Achieving self-awareness means you recognize your emotions at any given moment in time. Understanding your emotional state often influences thoughts and behaviors in a positive manner, which can eventually lead to viewing yourself objectively as if you are in someone else’s shoes. Attaining the height of self-awareness allows you to understand the impact you have on your surroundings and everyone that you meet during life’s long journey.
Self-awareness is not something that you attain by closing your eyes and wishing for it. You have to put the work in required to cultivate your perception of emotions to see the world through a much clearer lens. Participating in adult therapy is a highly effective strategy for learning how to grow your self-awareness.
Benefits of Cultivating Self-Awareness
Cultivating self-awareness allows you to make the right decisions by identifying thoughts and feelings. It enhances your mental health by taking steps to improve how you feel, such as addressing the reasons why you feel stressed in certain environments. A study released in 2020 indicated individuals who cultivated higher levels of self-awareness had better success at identifying the roadblocks to attaining personal and professional goals. Self-awareness also helps us get better at communicating with friends, family members, and professional colleagues.
How You Can Achieve Self-Awareness
Cultivating self-awareness is not a one-and-done process. You need to work on it constantly to achieve the benefits of getting in tune with your feelings and emotions.
First, establish goals for both the short-term and long-term. Working towards the attainment of goals gives us a steady direction in which to lead our lives. Second, take advantage of simple meditative procedures like calm breathing. Simply close your eyes, take in the fresh air, and exhale fully before repeating the process several times over five minutes. You should notice a more relaxed mind that focuses on your thoughts and emotions instead of stressful events.
Once you master controlled breathing, you can dive deeper into meditation practices by blocking out the stressful outside world and focusing on yourself while in a relaxed state of mind. Mediation, whether you reflect on yourself or someone close to you, can divert our attention from the mundane into a keen sense of ourselves. Mediation is an effective technique used during couples therapy sessions.
Cultivating self-awareness requires you to devote time every day to yourself. In our fast-paced digitally dominated world, it can be difficult to focus on how we live our lives. Take a day or even a part of a day to break away from your typical nine-to-five routine. Whether you decide to escape from it all on a thrill-seeking amusement park ride or by quietly absorbing the beauty of a natural splendor, spending time on yourself opens the door to cultivating self-awareness.
Work with a Therapist
Knowing how to cultivate self-awareness does not come with a road map toward discovering your feelings and emotions. However, a licensed therapist can not only reveal how to achieve self-awareness, but also keep you on the path to understanding what your emotions mean, as well as how to control them.