Self-knowledge or intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to understand why our body and mind respond to stimuli. It is the source’s search for a response. Below you will find some tips to expand your self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom and the end of all illusions (Gerd de Ley)
Selfknowledge?
Self-knowledge is important to learn from our own mistakes. Perhaps we sometimes react too pessimistically or too naively to a situation? Do we sometimes underestimate or overestimate ourselves? Sometimes we are blinded by our self-confidence and this can cause arguments, frustrations and ultimately hinder our success and happiness. Searching for yourself is not always easy because no person really wants to look at one of their negative characteristics or doesn’t really want to change anything about it. Most of our actions happen unconsciously and reasons are often added later to give us the feeling that we know ourselves well.
Tips
- Self-knowledge logically starts with yourself. Set aside an hour of the day to sort out the day and evolve.
- Look at what your role was in different situations. Ask yourself a lot of questions such as: ‘How did this happen?’, ‘What did I do?’, ‘What is the consequence?’, ‘Could it have been done differently?’ Dare to ask yourself questions, if necessary in front of a mirror and look at your own reaction (both verbal and non-verbal).
- Sometimes try to think calmly about an incident before you react to really see what you would normally do unconsciously.
- Really try to play with multiple ideas or solutions for a problem and justify to yourself why you choose this one.
To learn
Self-knowledge is not something that can simply be learned. It actually all comes from experiences in your own life. Sometimes we may react angrily too quickly and realize that other people do not welcome this with open arms. We can learn lessons from this. But sometimes we can learn lessons from someone else’s mistakes before we make the same mistake ourselves. So the message is to look carefully at others.
Reason versus feelings
Why do some people dislike certain things without knowing them? Intuition? Someone with sufficient self-knowledge can distinguish between his own intuition and reason. Is intuition wrong now? No, in many cases you have to and will let your feelings work. Reason and intuition can work together very well, but it is only important that you understand why you are doing something.
Key lock
Don’t forget that people tend to centralize themselves in the large crowd. Other people don’t necessarily see everything about you, so you also partly decide what you show people and what you don’t. The others have information that you do not have. They look at the things you do without knowing your train of thought. They also see your body language, which is rather unconscious and invisible to you. They look at you in a neutral way without gray or rose-colored glasses. So try to look at yourself from the outside.