Self-awareness relates to our ability to pay attention to the way we think, feel, and behave. Being self-aware is important to form a spiritual connection with yourself and more specifically to understand yourself better.
It also means looking for patterns in our thoughts, to perceive what thoughts trigger what responses and what emotions, and to understand how we explain things to ourselves and make sense of the world surrounding us.
Understanding our own emotions and moods helps us make sense of things and take actions to make the best of what life brings us. We pay more attention to ourselves and try to understand the reasons for things that bother us. Our habits and tendencies start being scrutinized by our own minds, opening ourselves to our own minds.
Meditation is what is advised by many kinds of research and studies to connect with our brains. To focus on our breathing and keep our mind trained on our thoughts. It lets you channelize your thoughts into a more understandable pattern. Meditating helps you sort through your thoughts and understand the reason behind them. When we think about why we are feeling the emotions that we are, it becomes easier to deal with our feelings.
Meditation is one of the most effective ways to achieve self-awareness. To know how meditation increases self-awareness, let’s first understand the concept of Neuroplasticity. So, neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change itself on exposure to a new experience. This involves the formation of new connections in the brain and also the creation of brand new neurons.
So, whenever you experience something drastic or mind-boggling, your brain rewires itself to adapt to the new reality. These changes can be measured with the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Thus, due to an increase in grey-matter density, the practitioner becomes aware of things about themselves he/she would not have noticed before. What I am trying to say is, meditation makes you aware of your problems, unconscious habits and negative thinking patterns that might have hindered your progress in life.
Final Thoughts
In essence, self-awareness consists of paying attention to our own mind and trying to learn about our own psychology. We are so invested in trying to avoid our feelings, we tend to make situations worse. Fixing how we feel isn’t as scary a concept as we like to believe. All we have to do is observe and stay curious about our feelings, no matter how difficult or how uncomfortable.
