Why Is It Important To Know Yourself?

Knowing yourself is crucial for personal growth, self-awareness, and overall well-being. Socrates the great philosopher has also emphasized the importance of knowing yourself. It is not just about knowing your favorite food, music, or color, though it serves as a foundation for the process, but some deep connections with yourself. It is true that we become what we see, hear, and the people we meet, their influence in our lives clouds what we actually are.

We have seen people in our lives who are unabashed, they live an authentic life doing exactly what they want without fear of judgment, this comes from loving oneself, and to love oneself we should know ourselves. Hence, to know ourselves is to know our strengths, weaknesses, our own morals, and what we think is right, etc. As rightly said by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom”.

What Does It Mean To Know Yourself?

Knowing yourself includes knowing what makes you interesting. It implies, knowing your likes and dislikes: it simply includes the things you like and the things you don’t, like your favorite music, if you like to meet new people or not, if you like to eat certain things or not, etc.

Exploring your beliefs or values:

We form our beliefs in childhood by learning and observing the parents when we develop our super-ego. But as we grow up and become an adolescent, we develop our own beliefs and value systems. Hence, knowing yourself includes what are the beliefs and values you have developed from your experience of life. Like from childhood, children take up the habit of following a religion, but as you grow up you might feel that you don’t believe in religious activities, etc.

Understanding your boundaries:

We have learned the importance of setting healthy boundaries. To set healthy boundaries, we must understand our boundaries, where we feel comfortable, and where we are not. Hence, it is a part of knowing yourself.

Embracing your distinctive traits:

Embracing and accepting yourself and your distinctive traits are a crucial element in knowing and loving yourself. Ultimately, all these things will help you become more self-aware. Being more self-aware promotes self-development, acceptance, and proactivity while improving our overall mental health.

Understanding yourself is important for several reasons

Increase In Self-Confidence:

Self-awareness is the first step towards self-acceptance. And once we accept ourselves for who we are, with all our quirks, flaws, and insecurities we become more confident about ourselves. It increases our self-confidence, not easily influenced by other people’s opinions and judgments about us.

Working On Your Growth:

Through self-awareness, you come to know about your weaknesses and personality flaws you think might be stopping you from achieving your desired self. Hence, you can change yourself, you become empowered to become the best version of yourself. You know the places and things you need to work in; thus, you can work towards your self-growth. It enables you to identify areas for improvement, accept your limitations, and work toward developing new skills and perspectives. Self-aware people are more open to feedback and learning opportunities, which speeds up their personal development journey.

Increase In Emotional Intelligence:

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and express emotions effectively, both in oneself and others. Knowing yourself makes you in touch with your emotions, it makes you empathize with yourself and with other people. Hence increasing your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the key to forming healthy and fulfilling relationships. You can better communicate your needs, boundaries, and expectations, resulting in more meaningful interactions with others. Understanding your own emotions helps you develop empathy and the ability to understand the emotions of others.

Resilience And Adaptability:

Self-awareness promotes resilience because you understand how to deal with obstacles and setbacks. You understand how you react to stress, which allows you to develop coping strategies and recover more quickly from adversity. Furthermore, knowing yourself allows you to adapt to changes and new situations more easily.

Clarity Of Goals And Decisions:

Knowing yourself well allows you to gain a better understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses, passions, and values. This clarity enables you to set meaningful goals that are consistent with who you are, resulting in a more fulfilling life. Self-awareness helps you make better decisions. You know what motivates you, what you need to succeed, and what risks you’re willing to take. This awareness guides you in making decisions that are consistent with your values and long-term goals.

Research on Self Awareness:

A recent study published in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement investigated the role of training-induced self-awareness in enhancing understanding of others. This training focused on perspective-taking and was inspired by the Internal Family System role of training-induced self-awareness for a better understanding of others.

In a large-scale longitudinal study, two independent participant samples (N = 80 and N = 81) received three months of contemplative training. This training focused on perspective-taking and was inspired by the Internal Family Systems model, which views the self as a complex system of inner personality aspects. Participants practiced perspective-taking on their own inner states by identifying and categorizing various inner personality parts. The results showed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of themselves, as measured by the number of different inner parts they could identify, predicted their improvements in high-level ToM (theory of mind) performance over time. This finding suggests a strong link between improving one’s self-awareness and increasing one’s social intelligence level.

How To Know Yourself Better?

We have learned the importance of knowing ourselves. Now let us see how we can do it better,

Writing Journal:

If you write down your daily thoughts, disappointments, and achievements, you will not only write down but also read what is going on. This may appear time-consuming, but it becomes addictive and an important part of your day. Journaling allows you to express yourself, think things through, reflect on your emotions, and determine how you truly feel. This is one of the best ways to get to know yourself.

Listen to Other People:

This is a difficult task because it is difficult not to become defensive when others tell us who they believe we are! However, when it comes to getting to know yourself, listening to them can be extremely beneficial. Others often have an idea of who you are because they observe you. They can recognize those subtle facial expressions that convey more than words. They can sometimes see your strengths and weaknesses better than they do their own. Usually, others tell you who you are through criticism. Their criticism may contain some partial truths, so take what applies to you and discard the rest. If you are getting to know yourself, you may not be able to see certain aspects of yourself that others do.

And of course, there are more techniques that make you self-aware and get in touch with your values, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Self-awareness is not just about introspection; it is a fundamental aspect of living a fulfilling and meaningful life.