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Self-awareness | Define Self-awareness at Dictionary.com

Posted: October 27, 2015 at 7:45 am


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Contemporary Examples

Certain sentences and paragraphs capture a self-awareness that is more insightful than obnoxious or narcissistic.

There is some self-awareness over what they are doing, said Brooks.

But with self-awareness comes self-protection and a little paranoia.

It requires a huge degree of self-belief, a considerable lack of self-awareness, and a touch of delusion.

The women seem at once to have no self-awareness and to be hyperconscious of the way they will be portrayed.

Historical Examples

In the enormous evening only a little shiver of self-awareness was left to her.

After all, it's just a question of increasing their self-awareness.

His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation.

Early words are a record of the self-awareness of the human, denoting body parts and elementary actions.

Word Origin and History for self-awareness Expand

self-awareness in Medicine Expand

self-awareness n. Realization of oneself as an individual entity or personality.

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Self-awareness | Define Self-awareness at Dictionary.com

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How to Be More Self-Aware – Understanding Yourself

Posted: October 23, 2015 at 6:41 am


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Tetra Images - Yuri Arcurs/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

Self-awareness is important in every area of life, but it's essential when dealing with relationships. If you're aware of the things you say and do, you'll be able to recognize when your actions bother or anger someone else.It sounds straightforward, but it takes some adults years before they understand what this concept means, and how to apply it to their life.

What Does It Mean to Be Self-Aware?

Self-awareness means that you have a solid understanding about who you are and how you relate to the world. This means being mentally and emotionally present in situations, and understanding how your actions affect people. It also means that you're clued into to what you really enjoy and dislike.

This concept is not as simple in practice, however.

Many things in life can change us, for good or bad, and these changes cloud self-awareness. Some things that can wreak havoc on our awareness are:

Do You Have a Problem With Self-Awareness?

One sure way to determine if you've got an issue with self-awareness is that you feel everyone else is always to blame for things. For example:

In each of these examples, what's missing is self-reflection. If these sound a little like your own life, do some soul searching to determine if you could be more aware. Most us can be, so you're not alone. What's more, self-awareness is a continual process. The more you do it, the better you will be at determining how the way you think and act affects your own happiness.

Self-Awareness and Conflict

Another common trait of those unaware is an inability to give and receive apologies. When someone apologizes, they either may not accept it at all, or believe that the person needs to keep apologizing. They don't understand what it means to truly accept someone's apology and move on, and as a result they continually harm the relationship by rehashing old arguments.

By contrast, they rarely apologize when they should, and if they do it's a non-apology instead of a genuine acknowledgement for how they acted. Their focus stays on what someone else did instead of their own contribution to the argument. (Here's more about different types of apologizes.)

Being More Self-Aware

The first step to self-awareness is to look at past issues you've had with people and be honest with yourself. Sometimes it's so hard to think that we might have messed up that we don't allow ourselves to reflect on the actions we took to help prolong or cause an argument.

Admitting you have a part in how people treat you is a hard concept to embrace at first. The following thoughts can act as a warning sign for better self-awareness.

When you think these thoughts, turn the focus back to yourself and see if there was something you did to push someone's buttons, start an argument, or prolong a disagreement. If someone blows up at you and you feel it's "out of the blue," take a moment and see if perhaps you were pushing them toward anger or resentment for awhile. Sometimes subtle nagging or condescension builds, and a friend who put up with your negative qualities before will suddenly not stand for it any longer. This is a good time to reflect on your actions.

When you do have an argument, listen closely to what your friend is telling you. It can be really hard to hear negative things about our actions, but if a friend is hurt you might have done something without even realizing it. Ask your friend to share their frustration with you so you can learn. If your friend is done with you, then go back over the attitudes you've had toward them (that you thought were hidden) and see if perhaps you weren't as good a friend as you should have been.

Self-awareness is important in our relationships, but you also have to balance it. The act of self-reflection should be to determine how your actions affect your friendships, not to act as a martyr or take the blame for everything. Understanding your role and acknowledging the things you do wrong will help you keep a harmonious social life.

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How to Be More Self-Aware - Understanding Yourself

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October 23rd, 2015 at 6:41 am

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Awareness – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Awareness is the ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns.[1] In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.

Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware, or may be acutely unaware of an event. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience. Insects have awareness that you are trying to swat them or chase after them. But insects do not have consciousness in the usual sense, because they lack the brain capacity for thought and understanding.

Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awareness or, self-awareness.[2] Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks.[3]

Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central and peripheral nervous system provides more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousness.

Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the brain stem. Bjorn Merker,[4] an independent neuroscientist in Stockholm, Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in infants with hydranencephaly. "Higher" forms of awareness including self-awareness require cortical contributions, but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem which human beings share with most of the vertebrates. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasizes that this form of primary consciousness consists of the capacity to generate emotions and an awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. In the same way, people can become conscious of a feeling that they can't label or describe, a phenomenon that's especially common in pre-verbal infants.

Due to this discovery medical definitions of brain death as a lack of cortical activity face a serious challenge.[citation needed]

Down the brain stem lie interconnected regions that regulate the direction of eye gaze and organize decisions about what to do next, such as reaching for a piece of food or pursuing a potential mate.[citation needed]

The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations. One factor is "baseline shifts" due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areas that affects the neural processing of subsequent perceptual judgments.[5] Such top down biasing can occur through two distinct processes: an attention driven baseline shift in the alpha waves, and a decision bias reflected in gamma waves.[6]

Outside of neuroscience biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed their Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote:

Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.[7]

This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at organic levels that we don't usually consider to be aware. Given the possible relationship between awareness and cognition, and consciousness, this theory contributes an interesting perspective in the philosophical and scientific dialogue of awareness and living systems theory.

