To Know Yourself or Not to Know Yourself, That’s the Question

Do you know yourself? Or how well do you know yourself? Here, knowing yourself has a very high positive correlation with individual awareness. A sentence that I remember from what I heard while receiving my coaching training;

“Awareness is about being able to see the possibility that something could be different.”

If we bring this perspective to the phrase “individual awareness”, we can say that “it is about a person seeing the possibility that something about himself could be different.”

Like being able to say , “I used to think of myself as a very good communicator, but I wasn’t always like that in every environment. And there were times when I couldn’t communicate well.” Like being able to say, “ I didn’t think of myself as a hard worker, they didn’t call me that either, so I guess I can be a hard worker in an environment that helps me develop in a subject I’m talented in .” 🙂

I think these examples can go on forever. Today, I think that self-awareness is a very important but neglected issue. While most people live their lives according to the plan and program made for them, they can hardly focus on noticing themselves and observing the changes in themselves. I am one of the many people here. While I was having coaching sessions with my coach in 2019, I remember stopping and looking and thinking, “I have never thought about myself this comprehensively and for this long before.”

A coaching conversation is different from a conversation in a circle of friends, because it has a system. The conversation has an agenda and the coachee is at the center. Therefore, the topic does not easily go off the rails and the coachee can look at the topic he/she brought up as an agenda from a 360-degree perspective. When chatting with a friend, it is like a game of go, one white stone and one black stone make moves. One of the environments where we can gain individual awareness quickly is a one-on-one coaching conversation, and the other is a team coaching environment. Did you know that you can become a member of our site and have a free chemistry conversation to start coaching conversations and get information? Click to start receiving coaching .

We learn from Boyatzis: Helping People Change

I would like to touch upon the subject of individual awareness in a scientific sense, through the narratives of Richard Boyatzis and his colleagues in their book “Helping People Change.” To understand this perspective, let’s look at these 4 dimensions together:

1) Ideal Me

2) Real Me

3) Others

4) Personal Vision Statement

Click to review the book

My Ideal Self

Instead of talking about it as described in the book, I want to write as if I were chatting with you, dear reader. When we examine it from the perspective of knowing yourself, the Ideal Self refers to the state where a person raises their individual awareness and almost approaches their potential. For example, you may think that your more ideal self is more constructive. You may want to see yourself as someone who is more hardworking, more energetic, and perhaps more clearly expressive. For this, a voice inside you supports you and says, “You can be more determined.”

Imagining, or visualizing, has an effect that is far beyond what is expected when the appropriate environment is provided. How about closing your eyes for a few seconds and imagining what kind of person you are ideally? What kind of person do you see? What is he wearing, for example? In what kind of environment? If you turn your head left and right, what else do you see? Who is around him? If there is a feeling inside him, what do you think this feeling might be? What is he doing? What does he want to do? What would he say if a few sentences came out of his mouth? etc.

The Real Me and Others

The second important element is the “Real Me”. We have just tried to get to know the ideal you. So who are you now, in reality? How do you define yourself? This is where the third dimension of the process, “others”, comes into play. How?

Boyatzis and his colleagues have an explanation about individual awareness as follows. Let’s say I have an estimate of what others think about me – Ayşegül is an energetic person, a positive person…etc. – and then there is what others actually say about me. The closer this estimate and what is actually said are to each other, the higher individual awareness will be.

So, in order for a person to realize himself/herself, he/she needs to listen to what others think and say about him/her. It is something different than what a person thinks about you. I am talking about the ability to listen to the voice of the collective, the things you hear from many people around you. If you constantly hear “You are an energetic person” from different people at school, at work, in your family, in your circle of friends, there is a high level of consciousness in listening to this. Don’t miss the opportunity to be aware with phrases like “No, what energy, that is your beautiful opinion”!

Others are important . Although individual awareness seems too individual, it cannot happen without others, we are social beings. 

Personal Vision: 6 words

While I am talking about getting to know yourself, I want to come to the personal vision statement without making the article too long. Just as institutions have a vision, they tell where they will be in the future, and this vision statement is parallel to dreams and goals, it mobilizes people. Because when you take an action, if it serves your vision, you embrace it more, you focus more. Therefore, the impact of the vision is directly reflected in daily life. For example, I had created a vision statement in 2019 and it is still valid; “To be one of the people who carry the Turkish industry up”. Exactly 6 words . I did not know at that time that it would consist of 6 words at most.

In short, you should definitely have a vision statement that is your own and not manipulated by anyone else. This statement will not come out right away for someone who has spent almost no time getting to know themselves. Because it requires effort, work and focus. Frankly, it was a time-consuming process for me as well. Coaching sessions are a great environment for this and I think that being aware of one’s values ​​plays a leading role in creating a vision statement. What do you think, should my next article be about awareness of values?

If you close your eyes and think, what is left for you from what you read in terms of knowing yourself? What affected you the most? What did not leave much of an impact on you? If I asked, “What did you notice about yourself?” “Do you know yourself?” “What did you learn about knowing yourself?” what would you say?  

To take a more conscious step towards knowing yourself with professional coaching, you can listen to professional coaching from the Waytogo team, just click here .