Thanks for your question. A few signs of highly self-aware people are the following:

• They trust others. They do not try to take control, but instead feel comfortable working with others and trusting that others can do their part too.
• They acknowledge their guilt when they are to blame, and apologize. Avoiding responsibility is oftentimes a sign of lack of self-awareness.
• They can take friendly criticism without getting upset or going into full defense mode. They realize that they are not perfect, and that criticism can help them better their work. Criticism is not to say that one’s work is totally bad, but instead that there are always ways in which the work could be further improved.
• They confidently and honestly express their feelings and thoughts. They do not expect people to be mindreaders and thus they do not resort to passive-aggressive behavior.
• They can laugh at themselves for silly mistakes that initially make them upset or ashamed. Everyone makes mistakes and for self-aware people that is no big deal.
• They listen more than they talk. They realize the value of what others have to share and are willing to welcome other people’s contributions in conversations. They do not feel threatened by people who are talkative.

Much love, Jessica

Symptoms of increased self-awareness:

I am clearer on how things make me feel. What makes me feel good? What makes me feel anxious? How does being around that person make me feel? How does doing this (nurtured, happy, healthy) or that (guilty, nervous) make me feel?

I used to feel and instantly react. Now, wait a minute. I feel anger. Why? Where is this coming from? Is the thought or series of thoughts that caused this anger real? Is this something I can breathe through? How can I best represent myself?

I am getting better at recognizing the voice of my ego. Oh my god I am alone. What are people going to think of me? Why doesn't anyone understand me? It's OK, ego. You are not alone. You never will be. I've got you.

I used to feel despair when someone misunderstood me or expressed disappointment. Now, I can watch that sensation. Can I make room in this tight, cavernous space? Can it be OK, to be misunderstood? Can I stand by the boundary I just created for myself?

Speaking of which, I am getting better at creating boundaries, at saying no to things so I have more space for myself - even when it feels scary or makes me feel like I'm being selfish.

I begin to do things I am scared of.

I have plans for myself and am following through on them.

I’m sad and very tired when I think of all the things I used to do that I couldn't see. My past behavior, my past suffering, my patterns.

Spending time alone used to make me feel restless and trapped. Now I love it, need it, crave it. Spending time alone feels wonderful but even when it doesn't I know it's solace: a steady place to go to sort myself out.

Unmodified, unconditioned awareness is always right here. It’s what makes all other experience possible.

You know you’re aware when you experience this pure awareness - the awareness that’s aware of everything else - directly.

“Knowing” by thinking, one way or the other, has nothing to do with it. Unless, of course, you convince yourself that you’re not self-aware by thinking about it.

And from awareness, it becomes clear that what anyone thinks of themselves as an individual is just an ever-fluctuating set of thoughts and conditioned reactions.

You’re not who you are “as an individual” - you’re the awareness.

Because that’s what doesn’t change. And that’s where life is lived from. Most people are just so over-focused on all their thoughts, feelings, reactions, and other objects in awareness that they miss the reality of their own unconditioned awareness, almost entirely.

Self-awareness comes from paying attention to:

1. How spending time with a person makes you feel
2. What thoughts go through your mind
3. Moments where you feel at peace + free
4. Moments where you feel resentment + trapped
5. How food, sleep. + nature makes your body feel
6. What words you speak about yourself
7. What words you speak about others
8. What you consume + how you feel afterward

(From Instagram, by @the.holistic.psychologist)

Self-awareness, therefore, is paying attention to what happens not only around or outside of you, but inside of you; e.g., how you feel after going out, what activities you enjoy and which you may want to withdraw from, who your real inner circle is (friends in which you can confide in), what you enjoy on a walk at night (a gentle breeze, the solitude along with the amplified consciousness of your thoughts?), etc.

(source: Instagram, Sara Kuburić)

It’s many things, and has probably not even a definitive meaning, but I think self-awareness comes from being alone with your own thoughts & emotions, essentially observing your inner-philosophy and letting stillness be your guest and your friend.

Self-awareness can only mean so much to you to how deeply you’ve met yourself on the inside of your being.

A person who has come to realize their true self is kind, loving and patient. They are fully present.