In cooperative settings, awareness is a term used to denote knowledge created through the interaction of an agent and its environment in simple terms knowing what is going on.[8] In this setting, awareness is meant to convey how individuals monitor and perceive the information surrounding their colleagues and the environment they are in. This information is incredibly useful and critical to the performance and success of collaborations.[9][10] Awareness can be further defined by breaking it down into a set of characteristics:[11]

Different categories of awareness have been suggested based on the type of information being obtained or maintained:[12]

These categories are not mutually exclusive, as there can be significant overlap in what a particular type of awareness might be considered. Rather, these categories serve to help understand what knowledge might be conveyed by a particular type of awareness or how that knowledge might be conveyed. Workspace awareness is of particular interest to the CSCW community, due to the transition of workspaces from physical to virtual environments.

While the type of awareness above refers to knowledge a person might need in a particular situation, context awareness and location awareness refer to information a computer system might need in a particular situation. These concepts of large importance especially for AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) applications.

The term of location awareness still is gaining momentum with the growth of ubiquitous computing. First defined with networked work positions (network location awareness), it has been extended to mobile phones and other mobile communicable entities. The term covers a common interest in whereabouts of remote entities, especially individuals and their cohesion in operation. The term of context awareness is a superset including the concept of location awareness. It extends the awareness to context features of an operational target as well as to context of an operational area.

Covert awareness is the knowledge of something without knowing it. Some patients with specific brain damage are for example unable to tell if a pencil is horizontal or vertical.[citation needed] They are however able to grab the pencil, using the correct orientation of the hand and wrist. This condition implies that some of the knowledge the mind possesses is delivered through alternate channels than conscious intent.[original research?]

Awareness forms a basic concept of the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy.

In general, "awareness" may also refer to public or common knowledge or understanding about a social, scientific, or political issue, and hence many movements try to foster "awareness" of a given subject, that is, "raising awareness". Examples include AIDS awareness and Multicultural awareness.

Awareness may refer to anesthesia awareness.

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October 23rd, 2015 at 6:41 am

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What Is Self-Awareness? How Does It Develop?

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Self-awareness is one of the first components of the self-concept to emerge. While self-awareness is something that is central to each and every one of us, it is not something that we are acutely aware of at every moment of every day. Instead, self-awareness becomes woven into the fabric of who we are and emerges at different points depending upon the situation and our personality. We are not born with self-awareness, however.

Researchers have demonstrated that the awareness of ourselves begins to emerge at around one year of age and becomes much more developed by around 18 months of age.

How Do Experts Define Self-Awareness?

When Does Self-Awareness Emerge?

Lewis and Brooks-Gun (1979) conducted some interesting research on how self-awareness develops. The researchers applied a red dot to an infant's nose and then held the child up to a mirror. Children who recognize themselves in the mirror will reach for their own noses rather than the reflection in the mirror, indicating that they have at least some self-awareness. Lewis and Brooks-Gun found that almost no children under one year of age would reach for their own nose rather than the reflection in the mirror. About 25 percent of the infants between 15 and 18 months reached for their own noses, while about 70 percent of those between 21 and 24 months did so.

It is important to note that the Lewis and Brooks-Gun study only indicates an infant's visual self-awareness; children might actually possess other forms of self-awareness even at this early point in life. Researchers Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, and Weiss (1989) suggest that the expression of emotions involves self-awareness as well as an ability to think about oneself in relation to other people.

How Does Self-Awareness Develop?

Researchers believe that an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate, a region of the frontal lobe, plays an important role in the development of self-awareness. The Lewis and Brooks-Gun experiment indicates that self-awareness begins to emerge in children around the age of 18 months, an age that coincides with the rapid growth of spindle cells in the anterior cingulate. Researchers have also used brain imaging to show that this region becomes activated in adults who are self-aware.

Types of Self-Awareness

Psychologists often break self-awareness down into two different types, either public or private.

Self-Consciousness: A Heightened State of Self-Awareness

Sometimes, people can become overly self-aware and veer into what is known as self-consciousness. Have you ever felt like everyone was watching you, judging your actions, and waiting to see what you will do next? This heightened state of self-awareness can leave you feeling awkward and nervous in some instances. In a lot of cases, these feelings of self-consciousness are only temporary and arise in situations when we are "in the spotlight." For some people, however, self-consciousness can become a chronic condition.

People who are privately self-conscious have a higher level of private self-awareness, which can be both a good and bad thing. These people tend to be more aware of their feelings and beliefs, and are therefore more likely to stick to their personal values. However, they are also more likely to suffer from negative health consequences such as increased stress and anxiety. They sometimes tend to ruminate on events and feelings and may experience more depression.

People who are publicly self-conscious have a higher level of public self-awareness. They tend to think more about how other people view them and are often concerned that other people might be judging them based upon their looks or their actions. As a result, these individuals tend to stick to group norms and try to avoid situations in which they might look bad or feel embarrassed.

More Psychology Definitions: The Psychology Dictionary

Browse the Psychology Dictionary

References:

Crisp, R. J. & Turner, R. N. (2010). Essential social psychology. London: Sage Publications.

Froming, W.J., Corley, E.B., and Rinker, L. (1990). The influence of public self consciousness, and the audience's characteristic on withdrawal from embarrassing situations. Journal of Personality, 58,(4), 603-622.

Lewis, M. & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1978). Self knowledge and emotional development. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.), The development of affect: The genesis of behavior, 1 (pp. 205-226). New York: Plenum Press.

Mullen, B. & Suls, J. (1982). Know thyself: Stressful life changes and the ameliorative effect of private self-consciousness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 43-55.

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What Is Self-Awareness? How Does It Develop?

