Professional Self Awareness to Boost Growth

Professional self-awareness is an advantage in any work field. Continue reading to find out what it is and how to use it to boost your growth!

Written and verified by the psychologist María Alejandra Castro Arbeláez.

Last update: 21 December, 2022

There are different ways to boost your growth. One of them is professional self-awareness. How can awareness-based practices promote well-being in your life? Also, how do you do it?

Before delving into it, keep in mind that intentionality is one of the keys that’ll allow you to promote such development. In addition, it’ll be a learning path you can gradually integrate into the various areas of your daily life.

Professional self-awareness

The dictionary describes self-awareness as “conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires”.

A professional emphasizes this skill and links it to the usual activity in which they develop, for which they’ve prepared, and from which they obtain remuneration.

Thus, it’s about how you recognize and perceive your work environment and relate to it and the factors that include it. Here are some associated features:

• Responsibility. People with professional self-awareness are in charge of themselves and take their duties into account along with any consequences of their impact.
• Ethics. This consists of knowing and applying the set of moral rules that regulate activities.
• Reflection of the deontological principles; one’s action, and interaction with others. Deontology, according to the definition presented by Córdoba Azcárate, an expert on the subject, is the “Set of norms required in a professional group”.

Furthermore, the assumption of rights and duties is necessary to acquire social and individual responsibility, accompanied by self-regulation and actualization. Thus, it’s about constant learning about the profession, work interaction, and responsibility to yourself and others.

Enhancing development

When you’re professionally self-aware, you neither take things personally nor get defensive. Instead, you know that assumption can lead to mistakes and, thus, you ask before you slip.

Also, you don’t need to please everyone. You know that isn’t the essence of work. Thus, you connect in-depth with some and are assertive with those you don’t in order to be effective at what you do. In that regard, you put yourself in other people’s shoes when dealing with conflicts, and communicate as effectively as you can so as not to damage it. You do so while maintaining boundaries.

Professional self-awareness is a way to enhance your development. You’re an integral being after all. Thus, what you promote in one area can influence another. For example, when working on how to manage your emotions to lead a team, you’re already working on your emotional side and it can have a social and physical influence.

It turns out that everything that pertains to your consciousness, such as focusing on how you act; what you perceive and what you do it for; what your thoughts and emotions are like; and how they affect other areas; are all matters that boost personal growth. They all help increase your physical, emotional, and social well-being, beginning with self-knowledge and self-regulation.

In fact, your anxiety, insomnia, and stress decrease, and your executive functions improve. It connects you to the present moment, fosters acceptance, and activates your senses, among other factors. It’ll be different in every person and will depend on their consciousness-based practices. Those they can apply to work and other aspects of their life.

How to boost professional self-awareness

You can strengthen professional self-awareness in different ways. On the one hand, it’s essential that you constantly update your profession, since theories, parameters, and techniques advance or become obsolete. Thus, you’ll practice ethically if you stay up to date.

You can also deepen the concepts and deontological principles of your particular area of expertise. To do this, just consult the manuals and codes that govern you.

It’s also important to take charge of your actions. Continuous learning allows you to grow both in every area of your life. It’ll refresh your rights and duties towards others.

Another way to do so is through feedback. You can’t just learn from your own perspective but need to see things from those of others. Thus, consult your peers, read, have a mentor, be in supervision processes, etc.

You can also enter into psychotherapeutic processes that promote integral well-being and have self-awareness techniques. As you can see, you’ll have the support to guide you and it’ll help you do your best and achieve your goals.

Final notes on professional self-awareness

In conclusion, professional self-awareness can have a positive impact on other areas. In addition, you must develop skills to enhance it, such as ethical awareness, self-knowledge, reflective and personal awareness, internalization of the rights and duties of your profession, and, of course, their application. Through it, you’ll grow by exploring, rebuilding, learning, and self-direction to reach set goals in a responsible way.