A person who has not yet come to realize their true self is wholly and completely concerned with the story of themself as an individual and separate being. They may spend a great amount of time thinking about their past or future. They may be concerned with the way others view them and their status in the community. Overall, their concern is for self above and beyond others or the well-being of the whole.

A person who has realized their true self knows that any sense of being a separate or individual self is illusory. And they do what they can to be a beneficial presence in the community. They are present, awake, aware, available, at peace, and loving.

This is a profound question that people across the Earth have been asking repeatedly over the last few thousands of years.

A Buddhist will give you a different answer from a Hindu or a Christian, an Athiest and a Moslem follower. A psychologist will give a different answer than tribal shamen.

Personally I feel self is something constructed from memories and language. My 5 week old daughter clearly is aware, but as yet has no real sense of self, while my 2 1/2 year old nephew clearly has a sense of self that is growing day by day. My two cats also are aware, but I can’t say for sure if they have a sense of self, despite my attributing them with what I feel are distinct characters and personalities. I think people who have worked with great apes, teaching them sign language report them having a demonstratable sense of self.

Self surely is composed of many elements, some cultural, racial, national, temporal and then some are ‘hard wired’ in and simply ‘human’ and therefore shared with all other human beings. On top of these deeper layers comes more personal traits that make us all individuals.

Although I am not a practising Buddhist, I think I align myself with a lot of the teachings. Self may be an illusion, but I try to be fair to all life, to have respect for all life and to have compassion for all living things. Ones actions over a lifetime add up and probably are a good indicator. I always liked the Ancient Egyptian notion that a persons heart was weighed against the white feather of truth or Maat, if they balanced that person lived on in the afterworld if it was heavier that soul was fed to the crocodile. It’s a nice story… poignant too.

I think one can live a lifetime and never fully answer this question, but it is still a vital one to ask, if we are to collectively grow as individuals and as a species.

I agree with Ahmet. The mirror test is the quickest and easiest way to get a crash course/taste of what it feels like to experience self-awareness...and no for all the smart-asses out there who think they know what theyre talking about when they say 'self-awareness? You're here and alive aren't you? You know you're you.' If you really wanna proclaim you know your self (not yourself) all you need is a mirror and your self.

Stand in front of a mirror, it's best if it's a mirror that primarily gets your head to your chest (don't do it in your car sitting down -_- it's not the same(for me at least)) and just look at your self. No music, no tv, just you (and don't tell me this is weird because I bet half of you all do weirder, things to yourselves when alone).
Start to be conscious of the fact that you're in this beautiful body He created for you, but the real you is inside, going along for the ride. You'll start to feel uncomfortable because you'll start to sense your own presence, and since it's not the presence of another, your self will know it is demanding its own attention. You won't be able to do this long because we are conditioned not to be aware, and feel that you that's in there, we only operate on the consciousness society demands from us. This feeling of awareness will start to be fulfilling and eventually work its way up to manifestations of reality and connectivity with God. Humans are naturally meant to heighten all aspects of their being.

1. Are you aware of yourself ? If you say yes, you are self-aware.
2. Look in a mirror. Do you recognize that what you see in the mirror is yourself ? Self-recognition is a test of self-awareness. If you put a dog in front of a mirror, it does not recognize itself. That is because it does not have self-awareness. However, there are certain members of the animal/mammalian kingdom that have a certain degree of self-awareness, viz. Elephants, dolphins, whales, apes etc.
3. If you have choice and will, you are self-aware. An immediate result of self-awareness is choice and will. I can choose to act, not act or act differently with respect to any given stimulus.
4. Presence of ego or the I-thought is another outcome of self-awareness. Only one with self-awareness has an identity…”I am so-and-so”. A dog cannot identify itself. You may call her Lucy but she has no sense of self. She is only aware of her surroundings, not herself as an individual being.

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Jai

You can surmise that you are self-aware through your own intuition. But that is not a proof. You can be tested whether you’re self-aware, which would seem more scientific and lead to an affirmative answer. But it would be from our own definition of “self-awareness”. The definition might be specific - but at the end of the day it was decided upon by ourselves. We create our own “artificial” world with our own definitions, which is just as consistent and real as the objective tangiable world outside ourselves - but the test of whether we are real or “fake” according to our own little world we created for ourselves, is only by comparing our responses with those of an entity known to be real in what is called a Turing Test. So what be the test of self-awareness of that entity?