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October 8th, 2015 at 4:45 pm

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Self Awareness – Pathway to Happiness

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Self Awareness is having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.

We might quickly assume that we are self aware, but it is helpful to have a relative scale for awareness. If you have ever been in an auto accident you may have experienced everything happening in slow motion and noticing details of your thought process and the event. This is a state if heightened awareness. With practice we can learn to engage these types of heightened states and see new opportunities for interpretations in our thoughts, emotions, and conversations.

Why Develop Self Awareness? As you develop self awareness you are able to make changes in the thoughts and interpretations you make in your mind. Changing the interpretations in your mind allows you to change your emotions. Self awareness is one of the attributes of Emotional Intelligence and an important factor in achieving success.

Self awareness is the first step in creating what you want and mastering your. Where you focus your attention, your emotions, reactions, personality and behavior determine where you go in life.

Having self awareness allows you to see where your thoughts and emotions are taking you. It also allows you to see the controls of your emotions, behavior, and personality so you can make changes you want. Until you are aware in the moment of the controls to your thoughts, emotions, words, and behavior, you will have difficulty making changes in the direction of your life.

Self Awareness in Relationships Relationships are easy until there is emotional turmoil. This is the same whether you are at work or in your personal life. When you can change the interpretation in your mind of what you think you can change your emotions and shift the emotional quality of your relationships. When you can change the emotions in your relationships you open up entirely new possibilities your life.

Having a clear understanding of your thought and, behavior patterns helps you understand other people. This ability to empathize facilitates better personal and professional relationships.

Develop Self Awareness Self awareness is developed through practices in focusing your attention on the details of your personality and behavior. It isnt learned from reading a book. When you read a book you are focusing your attention on the conceptual ideas in the book. With your attention in a book you are practicing not paying attention to your own behavior, emotions and personality.

Think of learning to be mindful and self aware as learning to dance. When learning to dance we have to pay attention to how and where our feet move, our hands and body motion, what our partner is doing, music, beat, floor space, and other dancers. Self awareness isnt learned from books and the Tango isnt either. In my years of study and working with clients I have discovered many useful techniques that accelerate the learning. I have incorporated these techniques into the Self Mastery audio course. The first four sessions are available free.

In the process of these sessions I am not telling anybody what to believe, how they should think, or what they should do. I am basically sharing with people exercises in raising their self awareness. When you become more self aware you instinctively begin to see aspects of your personality and behavior that you didnt notice before.

If you have an emotional reaction of anger or frustration, you notice many of the thoughts and small triggers that build up towards those emotions. You also notice moments when you can change the interpretations in your mind, or not believe what we are thinking. In this heightened awareness you instinctively make better choices in your thought process long before an emotional reaction or destructive behavior.

Making changes in your behavior is much easier to do when you catch them early in the dynamic, before the momentum of thought and emotion has gathered steam. The changes in your mind, and behavior become simple and easy steps when you develop self awareness. See the Self Mastery Course for the step by step process and exercises. You can also learn about these practices from the book Mindworks: A practical guide for changing Thoughts, Beliefs and Emotional Reactions.

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Self Awareness and the Effective Leader – Inc.com

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Although it is probably one of the least discussed leadership competencies, self-awareness is possibly one of the most valuable. Self-awareness is being conscious of what you're good at while acknowledging what you still have yet to learn. This includes admitting when you don't have the answer and owning up to mistakes.

In our highly competitive culture, this can seem counterintuitive. In fact, many of us operate on the belief that we must appear as though we know everything all the time or else people will question our abilities, diminishing our effectiveness as leaders.

If you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that really the opposite is true. Because whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. So rather than conceal them, the person who tries to hide weaknesses actually highlights them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and self-awareness.

It's easy to see how pretending to know everything when you don't can create situations that can be problematic for your entire organization. On the other hand, when you take responsibility for what you don't know, you benefit both yourself and your organization.

On an interpersonal level, self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses can net you the trust of others and increase your credibility -- both of which will increase your leadership effectiveness.

On an organizational level, the benefits are even greater. When you acknowledge what you have yet to learn, you're modeling that in your organization it's okay to admit you don't have all the answers, to make mistakes and most importantly, to ask for help. These are all characteristics of an organization that is constantly learning and springboards to innovation and agility -- two hallmarks of high performing organizations.

Most likely, your strengths are what got you to this point in your career. As your role in your organization changes, you must be careful not to overplay a former strength to the point that it actually becomes a weakness.

For example, let's say you're great with detail and have done good things for your organization as an individual contributor and get rewarded with a management role. Continuing to delve in the details once you're responsible for projects and people will cause you to lose ground with 1) your reports, who will feel unnecessary; and 2) your superiors, who may rethink your readiness for managerial responsibility.

Acknowledging the need to become better at anything is only the beginning, and it's often the most difficult step in the whole process. In many cases, individuals successfully come to the realization that something's not working but have no clue how to change it into something that works.

This difficulty to see in yourself what others see so easily is what makes the path to self-awareness so challenging. One way to get started is by soliciting and listening to feedback from those who work with you.

There are several ways you can get feedback about your work performance. Formally, you can get it through 360 multi-rater assessments. In a 360, peers, superiors and reports anonymously provide feedback on all aspects of your behavior.

Informally, you can make time once a day to reflect on the day's events, e.g. how people reacted to you, how fluidly you were able to work with or manage others, etc. To do this effectively on your own requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence, or EQ as it's often called, is defined as awareness of your own and others' emotions, and how they are impacted by situations. Some people are simply born with a high EQ but with diligent introspection it can be cultivated to a degree in everyone.

