SELF-AWARENESS – A Core Life Skill


  • According to the World Health Organization (WHO), self-awareness is one of the ten core life skills.

  • Having a clear understanding of one’s ‘self’ is a challenge. Seeing ourselves as others see us, is not easy.

  • We can help our young people understand the importance of self-awareness.


 

SELF-AWARENESS:

  • enables a young person to tune into their feelings, thoughts, and actions;

  • improves their ability to respond to different social situations;

  • means understanding how they act on their thoughts and how feelings affect them and others;

  • is vital to their social and emotional growth;

  • enables their academic success; and,

  • facilitates their ability to judge their own performance and behaviour.

BENEFIT OF BEING SELF-AWARE:

  • Enables them to understand and talk about their feelings;

  • Improves understanding that how others see them is not always how they see themselves;

  • Allows understanding of how their behavior affects others;

  • Improves recognition of other people’s needs and feelings;

  • Helps figure out what’s working and not working socially;

  • Improves knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses;

  • Enables identification of what is required to complete their tasks;

  • Improves self-monitoring;

  • Helps them recognize errors in their schoolwork enabling them to make edits and changes;

  • Improves self-reflection to make things work better for them;

  • Helps them learn more about themselves and their strengths;

  • Assists them to advocate for themselves;

  • Helps them learn from mistakes; and,

  • Helps them begin speaking up for their needs.

 

CHALLENGES OF POOR SELF-AWARENESS:

  • Difficulty in recognizing non-verbal clues and body language;

  • Inability to understand others people’s perspectives;

  • The conflicts arising to misunderstandings;

  • Inappropriate behaviour without recognizing the impact on others;

  • Inaccuracy in the self-assessment of their academic or athletic performance; and,

  • Less likely to check their work for mistakes,

 

SOME STRATEGIES TO HELP IMPROVE SELF-AWARENESS:

  • Constructive feedback: Learning to give and receive feedback is powerful. Constructive feedback heightens self-awareness and evolves into self-development.

  • Appreciation: Show them appreciation and they will learn how to express appreciation to others.

  • Self-reflection: Encourage them to reflect as to whether or not they did the correct thing or if they could have done something differently.

  • Patience: Learning and practicing patience is vital.

  • Self-expression: Enable self-verbalization skills by expressing their thoughts and problem-solving strategies out loud.

  • Consideration and respect for others: Showing consideration for other people by doing simple things. Help them understand that everyone is different and should be treated respectfully is important.

  • Challenge: Give them challenges to organize the sessions and find information on the Internet.

  • Discuss forgiveness: Forgiving is a powerful tool in moving forward and it makes them a better person.

  • Provide Topics: Have topics for them on which to share their knowledge with other participants.

  • Assessment: Encourage youth to identify their set of striving instincts by taking a test such as the Kolbe Y Index. This index test reveals what motivates them. We have mentioned this test in a previous posting.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

  • Self-awareness helps young people learn that how they see themselves may be different from how others see them.

  • Those who are self-aware are more able to recognize their strengths and weaknesses.

  • Self-awareness helps those with learning and attention issues, learn self-reflection and self-advocacy.

  • The skill of self-awareness will develop over time with practice.

We can assist our youth as they enter this changing world.

Please share your ideas on how we can assist our youth to increase their self-awareness.

If you require more details, please contact us.

 

LEARN MORE:

Are you are interested in learning more about group coaching?

If so, contact us to obtain a report on a simple and easy system on how to set up group coaching programs for youth. You can do this in the ‘Contact us‘ section of the website.

Please contact us to enter the discussion, REQUEST A FREE COPY OF THE GROUP COACHING PLAYBOOK or JOIN THE REGULAR COACHES FORUM. 

Wishing you lots of love and laughter, as always.

Fred Jones

Victoria, BC Canada

Fred Jones

Fred Jones

Posted in Administration, Blog, Coaching, Coaching youth, Community, Program Activities and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

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