BECOMING MORE SELF-AWARENESS

There are ways for us to explore ourselves — your inner-self as the second person with a robust, and much “real” than the one that normally the society could see in your daily life. I’ve encountered drastic changes such as near-death experiences since I was a child but more importantly is to observe my own growth after a traffic accident. It was a strange morning after the event, everything was like floated around and even though I try to move my own body…it didn’t feel that normal as I did before the casualty.

As hard as I can, I could barely open my mouth, brushed my teeth but something inside the mirror that really hit me…a question..strong and loud and clear as ever before: I’m alive?

Just for the moment, I actually feel the dilemma of living in this life and not believe the thing that happens to myself just around 12 hours ago. Life is strange and yet, I could feel the value of being alive, near to my family; I could see them for another day and continue to treasure this life. For the next 12 months of treatment, with another 2 years of medical and brain scanning, I’m able to perform some of my activities with no or little support from others. Also, my journey started with a question more than just “I’m alive?” : What if I don’t wake up after my sleep? What should I do and feel for today?

But little I know is to learn and accept my inner-self to live the way it supposes to be. Through my story, I hope that some of you may discover your inner-self, learn it properly and willingly accept it as part of your life.

Take Personality or MBTI Test

There are many tests that you can search on the internet or be recommended by your network. But using the Free Personality Test from 16 Personalities is one way that I did, take your time and read the result carefully. What you should remember before — during — after the test:

• Before: make sure you are totally relaxed and prepare a glass of water with ice, make your self comfortable with your surrounding (turn of your AC or cover yourself in a blanket to feel that you’re owning the space)
• During: This is important because you need to read the question and try to answer it without any hesitation. Do it with your instinct (what you believe you shall give an answer to that question in a real-world without any judgmental point of view.)
• After: read the result, copy it to your note, learn and discover your strengths, weaknesses, key learning point which is new to you. Compare it to your understanding so far.

Perform Daily Self-reflection

So, after you completed your personality test, you kinda know some of the traits of yourself. But, let’s not stop there and do nothing about it. The reason you have to continue with my next step is to learn more about your true-self by accepting everything from you.

Daily self-reflection is uncommon, furthermore, it would be not an option for you to consider in this fast-moving lifestyle. Right now, you need to practice this step by following some of the guidelines below:

• The self-reflection session should be at the end of the day, this is your recall period of time. The more you paraphrase and describe the things that happen to you throughout the day is the better.
• Self-reflection is not about blaming anyone, including yourself.
• Self-reflection is a way to practice your observation of your environment, your reaction to a certain activity.

Alright, those are the main things that we should take note before our self-reflection session. And now is the main questions for you to ask yourself, any medium can do the trick:

• How should I describe my day by using keywords?
• Why do I choose to describe my day with those keywords?
• What are the key factors that trigger my positive reaction/feeling?
• What are the key factors that trigger my negative reaction/feeling?
• How do I maintain my positive reaction/feeling?
• How do I minimize my negative reaction/feeling?
• What should I do differently to improve my negative reaction/feeling?

Ask for Feedback

Sometimes, it is not easy to give yourself feedback (this require determination and strong self-awareness that can understand the thin line between Feedback and Criticism); so you should seek for constructive feedback about what you did during the day. Remember: we are sensitive especially when we try to target our inner-self, so be careful and get yourself ready with a strong mindset of “I’m seeking for constructive feedback that can fire at me, but I need to listen rather than talking”

People will show you how to listen and find good constructive feedback, but never show you how to handle your emotion after the activity. Here’s how:

• While listening to constructive feedback or even criticism, use your pen and note to do the trick. The reason why is to make you distract from the other’s emotional thinking, plus vocabularies. With this way, you can totally focus on picking out the keywords.
• When they finished, give them a thank you right away and ask them how to improve it based on their experience. Again, asking this question is to lead yourself and them into the “Finding solution” phase and both shall stay away from producing negative feeling to each other.

Acceptance & Dance with the Devil

Honestly, you might not even consciously think about this phrase, but you are remarkable in a certain way. I’ve never admitted to myself and give it a reward for every time I did something good, or overcome my hard time. There is only one of you in this world and yet, you are on the way of discovering yourself by increasing your self-awareness internally with a doable to-do list.

With a list of feedback and self-reflection at night, connecting all of them like playing with dots; you’re giving yourself a clear picture of how to develop yourself, becoming the person who you truly are. At some points, you want to get rid of some of your traits completely, but in fact, you need to understand those things are your true-self. No matter how hard you try, you can only accept and live with it, but know-how to “dance with the devil” when the time’s come.

For example: I’m a person with hot and short temper. I tried really hard to get rid of it, but I would never succeed in doing so. The more I deny that fact is the more I got myself into trouble with bad temper. And then, when my came to the my reflection with my girlfriend, I started to admit that I have a strong pride in everything I do and present to others. Next, I defined the trigger that infuse my temper as a root cause to start this bad habit. Once I can talk about those thing in a comfortable way, I realize that I’m not a hot temper any more.

Find Yourself in Principles

Principles are the code of conduct or things that you shall believe it strongly. There are many types of principles to live with and I’m in the position of not giving you any to follow because you need to match your strengths, weaknesses, belief to the principles. For me, I’m living with the 7 Bushido (Principles of the Samurai), and it goes like this:

Hopefully that with this post, some of you can find a way to increase your self-awareness. Increasing productivity and balancing your life is also an ultimate goal to be achieved.