If you fall into the latter category, another more practical method that falls somewhere in between the formality of a 360 and the informality of quiet daily reflection is to get in the habit of doing regular post-mortems on every project in which you are involved. In order to do this effectively however, you must learn to do two things: ask good questions, and listen without justifying or defending your actions.

The skill of asking good questions can be invaluable to you and your organization. When the question is about your own performance however, it can be harder to be objective about negative feedback. When you show that you are equally open to all types of feedback, you demonstrate self-awareness and the willingness to learn.

Plus, asking questions models a solid, transparent approach to problem-solving and decision-making that benefits everyone in an organization. But perhaps most importantly, it models that it's okay not to know everything, which encourages everyone that it's okay to be constantly learning.

By modeling habits of good self-awareness you help to create a more self-aware organization. An organization that is self-aware is open to learning and better equipped to adjust quickly to changes as the marketplace dictates. This ability is the defining characteristic of a learning organization and possibly the most compelling reason all managers at all levels should include self-awareness in their development goals.

Once you've solicited feedback it's crucial that you listen without justifying your actions or people will stop giving you feedback. Moreover, when you are busy defending your actions, you miss what the person is trying to tell you.

If on the other hand you listen and accept feedback without defending yourself, you're more likely to hear what you need to hear, increasing your credibility with the person giving you feedback and creating a trust bond that will enable them to continue providing useful feedback in the future.

No doubt most of us would answer with confidence that we are pretty darn self-aware. Before you take self-awareness off your development radar screen, consider this: According to research* on management styles, you're more likely to be unaware of your behavior and how it impacts others if normally tend to operate at the extremes.

For example, at one extreme are the "Originators." Originators tend to be quick decision-makers who aren't afraid of confrontation or taking risks. On the other end of the spectrum you'll find "Conservers." Conservers are much more rule-bound and conflict- and change-averse. Most people fall somewhere in between these two extremes and are aptly labeled as "Pragmatists." Pragmatists don't either seek out or avoid confrontation. More practical and flexible, they tend to focus on issues in the order in which they need to be resolved.

So if you identify more with the descriptions of the Originator or Conserver, this may be an indicator that you are not as self-aware as you think you are. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of management styles, the benefits of greater self-awareness should be incentive enough to consistently seek (and listen to) as much feedback as possible on your performance at work.

When you pretend to know it all and never admit mistakes, you model behavior that can have negative consequences for yourself and your entire organization. Conversely, when you are self-aware enough to openly admit missteps and concede that you still have plenty to learn, you turn mistakes are learning opportunities and give people permission to be collaborative without fear of appearing unqualified.

To begin to increase your self-awareness, seek feedback on your performance from others by asking good questions and listening without justifying or defending your actions. Remember, organizations benefit far more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.

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Developing Self Awareness – Effective Mind Control

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Developing Self Awareness A Historic Practice Self awareness is the key theme in the meditation practiced for centuries by the Buddhists. They advised staring back at your thoughts. Matthieu Ricard, a respected Buddhist monk said: "One may wonder what people do in retreats, sitting for eight hours a day. They familiarize themselves with a new way of dealing with the arising of thoughts."

"When you start getting used to recognizing thoughts as they arise, it is like rapidly spotting someone you know in a crowd. When a powerful thought or anger arises, you recognize it. That helps you to avoid being overwhelmed by this thought." Self awareness is a powerful method of controlling your mind.

Developing Self Awareness The Difficulty But, developing self awareness is not easy for everyone. Eugene Gendlin, created his Focusing therapy to help people to achieve self awareness. It is a psychotherapeutic routine, which has helped thousands of people to develop self awareness and to calm their distressed minds. But, Gendlin noted that only certain clients really benefited from his therapy. Such people had higher scores on intelligence, ego strength, character and self-control, emotional stability, tender mindedness and introspectiveness." They repressed less, were less defensive, more self-disclosing and were willing to attribute difficulties to internal causes.

Those who instinctively attribute their troubles to external causes may not benefit from these pages. Their minds reject the possibility of effective self improvement. But, dear reader, your interest in reading these pages indicates your suspicion that internal causes may also be the cause of your emotional problems. You fit into the category that can be helped. You can develop self awareness.

Developing Self Awareness The Importance Of Attention Self awareness depends on the innate ability of your mind to focus its attention. William James, the father of American psychology, defined attention as "the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneous objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are its essence." When you pay attention, you can instantly feel the touch of cloth on your shoulder, a tightness in your hands, or a thought as it arises in your mind. Attention is a neuronal process.

Maunsell discovered that attention triggers increased neural activity in the observed circuits within your mind. At the same time, attention inhibits activity in the immediate surroundings. Maunsell had studied neural signals in the visual area of the cortex of monkeys, when viewing a swarm of dots on a computer screen. He was able to correlate the firing of specific neurons, with recognition of the movement of specific dots. When the animal focused on just one of the dots, the directed attention caused the neurons that signaled its motion to fire more strongly. At the same time, neural signals related to other dots were attenuated. When you pay attention, you can highlight your thoughts and and your cortex perceives them.

Developing Self Awareness The Observer & The Observed Millions of years of evolutionary development assembled a triune brain within your mind. Within it, a rational prefrontal intelligence and lower level mammalian and reptilian brains constantly develop competing survival strategies. Typically, the common sense in your prefrontal regions seeks a rational strategy. Anger searches for a successful aggressive strategy and fear, for a sound defensive one. If these searches fail, your feelings of fear, anger, or disappointment become more intense. Your turmoil increases, when fear or anger instinctively trigger visceral reactions. But, your common sense sees failure as merely another event.

