Self-Awareness Exercises: Activities and Worksheets for Personal Growth

Self-awareness is an exciting journey - not to an exotic destination - but inwards. During this journey, you learn your true self: your aspirations, core values, and unique identity. In contrast, without self-awareness, we tend to run on autopilot and respond with knee-jerk reactions to life triggers. If you live on autopilot, you don’t truly control your choices, but other people or your own emotions and biases cloud your judgment.

Thankfully, it’s never too late to practice self-awareness, as it is never too late to live and be happy. And as with every skill, self-knowledge requires time and energy. Look at the self-awareness activities that we prepared for you to work on. With these activities, you can build up a new habit of enhancing your self-awareness. 

The Importance of Self-Awareness

Self-awareness and self-improvement go hand in hand, which means that by keeping at self-awareness exercises, you eventually build yourself up in different ways. And when you move to deeper self-understanding, you change your reality because, at the end of the day -  our inner reality molds everything around us: 

We see the world as we are, or rather, we experience the world as we are. Through our biases, moods, beliefs, thoughts, prior experiences, etc.—that is the lens through which we look at the world. When you change your lens, you get to see a different world. To do that, you will need to create more self-awareness around those biases, thoughts, and beliefs, and coaching can help you do just that.

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You might feel at a loss about internalizing such a vast idea and incorporating self-understanding in your life. That’s where self-awareness worksheets and exercises come in.

Self-Awareness Exercises to Try

Just as we used to immerse ourselves in school subjects, we can dive into our inner world using the same back-to-school techniques: examining the topic and putting that knowledge into practice. Take a look at these self-discovery exercises that can give us a ton of information about who we are as people. 

Journaling for Self-Reflection

Your journal is your chance to be honest with yourself and have a deep conversation with your inner identity. Work through different journaling formats to find out which format resonates with you.

• Free-writing: Pour out everything that comes to mind without judging or overthinking the ideas. You might struggle at the beginning, but if it grows on you, you’ll be surprised at how many of your innermost feelings were deep-seated before being expressed on paper.

• Evening wind-down: Write three words about your day, and then expand on them. If you stick to this evening's pages, you’ll gain awareness of what is truly important to you and what may stunt your growth.

• Passion list: Write about activities that light you up. Not only will you know yourself better by doing so, but these pages will come in handy when you feel a little bit down.

Guided Meditation for Mindfulness

A heart-to-heart dialogue with your subconscious requires peace of mind. And with so much digital noise clouding our thinking day to day, we risk never making out what our inner self wants to tell us about ourselves. Meditation quiets the mind and creates so much-needed space for cultivating self-awareness. If you find it hard to meditate on your own, experiment with guided meditation. Here is a step-by-step instruction:

1. Find a place where you won’t be distracted.
2. Sit down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. You’d better not lie down unless you aim to fall asleep.
3. Develop an awareness of the breath.
4. If you are using a guided meditation recording or app, play it now and follow the instructions. Typically, the guide leads you through the process - from relaxation to visualization or affirmation. 
5. Notice every thought that comes and goes. Let them be, and gently focus your attention back on breathing or the guide’s voice.
6. Gradually return. This might include deepening your breath and gently moving your fingers or toes.

Mirror Exercises to Assess Emotional Responses

Mirror exercise is another powerful tool for boosting emotional awareness, self-reflection, and self-regulation. You might find it weird at first - looking at yourself in the mirror and talking with the reflection -  but if you go for it, you’ll discover the transformative potential of this self-discovery exercise. The steps below will walk you through the experience:

1. Find a quiet space with a mirror.
2. Take a few deep breaths to prepare yourself and allow any tension in your body to release. 
3. Try to maintain eye contact with your reflection. Take note of any emotion that arises on the spur of the moment. Observe your facial expression and body language.
4. Start speaking aloud about how you feel. You can begin with:

• “I feel…”
• “Right now, I am experiencing…”

‍Now, allow yourself to vent your feelings, even if they feel uncomfortable.

