To be able to be aware of others and help them, we must be aware of and accept ourselves first. That is the statement that I remembered the best amongst what my first semester lecturers of PCS told us. It is always important to actually know that being aware of yourself and always sparing a thought (no matter how small) is not being self-centered. I think many people actually misunderstood that self-awareness is being self-centered and I was one of them. There is this saying to put others before self and thus many see no need in being aware of ourselves. This is actually wrong and in my opinion: we should put others before self when we are helping people but should always still have ourselves in mind. We should always help people only when we know we have the ability and resources to cope.
I feel that self-awareness and self-esteem is closely related. Self-awareness can help to maintain self-esteem in a moderate level. I know, through our introduction to social psychology module, that too low or too high a self-esteem is not good. A low self-esteem eventually leads to a person not living to his/her life to the fullest as he/she don’t even feel that he/she can be successful. The other extreme end of self-esteem, that of very high self-esteem, is actually ironically roots of many problems. A person may become a bully due to high self-esteem as he feels he is always higher and better than anyone else. I think a moderate level of high self-esteem elicits someone who knows he/she is capable of success, knows that his/her actions are important determinants of the outcomes, but also knows his/her weaknesses or limits. And with good enough self-awareness, everyone is capable of doing that.
After going through many difficulties and turning points in life, I can understand how important it is to be self-aware and have moderately high self-esteem. At first when I was to be seated on a wheelchair when I was about 9 years old, it was an impact to my self-esteem. I used to be able to run and play with my schoolmates and then suddenly (but still quite gradual) I had to sit on the wheelchair and watch my friends play instead. This sort of impacted me and I started to feel a bit useless and worthless. But, I do remember how I was able to get back and maintain my self-esteem after I was on wheelchair. I was very fortunate to have very supportive friends and teachers then. My friends would not miss out me when they go anywhere in school and my teachers’ words of wisdom and actions always give me so much strength to continue on. Thus, till now, I really feel that the people around us, friends and family members, are very important in shaping our self-esteem.
To me, trying to maintain self-awareness is a rather tough yet important part and parcel of life. I always am open to other’s feedbacks and, in fact, I always pester people to give comments on the things I do. However, like what Ms Lau told us, not all feedbacks from others may be always true and useful. There may be a few who is out to sabotage or lower your self-esteem. So, I guess, we have to strike a balance between taking it feedback and doing self-analysis. We shouldn’t go too much to the extent of accepting all feedbacks from others. Likewise, we have to be open to feedbacks and then see whether the feedbacks can give any means of improving ourselves. If it’s a blind feedback without any means of providing us a means to improve ourselves (maybe something unspecific like you are bad), we should not be, by any means pulled down by this feedback.
