How To Boost Professional Self-knowledge?
There are different ways to stimulate our personal and professional growth. One of them concerns professional self-knowledge. How can outreach practices promote greater well-being in different areas? What can help us achieve this?
Before delving into it, let’s keep in mind that intentionality will be one of the key axes to promote such development. It will be a journey rich in learning that we can gradually integrate into the different areas of our life.
Professional self-awareness: what is it?
When we talk about self-awareness we are referring to “the capacity with which we recognize and perceive our reality”. As a professional, we focus on this skill linked to the usual activity in which we develop and which allows us to obtain remuneration.
It is therefore about how we perceive our work environment and the associated factors. Let’s see what are the main features:
- Responsibility. People with a professional self-awareness take charge of themselves by taking into account their obligations and the consequences of their impact.
- Ethics. It is about knowing and applying all the moral rules that govern activities.
- Reflection. It understands the ethical principles of own action and interaction with others. When we talk about ethics, we stick to the definition presented by Córdoba Azcárate, an expert in the field, ie “the set of standards required for a professional group”.
In addition, the assumption of rights and duties is necessary to acquire social and individual responsibility. It is a constant learning of the profession and our responsibility to ourselves and to others.
Improve development
When we are professionally aware of ourselves, we don’t take things personally and are not used to being defensive. Rather, we know that the hypothesis can lead us to error. Before sliding, we prefer to ask.
Plus, we don’t need to please everyone. We know that the essence of work is not that. Thus, in the face of conflicts, we put ourselves in the other’s shoes and manage our communication as well as possible, while maintaining our limits.
Professional self-awareness is a way to improve our development. What we promote in one area can influence another. For example, when we are working on how to manage our emotions to lead a team, we are also working on our affective field.
Professional self-awareness is a collection of issues that enhance personal growth, as they help increase physical, emotional and social well-being. Self-awareness and self-regulation reduce anxiety, insomnia and stress.
We thus improve executive functions. We connect to the present. Our senses are activated. For each person, it will be different. It will depend on their consciousness-based practices, practices that can be applied to work and other aspects of their lives.
How to strengthen professional self-awareness?
We can strengthen professional self-awareness in different ways. On the one hand, it is essential that we constantly update our profession, as theories, parameters and techniques advance or become obsolete. By being aware, we can practice ethically.
We can deepen the concepts and ethical principles of our region. To do this, we can consult the manuals and codes that govern us.
It is also important that we take charge of our actions. In this way, we will grow as people and at work, because we will learn from it. We can support you with the recognition of your own rights and duties.
Another way is through feedback. We can learn not only from our observations, but also from those of others. For this, we can consult our peers, read, have a mentor, participate in supervision processes, etc.
We can also enter into psychotherapeutic processes which promote integral well-being and which include techniques of self-awareness. We can thus benefit from support to get the best of ourselves and achieve our goals.
In short, professional self-knowledge can have a positive impact on other areas. In addition, it is necessary to develop skills in order to be able to value it.
These skills are in particular ethical awareness, self-knowledge, reflective and personal awareness, updating, internalizing and applying the rights and duties of our profession. Thanks to this, we grow by exploring and orienting ourselves towards our goals in a healthy and responsible way.
Our thoughts Adversity doesn’t always make us more resilient. Because resilience doesn’t come automatically, you have to know how to develop it.
