about your subconscious’s feelings and thoughts. It also allows you to reflect and read about your experiences and reactions. Keep track of your emotions, ideas, and energy levels to learn more. 

Writing things down can also help to get intrusive thoughts out of your head and come up with solutions to problems. Journaling about the following tips on this list can help to clarify who you are and whom you want to be.

• Fulfil Your Basic Needs

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an idea proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. This idea posits that to accomplish self-actualisation or self-awareness, the highest achievement of the hierarchy, you need to fulfil more basic needs first. 

A pyramid illustrating the idea found on Edutopia.org places physiological needs such as breathing, food, water, and sleep at the bottommost level. The safety and security of body, resources, and family come next, followed by love, self-esteem, confidence, and respect. At the very top of the pyramid lies self-actualisation, the highest form of self-awareness.

• Try Yoga

Practising yoga can make you more aware of your body and how it behaves in different circumstances, and how to control it to a point. Yoga can be as mental as it is physical and can help release tension and built-up feelings blocking your progress. 

Becoming aware of how these feelings affect your body can put you in control of how to react. Yoga also teaches you how to control your breathing and use it to keep yourself centred and present.

• Take Personality Tests

One way to become more self-aware is to take online or in-person personality tests. Some psychological tests can help you understand more about yourself and why you behave the way you do. 

According to bsu.edu, the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) is a test that determines your personality type from sixteen possibilities and describes common behaviours and traits to help you learn more about yourself. Another test, consisting of nine personality tests, is the Enneagram test. Many others can be found online or in colleges or career centres to understand more about yourself.

• Practice Mindfulness

Practising mindfulness can boost self-awareness by making you more aware and present daily. Feel the emotions you are experiencing and form intentions about who you want to be and how you want to feel. 

Using meditation, you can guide your thoughts to achieve specific goals and feelings. There are many apps and videos online that can help you get started practising mindfulness and meditation.

• Ask for Feedback

According to lifehack.org, asking for feedback from others is a great way to figure out your strengths and weaknesses. Be open to hearing the good and the bad; you will miss the point if you are stuck in a defensive state. Take this opportunity to work on the things you don’t like about how other people see you. 

It’s okay to ask for more feedback after you’ve made some changes to see if the impressions you make have changed for the better. Make sure you talk to a variety of people who know you in different facets of your life to get the most precise picture of how others see you.

• Be Open to New Ideas

Boost your self-awareness by always being curious and open to learning new things that can add positive experiences to your life. Get in the habit of saying yes to new opportunities. Travel, learn something, or meet interesting people. The more you put yourself out there, the more you will learn about who you are.

• Set Boundaries

According to psychalive.org, healthy boundaries help you maintain your well-being and take care of yourself. If you say yes to too much, constantly feel overwhelmed, or don’t know how to respond when others make you feel uncomfortable, you might have trouble setting boundaries. 

When you are constantly concerned with others or signing up for too much, you don’t have enough time for yourself. To boost self-awareness, you need to dedicate time to figure yourself out and respect yourself enough to set the boundaries that enable you to do so.

• Discover Triggering Behaviors

Do you find that the same qualities in others tend to annoy you over and over? Sometimes when specific characteristics bother you in other people, those are the behaviours you subconsciously dislike about yourself. Please take note of these things and look inward as to why they are so triggering to you.

1.  Write Down Goals

Use your journal to make goals and track your progress towards them. Having goals and ways to achieve them written down on paper can keep you accountable. Try to set specific goals that are measurable and have a deadline in mind to complete them. 

According to Lifehack.org, writing down your plans and breaking them down step-by-step is the next best thing to having a life coach. It narrows your focus and keeps you motivated with a clear path to success. 

Final Thoughts

The tips above are a great place to start if you are yearning to know more about yourself and how others see you. Use your new and improved self-awareness to be a better partner, leader, parent, friend, or whatever you want to become. Boosting self-awareness is an excellent way to achieve personal growth in all areas of your life.