All we are, are self-replicating molecules and genetic code that, over a very large number of generations of replication: grow more and more complex, develop deeper and deeper intelligence, and become capable of experiencing a fuller and fuller range of emotions. A long time ago we didn’t have self-awareness. Then at some point we did. Apparently. According to our own world that we created for ourselves. Therefore any entity could say the same thing about themselves if they choose.

Meaning is ascribed to the world by its agents on a micro-scale - not by a godlike entity from the outside. It is known that it is possible for the agents to become more intelligent over time. That is not just a feature of what we call ‘life’ that is unique to it. A computer program can become more complex and sophisticated over time. Does this mean that one day computers will become self-aware?

Life has to evolve “by accident” with no intent. Think of a viral video shared on social media. It could be a video capturing someone behaving badly on a bus. It could be somebody unexectedly (and humorously) getting hit by something. Whatever. The point is, is there’s a disjunction between intent and effect. Say there’s a guy who’s starting a new project who wants it to reach a global audience. He decides he wants to “encourage virility” asking members to repost on social networking sites. But he’s missing the point of virility. Going “viral” doesn’t just mean an exponential spread rate - it means more than that. It includes a lack of intent and design. When we say that something “seems to have a life of its own” we mean that something is occuring counter to the expectations of the agents apparently in control. It is only then that self-awareness will exist in computers. AI will therefore never be “enslaved”, because AI is just a tool created by humans for humans to use like any other tool, whether a scythe or a toaster or a calculator. That’s all it ever will be. It’s like the difference between Johnny 5 and KITT from Knightrider*.

Perhaps years from now everything written here could have been generated by a bot, with an avatar generated from This Person Does Not Exist. A sophisticated emulation- but an emulation nonetheless.

*Whether or not the car is actually sentient in any way was not addressed in the show, but for the purposes of this answer KITT’s just a highly advanced computer anthropomorphized from programming. (In other words, KITT may have had the ability to exchange snarky quips - but was ultimately designed and built that way; whereas Johnny 5 could belly-laugh at a joke it took him a while to “get”, only after developing self-awareness unintentionally from being struck by lightning.)

Slow your inner dialogue so it reaches the Alpha waves below 14 hertz. Measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine, the normal dialogue runs in the Beta brainwave range (from 40-14 hertz). We can think faster, in what is called the Gamma wave range from 40 to 60 hertz but then we'll be hallucinating or otherwise speeded up. Meditation slows you down. A good joint we'll get you down to about 22 or 20 hertz where you'll laugh but to sense your awareness you have to enter the Alpha waves from 14-8 hertz. You'll see your thoughts as a stream of consciousness moving from your right-brain hemisphere to your left side. Dreaming as if "I am a camera!" occurs in the Theta brainwave zone (8-4 hz) and lucid dreaming happens in Delta (4-1/2 hertz). At the Ømega point or when you flatline, your consciousness is not longer interacting with your brain and you have an out-of-body experience. You see the Light creating the world. In short, learn to MEDITATE.

It depends on how you define the “self.”

Do you mean the bodily self? Touch a hot stove and let instinct be your guide.

Do you mean the experiencer, the perceiver, the I that is the nexus of all continuing experience, the synthesis of inner and outer awareness, meaning awareness of recollections of past events, the integration of incoming sensory input, and judgments about possible future experience? That self, the I, is awareness. To say it is self-aware is to say nothing meaningful at all.

Or, do you mean the me, the subject of an objectively incoherent narrative that somehow gets made sense of subjectively? If you mean this ‘self’, then if you are aware of it, you are only aware of a fleeting articulation of a momentary configuration of mental states that deceptively manifests as a representation of a whole, yet is nothing more than an inference from a jumbled mess of concepts.

I know it sounds silly but I'm starting to lose a sence of self I'm feeling less alive by the day and I'm scared of losing my humanity I've found no evidence for a soul or anything like that am I just a collection of atoms with the allusion of self awareness?

You are concerned about the illusion of self-awareness. Who is concerned about the illusion of self-awareness? Who??

