Self-Consciousness or Self-Awareness: Which Do You Choose?

Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror

I’ve been asked to run a workshop this week on “Self-Awareness” to kick off the four-day-training for the 2010-2011 group of Engineers Without Borders chapter presidents. As I prepare for the session, I’m getting curious about what self-awareness is and what’s good about it. Don’t we spend a lot of time getting over our acute self-consciousness in our teens and twenties? Is it going backward to reintroduce self-awareness?

The difference, I believe, is that self-consciousness limits your choices, limits your actions, and leads to self-constraint. Self-awareness, on the other hand, increases the number of choices available to you in any given moment, increases the number of perspectives from which you can take action, and leads to self-expansion.

For example, if I am self-conscious that I am a poor conversationalist, then I constrain myself. I avoid situations where I have to have conversations. When I am in conversation, I’m self-censoring the whole time, and berating myself afterward. I look for evidence that supports my belief that I’m a poor conversationalist.

If, however, I am self-aware, I realize that I have a belief that I am a poor conversationalist. I realize that my belief may or may not be true. I recognize how I act when I carry around that belief, and I experiment with how holding different beliefs could change my actions. I look for both confirming and contradictory evidence. I am aware of many things in my life that I have changed, and accept that I can change how I am in conversation too. I see possibilities, and I see myself as dynamic. My choices expand.

Which do you choose? Where are you choosing self-consciousness? And where are you choosing self-awareness?

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Post-script: if you attended the workshop and are looking for the link to more resources, try here. 

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