Lesso

Personal Development:
n 2 Knowing Oneself
Self-awareness is an understanding of oneself as unique from others. As
an individual, we commonly observe, and undeniably, judge other
people’s manners, beliefs, and lifestyle. However, it can be perceived,
though, that most people find it hard to make good and sound evaluation
toward their own behavior, traits, and personality. In this lesson, we will
try to know ourselves better by having careful reflections on how we see
ourselves as an individual and understanding our characters particularly
as young and late adolescent.

Adolescence is the period when a young individual develops from

a child into an adult. There are many changes that can happen to an
adolescent like you and some of those are: how you look, how you take
your role in the community, how other people expect you in making
decisions on your own, and how you perceive yourself. Although the
"Self" is one of the factors of what we thought about ourselves, it is also
the result of what we think and/or do.

Many people believe that we are the product of our own

experiences. Those experiences shape our unique qualities and habits
that define who we as a person and differ from others. Your features or
own qualities that made you a unique are characteristics; when you do
something repeatedly and regularly it is a habit; and experiences are the
skills or knowledge you have gained because you have done it already
from the past.

Now let us focus on when and how our characteristics, habits,

and experiences develop and manifest by identifying some of the factors
that may affect a person’s “Self”.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is your evaluation of your own worth. It may be

positive or negative. Positive self-esteem is the valuation
that is pleasing and acceptable according to your standard and that of
others, while negative self-esteem is the opposite which is feeling
distraught or down and unaccepted by others. Our selfconcept will
contain many positive thoughts and we will have high self-esteem if we
have completed an important task, done something that we believe is
valuable or important, or if we feel accepted and respected by others.
Thus, self-esteem does not imply that one believes that he or she is better than others,
only that he or she is a person of worth (Diener & Lucas 2017).

Our self-esteem may change from time to time depending on the

situation we encounter in our daily life. Since it can be partly a trait that
someone can possess, it depends on how you perceive the things coming
your way.

Self-esteem can be tested in two ways: explicitly and implicitly, and both
methods reveal that most people have a favorable image of themselves.
The Rosenberg SelfEsteem Scale is a popular explicit self-report measure
of self-esteem (Stangor et al.). Higher scores on the scale indicate higher
self-esteem.

Self-Efficacy

Efficacy has a specific impact on behavior and emotions, allowing people

to effectively manage problems and achieve desired outcomes. It is your
desire to influence something specific. It's a self-confidence in your
ability to attain your most significant goal. The greater the likelihood of
achieving a positive outcome, the stronger the belief. For example, if you
want to get a better grade and are secure in your belief, it will happen.

Self-efficacy may sound like a term you're already familiar with—

self-esteem— but they're not the same thing. Self-esteem is the measure
of how much you like or "esteem" yourself, or how much you believe you
are a decent and worthwhile person. Self-efficacy, on the other hand,
refers to your belief in your ability to succeed and perform well in various
areas of life, such as education, work, and relationships (Syrett 2020).

You can perform a certain job or achieving a specific goal by

means of these five (5) different ways that influenced self-efficacy, from
the ideas of Albert Badura, a professor, and a psychologist.

(a) Performance Experiences – if you are good at achieving your

specific goal, then you probably think that you will achieve it
again. When the opposite happens, if you fail, you will often think
that you will fail again.
(b) Vicarious Performances – if others achieved their goal or specific
task, then you'll come to believe that you will also achieve your
goal.
(c) Verbal Persuasion – it is when people tell you whether they believe
or not on what you can do or cannot do. The effect of
your self-efficacy will depend on how that person matters to you.
(d) Imaginal Performances – When you imagine yourself doing well,
then it will happen.
 (e) The Affective States & Physical Sensations – if your mood or
emotion (e.g. shame) and physical state (e.g. shaking) come
together, it will affect your selfefficacy. If negative mood connects
with negative physical sensation, the result will be negative. And if
it is positive, most likely the result will be positive.

Self and Identity

Have you tried to talk with yourself in front of the mirror? What did you
see? According to William James, a psychologist, “the self is what
happens when I reflect upon ME". Taylor described the self as a
Reflective Project. How we see ourselves is geared toward improving
ourselves depending on a lot of factors.

Dan McAdam, a psychologist, reiterated that even there are many

ways on how we reflect to improve ourselves, it brings us back to these
three (3) categories:
1. Self as Social Actor o We are portraying different roles and
behaving for every type/set of people in front of us since
we all care about what people think about us. It is practically
for social acceptance.
2. Self as Motivated Agent o People act based on their purpose.
They do things based on their own dreams, desires, and
planned goals for the future. This, though, is not easily
identifiable since it is self-conceptualized, unless it was shared
with us.
3. Self as Autobiographical Author o He/she as the creator of
his/her own entire life story. It is about how oneself is
developed from his/her past, up to the present, and
what he/she will become in the future.

Judgment and Decision Making

As an individual, you are expected to act and decide on your own.

Most people tend to decide based on the intuitions and available
information that could be a hindrance in making a wise
decision and that could be a habit.

It is recommended that people think through critical judgement or

decision. Unfortunately, we don't always do so. ( Jhangiani 2020) Many of
us place far more trust in our instincts than we should. And, even when
we try to think logically, the way we enter data into formal decision-
making procedures is frequently biased.

For instance, you applied for different courses in six (6) different
universities, and you were able to qualify in all. Now, how will you
decide? To help you, the idea of Bazerman and Moore in 2013 reiterated
by Jhangiani that suggests the Six Steps on How to Make a Rational
Decision:

1. Define the Problem (select your most desired course);

 2. Identify the criteria necessary to judge the multiple options (list
things to be considered like location, facilities, prestige,
etc.);
3. Weight the criteria (rank the criteria based on its importance to
you);
4. Generate alternatives (the schools that accepted you);
5. Rate each alternative on each criterion (rate each school on the
criteria you have identified); and
6. Compute the optimal decision
Even the most significant judgments are frequently based on limited
information and intuition. A totally reasonable judgment or decision
requires a careful, systematic process.