And if you did lose self-awareness, how would you know?

And who was it that asked this question? Who wants to receive an answer?

Who is reading these words right now?

If you decide that there is no self, who makes that decision? If you decide that there is a self, who makes that decision?

The bottom line is, you are always there in your own present moment, experiencing what you experience, choosing what you choose. There is no way out of that unless you are in a coma.

There are some quick ways you can remind yourself of your self-awareness, humanity and existential reality.

1. Notice any sensations in your body right now. Without you as a sentient being, those sensations could not exist. There would just be atoms and molecules interacting with no subjective effect.

2. Have you ever been in excruciating pain? Like slamming a door on your fingers, or breaking a leg, or being kicked in the testicles? Presumably you would prefer to avoid having similar experiences again, if you could? But why? Surely if you weren't a sentient individual whose feelings are of huge importance to you, there should be nothing but indifference.

3. How do you feel about deliberately inflicting similar excruciating pain on others? Only if you completely lack empathy and humanity could you be so cold and indifferent to the experiences of others as sentient beings like yourself.

Don't let the reductionists fool you. When science tells us that reality is made up of meaningless atoms, it's only describing one part of reality - the non-subjective universe of matter. But there is far more to reality than what is visible to scientific instruments.

Conventionally, achieving self-awareness is about understanding one’s own thoughts, emotions, behaviors, motivations, etc., mainly for the purpose of being a better person. It is open to everyone (regardless of background or experience) and involves regular introspection, being mindful of what is happening at this very moment without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future (mindfulness), actively seeking and considering feedback from others, observing recurring patterns in thoughts and behaviors, etc. As someone becomes more self-aware, they will notice positive changes in how they behave daily, react to emotional changes, relate to others (families, friends, coworkers), etc.

On the other hand, according to Advaita (nonduality), self-awareness is about being aware that we are neither the physical body nor the mind, both of which are in a state of constant flux. It is a steppingstone towards the recognition that each of us is already and will always be the one and only pure being (or awareness) there is—eternal (timeless), infinite (dimensionless), indivisibly whole, innately peaceful, and absolutely fulfilled. This pure being (or awareness) is already and will always be our true self, and there is no real, finite, independent self separate from this pure being (or awareness) because any sense of separation or individuality is an illusion.

The one and only pure being (or awareness) is accessible to everyone, everywhere, and always for direct, non-objective recognition. It is not abstract—it’s the very “I am” we refer to in our daily lives. Furthermore, it manifests itself as different minds—processes of thinking, perceiving, feeling, memorizing, etc.—that generate fleeting and intermittent thoughts, perceptions, feelings, memories, etc. Through these minds, the pure being (or awareness) experiences itself as other objects in the continuously changing world, including these words.

However, if it does not know its true nature (or source), the mind mistakenly believes and behaves as if it is a real, finite, separate, independent self; it gets carried away by its objective experiences (perceptions, thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.), considering them as real and defining its identity. This belief is an illusion; it keeps one trapped in a state of suffering as they try to make their way in the continuously changing world. To illustrate, it is like getting engrossed by the scenes of a movie playing on a screen and not noticing their reality, which is the screen itself.

Therefore, Advaita (nonduality), also known as the path of knowledge, claims that we’ve merely overlooked, ignored, or forgotten our true nature; if we do not know our true nature, then there is an innate longing for truth and self-recognition. This longing is a form of grace that attracts us toward spirituality to neutralize (or dispel) ignorance through practices such as self-inquiry, contemplation, etc.

As the apparent ignorance in the mind about its true nature disappears (which can happen gradually or spontaneously), the one and only pure being (or awareness) stands revealed, allowing for recognition (or glimpses of) of oneself as the pure being (or awareness). Then, one can practice, without any sense of doership, resting in or as (or surrendering to) the one and only pure being (or awareness) there is while engaging in all aspects of a normal life. This leads to the cessation of suffering, the experience of lasting peace and joy, a more harmonious world, and a more sustainable environment.

If you are interested in knowing more, here is a link to my recent answer to a related question:

You will know if you are developing self-awareness because you suddenly realize you can hear the song in your heart.

At first you will not know you have a song, then you may become faintly aware of it.

