Professional Self-awareness, How Does It Boost Your Growth?

There are different ways to boost our personal and professional growth. One of them has to do with professional self-awareness. How can awareness-based practices promote greater well-being in different areas? What can help us to achieve it?

Before delving into it, let us bear in mind that intentionality is going to be one of the key axes that will allow us to promote such development. In addition, it will be a path full of learning that we can gradually integrate in the various areas in which we operate.

Professional self-awareness, what is it about?

When we talk about self-awareness, we refer, according to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), to ‘the capacity with which we have to recognize and perceive our reality and relate to it’.

Being a professional, we emphasize this skill linked to the usual activity in which we develop, for which we have prepared and from which we obtain remuneration.

So it’s about how we recognize and perceive our work environment and relate to it and the factors that are included in it. Let’s see some associated characteristics:

• Responsibility. People with professional self-awareness take charge of themselves, taking into account their obligations and the consequences of their impact.
• Ethics. It consists of knowing and applying the set of moral rules that regulate activities.

• Reflection. Of the deontological principles, the own action and the interaction with the other. When we talk about deontology, we stick to the definition presented by Córdoba Azcárate, an expert on the subject; that is to say, to the ‘set of norms that are required for a professional group’.

In addition, the assumption of rights and duties is necessary to acquire social and individual responsibility. Accompanied by self-regulation and updating. So, it is about constant learning about the profession, work interaction and our responsibility to ourselves and others.

Enhancing development

When we are professionally self-aware, we do not take things personally nor are we in the habit of being defensive; rather, we know that the assumption can lead us to error; Before slipping, we prefer to ask.

Also,  we don’t need to please everyone. We know that the essence of work is not that; we are able to connect in depth with some, and with whom we do not apply assertiveness to get an effective job. In this sense, when dealing with conflicts, we put ourselves in the place of the other and manage our communication in the best way, so as not to damage it, but maintaining our limits.

Professional self-awareness is a way to enhance our development, since we are integral beings. In this way, what we promote in one area can influence another; For example, when working on how to manage our emotions to lead a team, we are already working in our affective field, which can influence socially and physically.

It turns out that what has to do with consciousness, focusing on how we act, what we perceive, what generates us, what we do it for, what our thoughts and emotions are like, how they affect other areas; matters that strengthen our personal growth, since they help to increase physical, emotional and social well-being from self-knowledge and self-regulation.

In fact, it reduces anxiety, insomnia, stress. Executive functions are improved, it connects with the present moment, fosters acceptance, the senses are activated, among other factors. In each person it will be different, it will depend on their practices based on consciousness, which can be applied to work and other aspects of their life.

How to strengthen professional self-awareness?

We can strengthen professional self-awareness in different ways. On the one hand, it is essential that we are constantly updating our profession, since theories, parameters and techniques advance or become obsolete; if we stay up to date, we can practice ethically.

We can accompany the updating of the profession, deepening the concepts and deontological principles of our area. For 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 make this an apprenticeship. We can accompany you with the recognition of your own rights and duties and that of the other.

Another way is through feedback, we can not only learn from our observations, but also from those of others. For this, we can consult our peers, read, have a mentor, be in supervision processes, etc.

We can also enter into psychotherapeutic processes that promote integral well-being and have self-awareness techniques ; Thus, we can guide ourselves with support to get the best of us, to achieve our goals.

In sum, professional self-awareness can have a positive impact on other areas. In addition, it is necessary to develop skills to be able to enhance it, such as ethical awareness, self-knowledge, reflective and personal awareness, updating and internalization of the rights and duties of our profession, accompanied by application. Through it, we grow by exploring, rebuilding, learning and directing ourselves towards our goals in a healthy and responsible way.