Start main page content

Self awareness part 2: Your life path so far

Map with the words your life path so far

 

Your life path so far

Understanding where you’ve come from helps you to move forward. Understanding your circumstances and culture can help you to feel more accepting of yourself.

Try to answer some of these questions:

  • How did you feel growing up? 
  • Were there difficult things that happened? 
  • Who was important to you?
  • How does it affect you now? 

If you have troubling things in your past that still affect you, consider getting help through CCDU. 

Who are you?

Take some time to think about these questions and answer them for yourself. They will help guide you towards knowing more about who you are.

  • Who am I?
  • What do I want?
  • What do I really want to be?
  • What do I enjoy doing?
  • What am I good at?
  • What is important to me?
  • What motivates me?
  • What makes me unique?
  • What are my strengths?
  • What are my weaknesses?
  • What do I do when I am bored?

Self-acceptance

It’s important to be able to accept yourself, and to feel comfortable with who you are. 

This is also a good foundation for healthy relationships.

The previous section mentioned knowing your strengths and weaknesses. Think again about what you feel are your weaknesses. Part of self-acceptance is not to fight off or disown these parts of yourself that you don’t like. 

Instead, understand how these parts of yourself came to be (counselling and/or therapy can help with this if needed), and accept them as part of the package of who you are. Being compassionate towards yourself for the things that you don’t like is an important part of self-acceptance.

Social awareness

Once you understand yourself, it opens up the possibility of connecting well to others. You can start being more open to accepting others’ experiences, and this helps to create deeper and more meaningful relationships in your life. It will also help you to be more aware of what’s going on around you, and the effect that it may have.

Did you miss something or want to review? Go back to self-awareness part 1.

Wits Student Crisis Line  0800 111 331 (24/7/365) 

Share