At its core, self-awareness means understanding your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, and beliefs – and how they impact YOU, your world, and those around you.

Sounds great, right? But also a little elusive too. So like, HOW does one become self-aware? And why should you invest in doing so? Well, let’s talk about it.

The Importance of Self-Awareness: How do I become more self aware though?

Have you ever heard that phrase – come as you are? I feel like I’ve seen it on a few door mats, kitchen sign things and maybe heard it in a worship song too? I bring it up though because in order to truly know yourself, you’ve got to be honest and true to yourself. In other words, you’ve got to come as you are – literally. This isn’t always as easy or straight forward as it may seem because we play a lot of mind games with ourselves. You’ve got to peal back the facade, admit things you don’t want to admit, and give yourself grace for wherever you’re at right now.

For me, I’ve had to let go of all my self-judgement (as much as possible), and accept myself for where I am, who I am, and what my natural tendencies are. This is hard and sometimes even confusing because we have this “ideal” self that we STRIVE to be, but it’s important to understand who we are when we’re NOT trying, you know? Like what’s your default mode? It’s interesting and even challenging to think about.

I attempt to take time to reflect at the end of each day when I’m home, alone, and cozied up on my couch. Or super late at night when I can’t sleep. Journaling has also been helping me a lot with this – and it’s so nice to be able to look back and look for trends in my emotions and actions from day to day. Without taking time to reflect, I don’t think I’d be able to really identify where I want to improve on a personal level.

The Importance of Self-Awareness: How will being self aware actually help me? What’s the Point?

It really is so important to train your mind (or maybe force it) to STOP and consciously think about the life you’re living: to think about how you feel about #allthethings and whether or not you’re moving in the right direction. This is especially important if you’re trying to improve or work towards something “more” (or just different) for yourself or a relationship. The more you pay attention to yourself, the better you’ll understand why you do the things you do. And the more you know about your own habits and functionalities, the easier it is to improve or change – 0r at least know where to start.

It’s interesting and oftentimes surprising for me to realize that what I’m doing doesn’t correlate with what I want. And yet I keep on living, oftentimes in auto-pilot mode – doing things that contradict what I “think” I want. So it’s important to take the time to actually think about it and be honest with yourself.

So back to the original question here – what’s the point or why should you prioritize getting to know yourself? For starters (because there are many reasons!), here are 3 areas of life that will greatly benefit from your being more self aware:

Any kind of Self Improvement or Change – self-awareness is crucial for any sort of self improvement or personal development. Not only do you have to be aware of what you want to change to begin any such journey, but you’ve also got to be committed to checking back in with yourself. It’s this continual commitment to being self-aware that will make the difference as it guides and directs you along your journey, facilitating adjustments and learning along the way.

Communication & Relationships – When you’re self-aware, you understand how others perceive you and how you might be coming across. It’s important to know your weaknesses and blindspots so you can be proactive in improving upon them.  And this can be very valuable when it comes to investing in and building relationships – whether it be with your coworkers, friends or family.

Managing Your Career – the better you understand your strengths and weakness (on a personal and professional level), the more equipped you’ll be to focus on cultivating your strengths rather than getting distracted or dragged down by your weaknesses. You don’t have to be good at everything, but you should foster and focus more of your energy on the things you ARE good at. And in order to do that, you’ve got to figure out (or be aware of) what those things are!

Bottom line is that I’m really passionate about the role that self-awareness can play in self improvement and/or development; I’ve seen it make such a positive difference in my life and so I wanted to talk about it a bit on the blog and see y’alls thoughts! To be honest, after reading this, I STILL feel like I have so much more to say and/or that my point didn’t really get across but instead of playing the perfectionist game, I’m going to press publish anyway. I hope something in here speaks to you! Let me know!

Hey you! Yes, you. Let’s CHAT

Do you have any tips for slowing down and finding time to become more self-aware?

And how has becoming more self-aware helped you in your life? Slash please comment below if anything I said above stuck out to you and you’d like to chat about it more! I love writing these kind of more (non fashion-y) type blog posts and especially appreciate when you guys chime in via comments!

Outfit Details: pink sweater (wearing size xxs) // White jeans (on sale but almost sold out) // Chanel bag // Vince sneakers (size down 1/2 size)// c/o Moon & Lola Earrings (not available anymore) // Gorjana Necklace (not available anymore)