What are the signs that someone is self-aware?

Signs of self-awareness…hmmm. Good question.

First I would say that self-awareness in isolation from other qualities isn’t necessarily a good thing — or even all that helpful. Someone who has not come to peace with their own very accurate perception of themselves may expend tremendous amounts of energy attempting to hide aspects of themselves from others, or be defensive or insecure about them, or struggle with their observations to such a degree that they are in constant anxiety and self-doubt. So unless self-awareness is accompanied by humility, openness, self-control, self-efficacy, authenticity, compassion for self, maturity, acceptance and a host of other factors, the “telltales” of its existence may hold little import.

With that said, here are some signs I think are fairly common for folks with self-awareness that has evolved in conjunction with other critical and complimentary traits:

1) Realistic, honest and open assessment of own strengths and limitations — without either catastrophizing failings at one extreme, or overestimating competency at the other extreme. This, in turn, inherently improves self-efficacy.

2) Ability to describe one’s own mistakes by accurately identifying cognitive errors, mistaken perceptions or misinterpreted information. In other words, to be able to recognize not only the error one has made, but also how it happened via internal mistakes.

3) In my experience an ability to laugh at oneself is frequently concomitant with mature self-awareness.

4) The most effective and potent forms of self-awareness seem to require stepping back from the immediacy of a given situation — emotions, ideations, physical responses, etc. — rather than being swept up in it. This can manifest as both reflective metacognition and detached observation of internal events.

5) Genuine humility.

6) An ease with adjusting course when others point out weaknesses and strengths.

7) A knack for both avoiding overcommitment and neglecting the application of skills and talents; a balanced and insightful application of effort.

My 2 cents.


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