It takes a lot of self-awareness to hear the song and to know the words.

Listen -

‘You are a child of nature’ it sings, ever so faintly. You must listen hard.

‘You are a wonderful person’ it sings, and you will begin to hear it more clearly.

‘You are lovely, and you are loved’.

Now you can hear the notes and the words. They are sweet. Always saying beautiful things about you. They are never sad, never scold.

When you can sing the song you will know all is right in your world.

Sing softly to yourself, ‘I love myself’

Sing loudly, ‘I love and accept myself for who I am’.

Feel strong, hear the notes loud and clear.

For now you are awakening to the delicate song in your heart.

All is right in your world.

This is very good question. Self awareness is, in my opinion, more important than intelligence. At its extreme it’s a mental condition called ‘Anosognosia’ but to a less extreme extent it’s very common. I was listening to a conversation between to people who were arguing over who was more humble. Each one claimed to be more humble the the other. Now that’s lack of self awareness.

If someone doesn’t have it it’s very difficult to show them that they don’t have it, so as an answer to the first part of your question, I would suggest the following exercise. Every night when you go to bed, recall the day in a step-by-step process from when you got up in the morning to that moment and ask yourself how you reacted to situations. Did you say or do something out of anger or frustration? Were you mindful of the other person when you said something? Did you attempt to see things from their point of view? And so on. Done regularly, this will develop self awareness.

How do you know what it is? To some extent it’s questioning yourself all the time: your opinions, what you say or do. But it’s more than that. You can question yourself and decide always that you were in the right. Many people do. In part, it’s seeing yourself as others see you. But it’s more than that as well.

If you’re satisfied that you have it than you’re complacent, and complacency stifles self awareness.

I used to believe in the power of strategies and habits, and I was determined to become a better version of myself.

I read over 200 hundred self-help and psychology books, completed dozens of courses and attended numerous seminars.

I meditated. I took cold showers. I did negative visualizations. I wrote down my goals.

Yet after years of trying, I eventually had to come face to face with an uncomfortable truth:

I wasn’t really getting anywhere.

Sure, some of my rougher edges had been polished away, but I was more or less the same shitty me I always had been.

The major difference seemed to be the expertise with which I could wax poetic about it all.

I couldn’t understand what the problem was. I began to doubt everything:

• Was it the strategies? Maybe the strategies I had found and applied just weren’t the best ones or the right ones?
• Was I the problem? Did I simply not have the discipline and the motivation to succeed?
• Was I not smart enough? Could it be that I simply didn’t understand the books and methods well enough to really make use of them?

Despite years of effort, I couldn’t escape the truth: I was back to square one.

And when I looked around me, I realized I was hardly alone. My story was the story of most people.

Everything changed almost over night when I stumbled upon the true nature of reality.

Rather than find better tools and strategies to change myself, more leverage to get myself to do what I didn’t want to do, I looked within:

I realized that I was already ok.

I realized that there was nowhere to get to.

I realized I was living in the feeling of my thinking.

As best as I can describe it, a great sense of peace came over me.

I was no longer fighting a fight to be a better version of me.

I could relax.

I could breathe.

I could enjoy the moment I was in.

Everything was alright.

Even the things that weren’t.

When I finally relaxed in the moment, a funny thing happened:

I started taking action toward what I wanted.

Effortlessly.

Almost automatically.

Mostly with a sense of joy and ease.

Unsurprisingly, both the quality and the quantity of my work improved.

I did more work, better work and I enjoyed it more.

Work was no longer a grind.

The less I focused on what was wrong or what I was lacking, the more present, confident, generous and kind I became. Effortlessly.

In a curious paradox, I became a better version of myself simply because I stopped striving to be better and accepted myself for what I was.

It’s hardly surprising that those who feel comfortable and content in their own skin are more confident and peaceful.

Yet it’s so easy to forget this when the world around us is constantly pushing a fake image of what beauty, success and happiness should look like.

What I have seen is that you can try to emulate others until you are blue in the face. However, even if you succeed, you are going to be an inferior copy of someone else, when you have been a perfect, vibrant, dynamic original version of you all along.

So after 40 years of wasting time on trying to be a “better” version of me, my advice is this:

Stop comparing yourself to others.