Your prefrontal brain also brings you your conscious awareness. That awareness can be overwhelmed by your sensation of fear, anger and the related visceral reactions. But, the same region can direct attention to isolate and observe your own emotional responses. I can feel the fear. With practice, you learn to observe the impulsive thoughts arising from lower levels. You learn to sense the visceral responses of your body. The common sense of your prefrontal regions is responsible for such self awareness. Since that observing region is independent of the lower levels, your viewpoint becomes free from troubling emotions. Self awareness frees you from torture by your animal instincts. All it needs is a little practice.

Developing Self Awareness Proprioception And Relaxation Developing self awareness merely requires systematic observation. But, it takes a few days. As a first step, use your sensory ability to become aware of the position of your body with your eyes closed. Proprioception is the distinct sensory ability, where nerve impulses from the stretch receptors in your muscles inform your brain of the beginning and end of each joint movement. Lying in your bed in a dark room, you have the capacity to become aware of the position of your limbs with your eyes closed. Sense this feeling. This can be your first step into self awareness.

Also become aware of any tightness in your muscles. Consciously tighten and relax your muscles. Such a practice will enable you to better control the responses of your body. While lying in bed, practice tightening and relaxation all the way from the muscles in your toes to those in your neck and eyes. Within a couple of weeks, you can learn to relax on demand. Tensed muscles can trigger angry, or fearful thoughts without your awareness. Relaxing your body is the first step in removing the chatter of troubling stress messages. It is then easier to pay attention to the vast inner worlds within your mind.

Developing Self Awareness The Cause Of Stress Your mind works at lightning speed by actively searching for solutions to the problems faced by you. An animal escapes from danger by finding a suitable hiding place. It searches its own memories for the nearest shelter. Animals have hiding places. People are less fortunate. In the modern world, running away is not an option and problems have no immediate solutions. There are no instantly available hiding places. Your mind searches for ways to escape from your problems, or to remove obstructions. Emotions are triggered, when these internal searches lead to frustration.

Emotions often have an unpleasant quality. Medical texts report that pain is felt in two waves, separated by an interval of a few tenths of a second. The first is a sensation of pain, which is sharp and localized. The second is an emotional drive signal, which patients report as being a more disagreeable sense of hurt. Stimulation of certain nerve cells in the temporal lobe causes a patient to feel the awful dread emotion. Emotions are real nerve signals in your nervous system. Self awareness is the ability to independently identify emotions as and when they occur.

Developing Self Awareness Identify Your Primary Concerns Self awareness becomes easier, when you categorize the storm of emotions within you. The Self Improvment Plan presented in this website can put you quickly in lucid touch with your most troubling concerns. This method of self assessment depends on the capacity of your mind to get swiftly to the essentials, such as when you prepare a simple shopping list. The procedure will bring to your notice troubling issues such as the conflicts between career and personal life.

When you evaluate the list subsequently, RI, your common sense, takes charge, differentiating the facts from your emotional responses. Self awareness is the skill of consciously identifying your emotional outbursts. You gradually become familiar with the viewpoints of the animal intelligences, which attack you with their warped strategies for survival. In the process, self awareness isolates your common sense, and frees it from emotional turmoil.

In subsequent steps, the Self Improvement Plan lists the various options available to you. Reality will then dawn on you that there are no immediate solutions to quite a few of the problems you face. Acceptance of such unpleasant facts in life will help still the emotional storms within. Settling your primary concerns will lead your attention to uncover the simpler emotions like envy, jealousy, guilt or irritability, which trouble you. Self awareness is the key to stilling such emotions, which spoil your calm.

Developing Self Awareness Envy And Jealousy For most emotions, we experience only a mild sense of discomfort. But, such emotions like envy and jealousy trouble many good natured people. These emotions are not shameful feelings. They are the responses of the deep wisdom within your mind to personal failure. Jealousy originates from fear or anger over the prospect of failure in achieving a desired goal. Career growth, a partner's love, or a mother's undivided attention are usually the threatened goals.

Envy originates from regret, leading to anger, over one's powerlessness to get an alluring asset owned by a perceived equal. Self awareness helps you to notice your discomfort over such events. Identify the failures in life, which haunt you. Then you can act to prevent failure in future, or learn to come to terms with it. When such failure does not trouble you, envy, or jealousy will not trouble you again.

Developing Self Awareness Low Self Esteem Some people are burdened by persistent internal voices, which tell them that they are failures. Their low self esteem may be caused early in life, by bullying even as they were too timid to fight back. They may be very successful people, but these early critical voices persist. For every success story, there are many ordinary workers. Low self-esteem can punish them with crippling reminders of being failures.

Self awareness can recognize these troubling messages. Recognition of such messages will quiet the harsh voices. Common sense will put their lives in proper perspective. Overcoming low self-esteem will not work miracles. It will not convert quiet people into extroverts. But, it will still turmoil. They will feel comfortable about not being the life of the party. Not burdened by persistent inner criticism, they can go on to discover and exploit their innate talents.

Developing Self Awareness Empathy Self awareness can improve your capacity to communicate with people. The human brain has a mirror neuron network, which uses sensory clues to enable a person to experience the feelings of another person. In experiments with monkeys, researchers report that specific neurons fire when an animal reaches for a peanut, pulls a lever, or pushes a door. Iaccomo Rizzolati and Vittorio Gallasse discovered that neurons in the same regions also fire, when the monkey watches another monkey perform similar actions. In humans, neural signals, which signify pain were reported when watching another person being pricked by a needle. Your mirror neurons enable empathy by making you experience the feelings of the people you communicate with.

Self awareness can strengthen your sensitivity to people, when you pay attention to sensing their feelings. Insensitivity to this massive world of information, which is available to you within your own mind, can weaken all your interactions in life. How do they feel about your decisions? What are their motivations? Strengthen your capacity to empathize by being open to the nerve signals, which your brain sends you, based on its assessments of their objectives and motivations. Become aware of the feelings of others.

