Self-Awareness is the foundation of wisdom and personal growth. Socrates believed that before seeking knowledge from the world, we must first understand ourselves, and we all, or maybe a few of us, are in search of wisdom, right? Those who are not might have gotten,hahahha! That’s alright, in search of wisdom, the prerequisite is knowing yourself, and the same thing was explained by Socrates, hence in today’s blog, I am going to discuss this in detail, what does this actually mean? How to know yourself, and also we will try to understand Socrates way and will try to simplify it so that we can incorporate it in our life, know ourselves, and then achieve wisdom in life.
Knowing yourself is simply self-awareness. It seems funny to accept that most of us are not self-aware, but it is true that, in most cases, self-awareness is missing in people. This is mainly because of a poor understanding of self-awareness; we have misunderstood it, or maybe we do not even understand it at all.
Understanding Socrates’ “Know Thyself”
Before going deep into this topic, I would like to recall an interesting quote of Oscar Wilde, where he says, “ Only the shallow know themselves.” Now, what is this? Are you also surprised? Even I was when I came across this quote for the first time. No worries, here we are. You can learn more about Socrates and ancient philosophy through Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Being, Nothingness, and Human Identity
So basically this goes with the idea of being and nothingness, we human are identified by being that means we are an integral part of a mobile and continuous shifting dimension, we are not a single identity which we feel we are it is not the case, even our emotions and thoughts are not the same it is the result of our physical world what we are receiving from our surroundings through our senses and how we are responding to it, hence the continuous changing being can not know themselves because to know something it should be of some fixed identity but the same is not with us maybe if we are a stone then we can know ourselves a little better, maybe we give ourselves a particular label then we can know ourselves much more but this is not the case with human reality.
Now you might be thinking what I am saying, I started with the topic of knowing yourself, how to know yourself? And now I am saying you can not know yourself, strange, right? Not that much let me simplify it to you, Here we can not know ourselves does not mean we can not be self aware but to reach that point first you need to understand that our identity is less of a being but more of a nothingness, and with this mindset of nothingness if we try to be self aware then only we can reach the point where we can say that we know ourselves.
Why Most People Lack Self-Awareness
If we identify ourselves more like a being then we are limiting our identity and hence the potential, here we are giving our mind a boundary which it can not break and think beyond and this is the reason with this mindset of us that we are something, we are this, we are that we just create a big obstacles in our path, simply I wound like to say if I say we are more into nothingness then I simply mean that we are a possibility, we can be anything, we can be god, we can be devil this is completely on what choices we make. Hence, in the journey of self-awareness, it is very important to keep in mind that we are what we make of ourselves. And hence it is very important to keep a watch on ourselves or be aware of our daily activity, how we are evolving, and in what direction we are leading. This watch will help us to be more self-aware and know ourselves. This can be done simply by reflecting on ourselves on a daily basis.
Daily Reflection Steps for Self-Awareness
On the journey of knowing yourself first thing we need is to have the courage to accept that we do not know ourselves, the nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, how can man know himself he is a thing obscure and veiled, if a rabbit has seven skin the human can shade seventy times the seven skin and still not be able to truly say here you truly are and no more skin is left. Hence, accepting that we do not know ourselves opens the gateway to all the possibilities, and hence we become exposed to the universe’s strongest possibility. After acceptance, there are a few more things that we can do to bring self-awareness, or to be more precise, reflect on ourselves in day-to-day life.
Practices like Loving Kindness (Metta) can help cultivate emotional awareness and compassion.
- Clarification of goals and values: We must have clarity about our goals and values, what we want out of this life, and what types of values we need to incorporate in our lives so that we become the best version of ourselves out of all the possibilities. When I say clarification of goals, I do not mean to restrict you. I simply mean to give you a direction.
- Practicing gratefulness: At the end of the day, it is important we recall and feel grateful to each and everything which happens to us, it can be a person, or just an act which made you feel good and has added value to your life.
- Emotional Regulation: Observing our whole day emotion is a amazing way to take care of it, when we are winding up we need to revisit our day and recall how did we handled the challenges where there was a situation how did we handled it how we reacted towards it, if you feel you did good be proud and appreciate yourself if not then just promise yourself to be more cautious next time. Along with that, it is also important to see what types of emotion did we experienced more strongly today, and what was the reason. After investigating it, we can easily manage it and react more appropriately next time.
- Self evaluation: After the end of the day we must look into our actions for the whole day and need to see does our action match our goals and values, do we practice what we preach, if yes congrats and appreciate yourself, if not please analyse the possible reason for this, because it can make you shallow from within in no time because a man without values is not more than a corp.
- Referential Evaluation: We have heard that the society is the mirror of our behaviour, how we behave what type of person we are, all these are seen in the behaviour of people around how they treat us, hence after sometime it is important to keep checking how our surrounding I treating us, it will show the positive and negative changes we have made in us in that particular time frame.
Final Thoughts on Self-Awareness
We have understood what self-awareness is, how it can be achieved, hence start reflecting on yourself from today and reach the goal of your life, reach the point that you have decided for yourself.