Stop trying to live up to your ideal self.

Look inside.

Accept yourself.

Relax.

When you do, you’ll find that you have had all the resources you’ll ever need all along.

This world needs people exactly like you.

So please, be more of you, and less of someone else.

Self-awareness is a technique, a way of looking. It is not something that can be developed. Insight develops from persistent self-awareness. These growing insights biofeedback to you that your technique is good.

Self-awareness is defined in Merriam Webster's Dictionary as follows:

“An awareness of one's own personality or individuality.”

This is the opposite of genuine self-awareness and its worst enemy. Self-awareness means self-observation. It is awareness becoming aware of itself. Who is reading this? Not a thought. Awareness is reading this. Can you become aware of yourself, awareness?

Self-awareness is self-knowledge, as propounded by the ancients. Self-knowledge isn't head knowledge. It isn't thinking about yourself, dissecting the human body, the brain or the mind to gain more materials for yet another book.

You, awareness, are not your body, your emotions, your mind or your consciousness. Stop gazing at or into those things, as you will never discover yourself within them.

The only way to discover what self-awareness is, and to practice it on yourself, is to try and see what YOU are NOW doing to create your problems. Become aware of that which sees, but is never seen. You are not an object, but the subject looking, right? So, pause mentally, take a step back, and include yourself in your awareness of your life to now at last see how you are creating your own problems. When you are aware in this way of yourself, indefinable observing subject, you will see that your awareness appear to suspend all your mental reactions. You notice you are not doing anything. You will feel a desire to do something if you are suffering right now, but as long as you observe yourself, not as an object, but the observing subject, you cannot act. It is impossible, however much you desire to act. This mental suspension is in fact awareness, which is non-doing, choiceless, always impartial, though you are unlikely to grasp this fact at first. But, every time you are self-aware in my sense, you will notice perfect mental inaction. Even though your problems at first persist, you are no longer feeding them through unconscious identification with the contents of your mind. Self-awareness actually withdraws your attention from the contents of your mind. It places you outside the awful clutches of your own mind. Your mind won't immediately docilely acquiesce. It will continue to act as if though it is in charge of the lunatic asylum, which it is. Mind creates the lunatic asylum which is life in this modern world.

But stay with your mental inaction (awareness of yourself, the observing subject). Don't move away for an instant. Then your problems will start to disappear more and more as insights start exploding in your awareness. This proves to you that you are doing it right.

After that, it is a matter of repetition and infinite patience with your jailor, the master of your lunatic asylum, your own mind, as you keep practicing this single step technique.

Tell the truth as kindly, as clearly and as often as possible. No white lies. No sugar coating.

Put yourself first. How are you treating yourself? Are you caring for yourself? Are you resting? Are you giving yourself space and room to think, to act with intention? Are you protecting yourself from burnout, exhaustion, depression?

Ask yourself how you really feel about things and begin saying no to what you don’t want to do. Make peace with disappointing others. This will always be incredibly hard.

Become the person who observes what you do. Observe your thoughts. Observe your actions. Observe your emotions. Self-awareness is the first step towards transformation.

In the spirit of observing what you do, learn as much as you can about cognitive distortions. They have taught me a lot about when and why my own brain lies to me.

In the spirit of learning about things, if you come across something that really speaks to you (for example: Observe your ego. Don’t take things personally. Create a practice) go and learn as much about it as you can. One of the best things about being alive today is that we have more access to information and expertise than we’ve ever had in history.

Look at all the people you are close to. Do they love you? Do they support you? Do they respect you? Do they think highly of you? In the life you are building, these people are the infrastructure. As part of this review, resolve to stop striving to be with people who are not striving to be with you.

Look at how you are using your time. What will it add up to? Establish habits and a discipline that with tiny, incremental steps gets you where you want to go. Discipline = self love.

Make the time and space to create. Creation will get you closer to you, and depending on your beliefs it will get you closer to your soul, to your purpose, to your destiny, to god.

Stop expecting others are going to change, or that you have control over anyone but you.

Follow through on what you say you are going to do.

Practice self-compassion: treat yourself the way you would treat the love of your life, because the love of your life is you.