Developing Self Awareness Controlling Anger Anger is merely a punishing viewpoint. It destroys your peace of mind and ruins your relationships. Self awareness can change that viewpoint. Once changed, your mind will not shrink back to its narrow views. The stressful anger signals originate from the amygdala, an almond sized organ in your brain. When they are stilled, controls pass to the common sense of your prefrontal brain. You can't wish your anger away, because your mind disregards such wishes.

You mind will respond intuitively to practical experience. First, your mind needs to be convinced that anger is a problem and not a solution. Second, you need to come to terms with the pivotal sources of your anger, reducing its causes. Third, you need to become aware of and detect the onset of anger, whenever it raises its head. Your attention to the telltale signals from your amygdala will gradually still any remaining anger signals. Each time your common sense wins, your neural circuits will have put an end to one knee jerk response. Self awareness can save you from seething against the inevitable thorns and barbs of life and accept it as it is, with its many unexpected potholes.

This page was last updated on 31-Dec-2013

Back in 1902, the great sage Ramana Maharshi offered to his pupil a method of reaching an enduringly happy state, where there is no mind.

Developing Self Awareness Developing self awareness makes you understand your feelings, your behaviour and your actions. It gives you the clarity and freedom to change all those characteristics you want to change to achieve your goal.

The Body Window Find health and healing through the use of your body as a tool for intuition. Your body is a 'window' to your true self or your soul. You can be free of pain and dis-ease by learning how to use this intuition!

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October 6th, 2015 at 4:46 am

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Voice Dialogue Inner Self Awareness

Posted: September 25, 2015 at 6:45 am


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* This site is about Voice Dialogue and Self-Awareness work, one of my great passions. It is dedicated to Dr Hal Stone and and Dr Sidra Stone who developed this powerful process and their continuing work on the Psychology of the inner Selves.

If you are interested in Voice Dialogue training and Self Awareness groups in Queensland Australia you can check out the latest news on

This site.

I also have other passionate interests that all have to do with personal growth and inner child work. Some of these are connected to but not directly related to Voice Dialogue. So my articles about those topics wont appear on this web site.

Go to Core Beliefs Balance - A web site devoted to balancing your hidden negative core beliefs and the clamps and blockages and over-reactions they cause in peoples lives

For a full listing, synopsis and links to each site please scroll down to the foot of this page.

For a complete list of all the pages on this website click here Site Map

Whats this about an inner village?

NOTE: Because this is my Voice Dialogue site, in most cases on this website you will notice I stick to well recognised voice dialogue terms to describe the inner selves, and explain how they protect us. I do however try to make my explanations easier to visualise by telling stories or fables to create a clearer picture in your mind.

Some abstract voice dialogue descriptions are a bit difficult to visualise, for example the primary inner selves that make up the operating ego. In my own world what goes on in my operating ego is so much like an old fashioned village that I have got used to describing my operating ego as my inner village and in these pages I often use that term. I hope it might help you also to visualise what is going on for you in your operating ego.

An interesting aspect to this is that when I dialogue with other peoples inner selves and I ask them about life in your inner village they often respond in a way that suggests they, as inner selves feel very comfortable talking about their daily work load and their responsibilities as if it was taking place in a familiar old and rather tradition bound village.

I imagine this is because most inner selves cant quite get their busy minds around abstract psychological descriptions. What I have discovered is that the more I talk with them as members of an inner village the more this seems to help them develop their sense of character, and their ability to talk about their work more freely, which is one of the basic aims of voice dialogue. I have yet to talk with an inner self that tells me Correction, I live and work in an operating ego not a village!

Other peoples selves that I have dialogued with, live and work in an inner garden, an inner family, an inner tribe, an inner orchestra, an inner shop; an inner bus, on an inner ship, a train, an inner plane, an inner congregation. If visualising things this way helps people understand voice dialogue then I support the idea of letting your inner selves (as I allow mine to do) live wherever they want to, including an operating ego if that is their preference.

The best way as with all aspects of voice dialogue is to discuss this question with a few inner selves and ask them to tell you how they best like to describe the place where they live and work.

What are WING and SAGE selves?

On this website I often use the terms self aware and grown-up WING or SAGE to describe the parts of us, the rather different kind of inner selves that we are all seeking to develop, our Aware Grown Up system.

I do not suggest that this is the same as the "Aware Ego" as Hal and Sidra Stone describe it, however the "WING and SAGE parts of us reflects many of the characteristics of what Hal and Sidra describe as the "Awareness Self". In most people I work with the WING and SAGE selves are identified by their more balanced energy and their desire to integrate the and work as balanced pairs instead of the previously unbalanced way that is typical of polarised opposite inner selves.

As I see it, identifying and dialoguing with the WING and SAGE selves quickly gives us a way of consciously connecting with our sense of self empowerment, and self-awareness. As we dialogue with them, talking with those selves, identifying them and addressing them as the self aware grown-up system helps us:

* provide that person (and her or his inner child) with clear evidence that there is a stronger more self aware system now working within them

* identify what tasks the self aware grown-up selves are ready to take over from the older more polarised weve always done it that way selves

* create a stronger sense that this stronger part of us is already up and running and available right now to start protecting our inner child and reducing our underlying vulnerability.

There is bit of a problem with the term ego in Australia because down here it has so many different connotations and different meanings for individual people (most of them negative).For this reason I dont often make a direct reference to the aware ego by that name.

Some people have suggested thats also because I still havent developed much of an aware ego of my own.

I will leave it to you to make that judgement for yourself.

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I have published a number of free books which I am happy to share with you and which introduce you to some of the main topics covered in my Growing and Flying Awareness Awareness Book Sets.

