SELF-AWARENESS

What do you know about yourself? What is your personality like? How do you enjoy spending your time? How Self-aware are you?

Self-awareness plays a huge role in improving your interactions with mental health. Self-awareness is the process of learning about yourself, your traits, your passions, your priorities, and your personality.

How does Self-Awareness Relate to Mental Health

Having self-awareness can help you more clearly identify your habits, your reasoning, and where your thoughts come from. When you have self-awareness, you can more effectively understand how to improve!

How Self-Awareness Helps

Having a bigger picture of self and of how your mental health affects your life will help you see more effective steps to improve your life. Everyone is unique and because of this, everyone with a mental illness has different struggles. When you have self-awareness, you are more aware of how mental illness plays a role in your life.

Action Steps

So what can you do? How can I become more self-aware? Luckily, here are some structured ideas of how to interact with yourself and find more about who you are.

#1 Meditation

Meditation gives you time to focus solely on what is happening inside of you.

Breathe in and out to find the little fire inside.
Focus on places that seem tight.
Breathe into the tight places and help the knots melt away.
Pay attention to your body.
What have you been neglecting? What aspect / part of your physical body are you thankful for?
What are your beautiful flaws and even insecurities?

Meditation also helps you understand your body’s messages and learn to live in the present moment.

#2 Self Reflecting Questions

I like to think of this tactic as the “dating tactic”. Give yourself time to sit down and get to know yourself. Here are some examples of questions you can ask:

What does the ideal “you” look like?
What dreams and goals do you have?
Why are these dreams and goals important to you?
What would you recommend your children to do and not to do?
Describe yourself in 3 words.
How has your personality changed since childhood?
Is your personality similar to either of your parents?
What qualities do you admire most in yourself?
What are your biggest weaknesses?
What are your biggest strengths?
What scares you?
What makes you worth it?
How satisfied are you with your current relationships?
If you only had a few minutes to live, who would you call and what would you say to them?
Who in your life have you loved the most?

#3 Journaling

You can also journal about the questions up above and see and reflect how the answers change over time. You can also write about your day and notice the good parts and the bad parts. What were your emotions today? What led you to feel what you felt? What did you spend your time doing? What went well, what didn't go quite as well?

#4 Ask Trusted Friends

Find the people in your life who know you the best. Ask them questions about yourself. How have they observed you? Why are they friends with you? How have you helped them? What are your flaws? What can you work on? What are your talents?

#5 Ask for Feedback at Work or School

Ask your boss, coworkers, teachers about your performance. What do you do well in class or at work? How can you improve?

These action steps are only a few of the ways to increase your self-awareness. There are so many ways to get to know yourself! Try out a few of these tips and see how you feel!

Download the Ascendant Tracker App to help you gain greater self-awareness about your mental health patterns. Ascendant Tracker was created to help individuals develop greater awareness of their mental health and therefore have greater control over their symptoms. Give it a try today!

Written By: Maren Bush - Ascendant Tracker Team