1. I wake up around 6–6:30 am.
2. Drink a litre of water the first thing after I wake up
3. Stretch for 15–20 minutes
4. Cook food for the family
5. Eat my first meal around 9–9:30 am
6. Clean up as soon as we are done eating.
7. Relax for sometime
8. On days when I go to our clinic, I stay there for couple of hours
9. On days when I stay at home, I organise the pantry, do laundry, mop the floor, declutter, organise home, tidy the space where it needs to be done and never procrastinate the work for laters
10. Read books and write
11. Drink enough water throughout the day
12. Eat any seasonal fruit.
13. 99.9 percent of the times, I eat organic and no junks, no spicy foods and no deep fried foods
14. Relax for sometime and connect with my loved ones via video call. It uplifts my mood, keeps me sane and I feel I am seen and heard. I feel I am loved and valued
15. Cook my 2nd/ last meal and eat before sunset.
16. Sometimes I go for a short walk after dinner
17. I go to bed between 9–10 pm.
18. Eating balanced diet is my favourite and most top listed priority.
19. Mental peace and wellbeing is my ultimate goal. I don't do any of the things that doesn't give me peace.
20. I stay away from toxic people, negative news and anything that doesn't help me to grow up
21. All the time I eat at home and if I ever have to eat outside, I opt for fruits and take snacks prepared at home
22. Whenever I feel low, I listen to good music, journal down my thoughts, take a long shower, walk and watch something funny
23. Money and material possessions aren't my thing. I am happy with simplicity all the time.
24. I like to learn new things everyday. Everyday I get excited to learn new things and look forward to it. When I come across something inspiring and interesting, it keeps going on inside my mind for the long time and I incorporate it in my everyday life.
25. I like to avoid fights, arguments etc. Instead of arguing to prove my point even when I know I am right, I let go of the things to keep myself at peace. For me mental peace is everything. Surviving abusive relationship in the past, mental peace is my biggest concern in life.
26. I don't waste food. I don't waste anything. It's been more than one year,I haven't purchased a thing and it taught me many great lessons of my life. I don't spend money on possessions, luxury and anything that's not necessary in my life.
27. I am my own best friend. I never get bored. I like to journal a lot. I listen to music and engage in activities or simply be like that and enjoy the essence of life.
28. I save a lot. Recently I have been spending on only essentials and I never knew that we need nothing other than essentials in our lives.
29. Staying happy all the time is my goal. Even when I am sad sometimes I get back to normal very quickly.
30. Gratitude. It feels liberating to value what I have. I feel thankful to lord and take care all of properly. Be it the life, people in my surroundings and ability to read and thrive more.

Going to bed in night if you don't have any thoughts of regret… Then you are self aware of yourself and you are going in right direction…

if you are able to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong then you are self aware..

if You are not running behind the instantaneous happiness but the happiness which are going to linger in your heart for forever then you are self aware..

if you are giving your best to every moment then you are self aware..

I am student and personally experienced that the day in which I don't give my best and don’t listen my inner voice and do the things against my inner call then I feel regret sooner or later in the day…

It’s improving, but I still have a ways…

Recently, I decided to take the time to look more inwards on myself. I actually realized that the reason I was lacking in a lot of self-awareness was because I was afraid of looking inside myself and finding things I supposedly “wouldn’t like”. However, I learned those difficult pieces to acknowledge were driving me more than I thought, and shedding much needed light on those issues will help me get better control of myself, even if it’s hard at first.

I am aware of my own selfishness. I have been deceitful, I’ve been attention-seeking, I’ve been acting in ways that only serve my own needs, etc. This was the hardest piece of me to reflect on. I realized and looked back at why I did the things I did, and became aware of their selfish elements.

However, I am also more aware of my more selfless pieces. I’m not completely selfish or selfless. Just somewhere in between.

Reflecting inwards on myself was a struggle because it came with a lot of guilt. I had to admit things I’ve done were for my own egotism and not for the benefit of others. But I realized everyone has their own egotism that drives their own behaviour, and that is part of being human.

I’m still reflecting on myself. Self-awareness is a gradual process that keeps improving the more reflection you do. As time goes on, and you pay more attention in your actions and learn to be honest with yourself, you will actually be able to get better control over your own behaviour and act in ways that are more selfless.