3 Approaches You Can Use to Gain Self-Awareness If You’ve Been Struggling with Reflection
Being a professional engineer gives me a unique angle on gaining self-awareness.
Why is self-understanding so crucial? Because you need it to improve. Self-knowledge is how you experience and explain your character, emotions, motives, and wishes to perceive strengths and weaknesses. Then you apply these insights and take actions for self-growth. Mihai Valentin Ciolacu writes in his journal, “The subjects with a higher level of awareness of self-efficacy had a higher tendency of self-improvement (Valentin, 2013).”
There are many techniques to mature into self-aware, such as asking self-reflecting questions: What am I good at? What am I bad at? Although self-reflecting questions have their own merits, sometimes they don’t work for some people because they have a Know-It-All mentality. In this post, I’ll discuss a different strategy — continuous learning to gain Self-Awareness.
Here’s how I use continuous learning, rather than self-reflective questions, to master myself further. It helps me to explore fresh perspectives. As an engineer, I have illustrated below the outline for this post using a watered-down version of a flowchart (a diagram that represents a process) to help you visualize the post’s goal so that you can better understand it from a different angle
“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”
— Socrates
What happens when you don’t want to explore a fresh perspective
The Brute-Force concept is a very common problem-solving technique in computer science, which involves applying a lot of effort over a significant period instead of an efficient and planned response. But it’s time-consuming.
As an engineer, I needed to rethink my approach away from the Brute-Force method and find a solution to solve the obstacle. I use these three strategies for regular training to grow my self-consciousness through continuous learning.
1. Read more
You require continuous learning. It could be books, articles, journals, or anything that is in written format. I try to read every day about anything that interests me. Teenagers get valuable insights into mature relationships, personal values, cultural identity, physical security and security, visual preferences, and perception of the physical world through pleasure reading, according to this research. To quote Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows ― Epictetus.
2. Ask for feedback
Ask for advice from the people you admire and trust. They will give you genuine feedback. People love to give advice, so carefully choose the people around you, make sure they know what they are talking about. As reported by this research, the highly self-aware people interviewed actively worked on both seeing themselves clearly and getting feedback to understand how others see them. Ken Blanchard, a thought leader and groundbreaking researcher on leadership, customer service, empowerment, change, and trust said, feedback is the breakfast of champions ― Ken Blanchard.
3. Meditation
I get most of my ideas when I’m not in front of the computer. I like to take long walks; it allows me to brood over my life. Research shows that experienced meditators have a higher awareness of their inner processes, like voluntary movement initiations. It is helpful for you to develop self-awareness because it can help replace impulse actions with conscious actions. Rumi, a Persian poet, and Sufi master, was quoted as saying, “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” ― Rumi.
As a writer reading non-technical materials (continuous learning by reading articles) made me realize that I’ve lacked in this field (self-awareness), so I reached out to an expert (Zulie Rane) to improve my writing (action) to become a better non-technical writer (improvement).
I firmly believe the continuous improvement of self-awareness is a key to face challenges, even in inevitable and unwanted situations. James Cameron, an acclaimed director, screenwriter, and adventurer, had to wait over fifteen years to make the movie Avatar. It is because the required technology was not available during that time. So if this is the case, keep chasing your dream, make it happen.
Final thoughts
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
Self-awareness is a process. It does not happen overnight. It takes time, energy, and effort upfront so that you can save them in the long run and become a better problem solver. Invest in your growth because no one will do it for you.
When I became a computer engineer, I used to think about only coding. During my journey through a rigorous learning process, I have gained new perspectives about customers and enterprises in more depth and have gained knowledge about myself in the process. So, never settle because you are your only limit. Otherwise, why live?