5. Embrace every emotion that arises. Be kind to yourself during the process. You might say something along the lines of:

• “It’s okay to feel this way”
• “I accept my feelings”

6. Consider keeping a journal to reflect on your emotional responses. This can help you to track your feelings over time. Having jotted down any insights, take a few deep breaths to ground yourself and conclude the exercise.

Daily Check-Ins and Affirmations

We are used to having check-ins in a working context to see how we are doing. But what if we embrace the idea of personal daily check-ins? This practice can help us to stay on our path and not get sidetracked by loads of pressing ideas and distractions. This is how you can put the idea into practice:

1. Set a time - whether in the morning or before bed - for your check-in.
2. Create a ritual: buy a fancy notebook, find a cozy corner in your home or a peaceful place at work, and mute your phone.
3. Create a set of check-in questions that help you to turn to yourself. You can take a shot at answering our questions:

• Are you happy with how your day is going?
• What is one thing you can do to improve your day or week?
• Have you taken time for yourself today?
• What is one thing you are grateful for today?
• How can you practice self-compassion today?

4. Set an intention for the day or week based on your reflections.
5. When the intention for the day is set, create or choose an affirmation that resonates with you. Repeat the affirmation daily to encourage yourself to choose the life you lead rather than simply slipping into it.

Self-Awareness Worksheets for Structured Growth

Your inner world can turn out to be an uncharted territory. Sometimes you need a roadmap to avoid getting lost on your inner journey. I am sure you’ll find self-awareness worksheets incredibly helpful for navigating the self-discovery process.

Self Awareness Checklist

This checklist can be a great starting point on your journey to your true self. Go for it and evaluate how well you know yourself and where you are in this process. This will help you make your self-exploration more structured and identify your goals. Yes, even self-understanding is more effective if you set clear intentions.

For example, if you get in a taxi, it would be strange to say to the driver, “Just take me wherever.” In this case, you probably will not be very happy with their choice. A clear vision of the direction where you want to be going increases your chances of getting there. It works the same with dreams and goals—they give you direction in life, and research has shown that having goals and working on them is good for our mental well-being.

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Who am I

Use the “Who am I” worksheet to examine your core values and reveal blind spots in your understanding of yourself. You might also like the DISC personality test to figure out how Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance affect your behavior. If you like to learn more about your personality type, take Jung's personality types test.

Values and Priorities

Why is it pivotal to identify your priorities? Well, this is the only way to live a meaningful life: when your life and business choices are aligned with your core values. Try out the Values and Priorities worksheet to become more transparent about what you want in life.

Strengths and Weaknesses

This Strengths Exploration worksheet is a powerful tool in the process of identifying your strengths and applying them in different areas of life.

Happiness Assessment

Everything that makes your life good or bad comes from within, and it is vital to know what exactly brightens your day. Go for this Happiness Assessment worksheet and clear up what can lift your spirits.

How to Incorporate Self-Awareness into Daily Life

Self-awareness activities for adults in this article are great tools to set about deepening your self-awareness. However, if you can’t make head nor tail of where to start, we advise you to start with a focus on physical.

You can try turning a mundane activity, like doing the dishes or brushing your teeth, into an awareness practice. Try to take notice of every emotion and sensation that accompanies the process, and make this awareness habitual. Over time, physical awareness will inevitably grow your awareness on mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Wrapping It Up

Through the self-discovery activities, you’ll gain awareness of your values, strengths, and areas of opportunity. Plus, you’ll become more curious about further self-discovery, which is the most exciting process in life.  After all, Socrates said it best - “The unexamined life is not worth living.” So dive into the bottomless well of self-exploration. And if you need an outside perspective, consider booking a session with one of Miranna’s coaches. A coach can serve as a guide and facilitator of a transformative process, leading you to deeper self-awareness that drives both personal and professional growth.