Understanding Yourself and Others
Understanding Yourself and Others
Self-awareness is the capacity to look inward and understand our own feelings, emotions, stressors, and personality. These key understandings play a critical role in influencing our judgements, decisions, and interactions with other people. Some of these emotions, stressors, and personality traits may have altered as a result of the events surrounding COVID-19. There is no better time than the present to look inward as a means of improving your individual well-being.
There are many benefits to practicing self-awareness, which may include:
- Helping you understand yourself in relation to others
- Helping you understand why you are feeling a certain way
- Empowers you to manage yourself effectively
- Enables you to continue to build and develop meaningful relationships
- Improves your awareness of friends, family, and co-workers
If you are looking to practice self-awareness, here’s a few tips to help you get started:
- Self-Reflection: Self-reflection involves asking yourself questions that focus on your behaviours and attitudes, such as
- What causes me to be optimistic or pessimistic?
- What provides me stress, or, alternatively, a sense of calm?
- What am I thankful for today?
When participating in self-reflection, it’s important to focus on your strengths and challenges. It’s easy to be hard on yourself during this process- you are your own toughest critic! Give yourself the opportunity to explore things that provide you with a sense of happiness, gratitude and joy. There are also resources on self-reflection during times of physical distancing, an example of which can be found here.
- Journaling: Journaling allows you to set goals and achieve those goals. It also helps to boost your memory and comprehension, while improving your communication skills. Journaling is a practice that reduce stress while encouraging organizational skills. Journaling can help improve your general mood specifically by
- Helping you prioritize any stressors or concerns
- Provide an opportunity for positive self-talk
- Assisting in processing your experiences
Research says that one 15-30 minute session can provide many of the benefits listed above.
Social-awareness is the process of looking outwards, and understanding the feelings, emotions, and stressors of others – e,g, family members, friends, or work colleagues. Those who have a strong grasp on self-awareness can make this a greater priority. Some easy ways to practice social awareness include:
- Understand what it means to listen
- Pay attention to non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, or punctuation used in written communication
- Check in with your teammates or family members to see how they’re doing
- Avoid the “Drive By” conversation
References: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/style/journaling-benefits.html, https://www.insperity.com/blog/social-awareness/, https://advice.shinetext.com/articles/five-self-reflection-questions-to-ask-yourself-while-social-distancing/
Employee Well-being