Self awareness and Self esteem

Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem, I’m sure we have all come across these two terms in our life, but wad does these two terms means exactly?

To me, self-awareness is an understanding of who you are and self esteem is how confident you are of yourself.

Self-awareness is important as it is the image we have of ourselves. If we do not have self awareness, we may not be able to make the right decisions in our life and ends up suffering and regretting. Self awareness allows us to show others who we really are and to let others have a unique impression of us. Self awareness allows us to present ourselves to others in the appropriate way. Self awareness also allows us to cope with and respond in the correct way when face with negative comments or difficult situations. Self awareness also allows us to communicate to others more effectively.

Self esteem is important as a person with self esteem is confident and thinks positively compared to one who has low self esteem. People with self esteem will not have doubts about themselves and will not be affected in a negative way when met with setbacks. People with low self esteem tend to have doubts about themselves and are easily defeated by minor set backs. This affects their performance negatively compared to those with self esteem as people with low self esteem will think that they are not worthy and inferior. This results in not putting in hundred percent of what they really are and the this further demoralized them as they feel more inferior as their performance is not as good as others.

Although self awareness and self esteem is good for us but if we are overly self aware or overly confident may also affects us negatively. Overly self aware and confident will lead us to unrealistic perceptions of ourselves and make us proud and arrogant. This will also results in negative impacts such as not having friends by your side.

To enhance our self awareness we can constantly reflect and observe ourselves, be more open to others, interact more with others and to find out what they think of you.

To enhance self esteem, we can try to find out our strengths and to appreciate it, learnt to accept your weakness and try to cover up our weakness using out strengths, to view setbacks and negative remarks as a new lesson learnt and not to dull on about it.

I remember the first lesson when we are supposed to put the score beside a list of adjectives and share it with our group and I found out that what others see in me is not necessarily the same as what I thought I am. I am a person with not quite high self esteem and self awareness as I always plan for the worse and don’t really believe in myself. Although others may see me as a loud person who speaks and talks confidently and loudly but I guess that’s just a protective color I’ve made for myself, to disguise myself up so that others will not see the other side of me.

I’m those who will be scared that I will have no friends in a new environment and will be suspicious and wonder if others are discussing bad stuffs about me behind my back.

I shall try and improve on my self awareness and self esteem so that I can be a better person.