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NOTE: My original 412 page text book "Growing Awareness" published in 2000" is no longer in print. I have republished the original book as a series of 5 new and revised books, the "Growing Awareness G Set"

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A new page on this website

Click on Emotional Age and Your Inner Selves

The more I work with Voice Dialogue and the Inner Selves the more I come to appreciate the significance of the emotional age of each individual inner self.

This new approach is, I believe, one of the most significant that I have worked on in recent years. It provides a visual way of looking at our Inner selves and what inner selves do, how effective they are when they do those things and the links with their changing emotional ages.

Free Inner Self Profile Sheets and a free book - For many years I have been using different kinds of Inner Self profile sheets that help keep a visual record of your inner selves as you meet and talk with them.

There are different places for different kinds of selves on the profile sheet according to their different energies, emotional ages or the different ways they do things to protect you.

If you would like a copy of the latest version of my Profile sheets it is now part of a free book that explains how to use the profile.

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September 25th, 2015 at 6:45 am

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Why Self-Awareness Is the Secret Weapon for Habit Change

Posted: September 24, 2015 at 12:48 pm


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More than wed probably like to admit so many of our days are spent in a state of self-delusion, an internal monologue of justifying our actions, both good and bad. When we do something wrong, our evolutionary instincts kick in and we do anything we can to not acknowledge the obvious: sometimes, its all our fault.

The examples should sound familiar: We get necessary and helpful feedback from a boss or colleague, only to snarl under our breath, but failing to realize the foolishness on our end. We become aware of our declining efficiency, so instead of treating the disease we treat the symptoms and we chug coffee only to crash an hour later face-first into our keyboard (and then we go searching for productivity hacks because our workload is too high).

Over time, this becomes our routine, our default reaction, and we fail to stop and reflect on what were doing. To make it even more difficult, many of us dont have the luxury of someone being accountable for us (who does?), helping us recognize our mistakes and their repercussions.

Catching ourselves before we engage in our typical default reactions is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, but when done relentlessly and with discipline and moments of reflection, mindfulness ensues. Its human nature to first experience and then explain. How difficult it is to be in the midst of trolling, stopping yourself and admitting, Wait a minute, Im trolling right now because this persons opinion just sucker-punched my ego, and I feel a visceral desire to tell this person theyre an idiot so I can feel better! Instead, we hit send and then explain why we did it.

Its human nature to first experience and then explain.

In the words of Harvard Business Review writer Anthony K. Tjan, there is one quality that trumps all, evident in virtually every great entrepreneur, manager, and leader. That quality is self-awareness. The best thing leaders can [do] to improve their effectiveness is to become more aware of what motivates them and their decision-making.

Taking pause, and allowing a moment of reflection where we gain clarity and realize our foolishness is so vital to cultivating self-awareness. Youre fighting against all your adaptive and evolutionary behaviorsyour mind is hardwired to protect itself at all timesso instead of expending energy on fruitless actions for the sake of a damaged ego, you pause, reflect, and do whats best for you.

Self-awareness is defined as conscious knowledge of oneself; its a stepping stone to reinventing oneself, learning to make wiser decisions, and helps you tune into your thoughts and feelings. So often we place blame on externalities because its the easiest excuse, when in fact we should be thinking about our thinking, reflecting, trying on different perspectives, and learning from our mistakes.

The Roman philosopher Seneca once said, For a person who is not aware that he is doing anything wrong has no desire to be put right. You have to catch yourself doing it before you can reform.

There isnt one way to exercise self-awareness, and everyone will meet it in different ways, so below I will outline a few tactics that I hope will help you in this arduous yet equally rewarding practice.

The force that can save the amateur is awareness, particularly self-awareness. But the amateur understands, however dimly, that if she truly achieved this knowledge, she would be compelled to act upon it. To act upon this self-awareness would mean defining herself, i.e., differentiating herself from the tribe and thus making herself vulnerable to rejection, expulsion, and all the other fears that self-definition elicits. Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

To be conscious of who you are, how you think, and what you do is invaluable because it leads to self-knowledge, and in turn, change. Perhaps this is why in practices like Alcoholics Anonymous and cognitive behavioral therapy they first help the individual become self-awareto be conscious of their fears, thoughts, behaviors, mustering the courage to own it, and using that awareness to facilitate behavioral change.

The dedication required to change our mind and behavior is the fight of our lives. Its within human nature to habituate, to create routines, so that our brain exerts less effort and spends less energy. The potential danger in this is that we can get too comfortable doing the wrong things, and as Seneca previously said, if we are unaware of it we may have no desire to be put right.

What makes this pursuit particularly difficult is because it isnt a popular topic of discussion in our culture. Its not championed in the institutions that raise us. It is extremely difficult to humbly admit a shortcoming instead of fabricating a tale to mitigate the blow.

It is extremely difficult to humbly admit a shortcoming instead of fabricating a tale to mitigate the blow.

And theres the crux of searching for self-awareness: Do we embrace the ignorance is bliss adage when a bright light shines on our flaws? Do we simply escape the reality of who are and let the tides of the day carry us adrift? Or we do face ourselves and move onward towards a path that allows us to reinvent ourselves to embrace our best, truest selves, regardless of how painful it may be at times?

Dont let those who have fallen into a comfortable groove tell you that this is how life is supposed to be lived. Reflect on your shortcoming, understand the source of its weakness, observe your own contributions or lack thereof, and deeply internalize the lesson so that next time you can play a bigger role. Its going to be hard, because the mind will thrive to defend you from any opposing information or perspective. It will push for unrealistic attitudes to make you feel better because, hey, you need to survive. This isnt only our default reaction, its simply human nature.

