Self-awareness is the powerful ability to recognize one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and understand how they affect them and others. Why do you think, feel, and do what you do, how to make better decisions, and how do those decisions affect others? To become self-aware, one needs to develop certain skills, such as being mindful, reflective, and nonjudgmental.

In this blog post, we'll look at five key skills that can help you become more self-aware. By working to strengthen these skills, you can gain a better understanding of yourself, become more aware of your emotions and reactions, and improve your relationships with others.

1) The ability to monitor your own emotions

Emotions are the language of our body, our musculature. Emotions are nonverbal muscle sensations. The ability to translate sensations into feeling words can help us understand what we are feeling. If we know what we are feeling we can better communicate with others around us! The ability to monitor our emotions can be cultivated with mindfulness.

• How easy or difficult monitoring your own emotions is for you?

• What makes it difficult?

• What makes it easy?

2) The ability to take an objective view of yourself

It is important to translate our body experience, and our muscle tension into words. Feeling words. Since emotions are nonverbal we have to work from the inside out and from the body to the head. The only individual in the world who has the most information about your sensations is you. The direction of the "work" is gathering data from the body to bring to the verbal part of the brain that is going to come up with naming how we are feeling.

• What are you sensing in your body right now?

• If you were to take an objective view of your inner state could you describe at least three emotions you are feeling at this moment?

3) The ability to know your strengths and weaknesses

If you are older than 18 knowing your strengths is something that you are familiar with by now. Growing up the authority figures around us give us a first reflection of our strengths. If we have a support system that is accurate, positive, encouraging, and loving we get a realistic sense of our strengths and weaknesses. A loving upbringing can set up a path for emotional awareness that we can continue to cultivate with success.

• Did you grow up in a supportive environment?

• Did you grow up with a lot of criticism?

• Do you have a strong inner critic?

• Can you confidently name ten of your strengths?

• Do you find it easier to name your strengths or your weaknesses?

4) The ability to set boundaries

Setting boundaries is important for self-care and healthy relationships. Learning to set boundaries starts in childhood. If we grow up in a family that is respectful of each other we learn to assert ourselves with confidence.

• Are you comfortable in speaking up?

• Are you a "people pleaser"?

• Do you sacrifice your time or desires?

• On a scale of zero (0-not at all) to ten (10-very assertive) how assertive are you?

5) The ability to be honest with yourself

Honesty is like oxygen in a room. Being honest with yourself is essential but not always easy. The ability to be honest with ourselves is harder than we can even imagine! The mind is tricky! We often get defensive, make excuses, act impulsively, and even get angry, confused, and hurt ourselves.

Self-awareness is a skill that we need to cultivate!

We need to pay attention to our bodies and carefully identify our emotions. We need to objectively discern our strengths and weaknesses and express them with confidence and sensitivity for others around us. We need to be honest. It is important to keep the promises we make to ourselves.

• Have you broken a promise to yourself this past week?

• What are the "excuses" you told yourself and derailed your plans?

• How can you identify the strengths that can help you keep your promise and try again?