Meditation is a rich and powerful method of study for anyone who knows how to examine his mind, and to employ it vigorously. I would rather shape my soul than furnish it. There is no exercise that is either feeble or more strenuous, according to the nature of the mind concerned, than that of conversing with ones own thoughts. The greatest men make it their vocation, those for whom to live is to think. Montaigne, Essays

At the end of the day, before I go to sleep, I spend ten to twenty minutes meditating. What that really means is I sit there in the dark reflecting on my day, playing the events in my head and pinpointing where I made mistakes.

I ask myself a series of questions to help me digest my day: Did I do what was required of me? Why was I nervous when speaking to that stranger? What did I learn today that was useful? Was I kind to others, to myself? Did I exercise? Why did I check Instagram 10 times in the midst of company? When my friend was telling me a story, why did I tune out?

I do this in hopes that tomorrow I can approach the day with clarity and a better mindset and to acknowledge where I fell short so that I can improve. But you dont have to meditate in the sense that youre sitting cross-legged with your eyes closed. You can journal your thoughts. You can simply think out loud while pacing around your room. You can discuss it with a close friend, asking them for their perspective so it can shine a light on your misperceptions.

Self-reflection can take place anywhere at any time. After a heated debate or after realizing a failure, stop yourself from reacting emotionally (which is difficult, for sure). Instead, reflect on the event, look at the individual parts, and be curious as to why it didnt work out. Seek to understand, not to be right. Where are the faults? What was missed? What piece of the puzzle is missing to help you understand, to alleviate the frustrations, to put the event into perspective? In these moments youre filled with insecurities and misperceptions. This is far more helpful for devising a solution than ranting and complaining.

Seek to understand, not to be right.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. Henry David Thoreau

If you look at any story where the hero is aided by a wise teacherLuke Skywalker and Yoda; Frodo and Gandalf; Harry Potter and Dumbledore; the grandmaster and the novice; the general and the soldierwhat were seeing is the teaching of practical wisdom from teacher to student. The common themes of sacrifice, selflessness, humility, courage, duty, honor, are all aims that we strive for in our daily lives but we sometimes lose our focus. These mentors were around to instill a moral code in their pupils. When we dont have a more experienced colleague to nudge us back into place, philosophy can serve as our guide, our champion.

The challenge, of course, is remembering to return to our philosophy the way we would call a friend in a time of despair.Its not so much about fully embracing one philosophical (or religious) schoolStoicism or, say, Buddhismbut to take principles, practical wisdom that has been talked about throughout all of human history, and to utilize it in your life. Sometimes, we need a little do this, not that.

For example, after realizing that you had wasted your most creative hours manicuring your social media profiles, can you learn from that error? Can you admit to yourself, I messed up. Time to get to work. Or will you just blame writers block or some bogus excuse? Is there a specific quote or mantra or passage from a book that can help you refocus your energies to stop procrastinating and actually do the work? Or perhaps you have a hero that you look up to. Is that what they would do? Stumble around and blame the muse or actually sit down and work?

Roman philosopher Epictetus once said that a good philosophy is, Self-scrutiny applied with kindness. You must learn to face yourself, to admit mistakes, to learn from them, and to let that awareness motivate and change you. Because frankly, who else is responsible for the quality of your life? Above all, you have to be compassionate with yourself because this change is a slow and steady process, a struggle to override old habits and to ultimately form new ones that define who you become.

You must realize that this process of exercising self-awareness is increasingly difficult because everything from cultural influences to your ancient brain is fighting against you. It is far easier to throw a mental tantrum, to blame externalities, to flee from the painful reality of our flaws and mistakes.

***

The late, great Maya Angelou once said that, When you know better, you do better. Once you have made a mistake and learned from it, you are put in a position to act out your lessons learned. Theres a reason were told to keep a budget to fix financial woes, or to keep a food diary when trying to eat right: self-knowledge is power. Without a clear view of our mental landscape, its easy to fall back on bad habits, to repeat the same errors we did yesterday. (And even if we do, thats just another opportunity to learn about ourselves.)

Self-improvement is not about finishing a book or a seminar. Self-awareness is a practice, a muscle that grows with time and effort that ultimately provides us strength. We are in a constant state of change, adapting to our cultural influences and our individual experiences. The more we learn to be conscious of our impulses, thoughts, and actions, while also keeping in mind our principles that foster practical wisdom, we can more easily become our best selves.

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Why Self-Awareness Is the Secret Weapon for Habit Change

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September 24th, 2015 at 12:48 pm

Posted in Self-Awareness

Module B: Self Awareness

Posted: September 20, 2015 at 8:47 pm


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Middle school is a critical time in the life long process of establishing one's identity. The importance of self-awareness and a positive self-concept in the career development process cannot be understated. This module helps middle school students develop a greater awareness and appreciation of themselves in relationship to others, school, and the world of work. In the module, students will also have an opportunity to become aware of, explore, and develop personal interests, attitudes, and aptitudes and to understand the life career concept.

Students will understand the importance of matching career options to their personal preferences and how those preferences may change over time due to maturity and experiences. Students should complete an interest assessment, explore careers that match their interests, and decide what careers they are most interested in during their Florida CHOICES session. The career profile in Florida CHOICES will include the career cluster for each occupation.

While there are value and skills assessments in Florida CHOICES, it is recommended that students complete those assessments in high school. There are lesson plans in the Educator's Toolkit that will orient students to values and skills and how they match to occupations. The estimated number of class periods needed to cover the activities in all four lesson plans would be seven class periods.

4.Getting to Know Your Interests (PDF)

5.Skills for the Workplace (PDF)

6.Values - What's Important to You? (PDF)

7.Selecting a Lifestyle (PDF)

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Module B: Self Awareness

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September 20th, 2015 at 8:47 pm

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