Self Awareness Articles 2015

3 Signs Your Exercise Plateau is Mental or Emotional 5 Skills Every Woman Needs to Succeed at Work 5 Ways to Eat Healthier Even When You've Failed Before 5 Steps To Spiritual Awakening 5 Surprising Things That Keep You Calm 5 Ways to Bring Yourself Back from Burnout 5 Ways to Stop Being a Control Freak 10 ways to embrace change 10 Years From Now 11:11

Abandoned, The Grids Abused Wives Addictions ... pick one, Delayed Gratification Adolescent Depression Affirmations and Readiness Affirmations, Thinking Positively Age of Healing and Awakening Alcoholism With A Metaphysical Twist 2009 Allergies and Metaphysics, Nesting Time With Partners Alterative Healing Analysis Paralysis Anorexia Nervosa April is Stress Awareness Month Are Any Decisions Made in Third Dimension? Are Comedians Crazy? Does Talking to Spirits Mean You Are Crazy? Arthritis Linked to Depression Assertiveness, Saying No Astrology August Transitions Autism and Consciousness Awakening in the Cloud in 2012

Back Injuries and Pain Being A Winner, Awards, Childhood Paranormal Experiences Being Around Smokers - They Smell - Addictive Behavior Being Ignored Being Overconfident Being Psychic in 2011 Between Laughter and Loneliness Bipolar Disorder - 2012 Study Birth and Rebirth Blogger's Word Choices and Their Personality Traits Body Language Body, Mind and Soul Connections Born Into The Wrong Family Bullies and How They Affect Your Life Bullying 2012 - Karen Klein - Jerry Sandusky Business of Healing

The Calling Can men and women just be friends? Can Our Bodies Predict the Future? Can Someone Be Overweight and Healthy? Can You Think For Yourself? Libra, Balance, Equinox, Discovery Caretakers Forced To Return Home Caretaking Some With Altzheimers Disease Career Reinvention Rules of The Road Cellular Memory Centers of Light -The Things We Are Guided To At The End Changing Your Mind Chemosignals Communicate Human Emotions Children's Files City Living Stresses the Brain Client Comments On Reality, Humor Common Cold: Prevention & Dealing With ... Ellie and Dr. Oz Compassion Meditation and Empathy Consciousness Files Conscious Uncoupling Consulting vs. Full Time Employment Corporate Gender Discrimination Couch Potato Syndrome and Chakras Creating Goals Creativity and Sex Creating Sacred Spaces, Buying a Home, City Life Cutting, Self-Mutilation

Depression and Detaching From the Grids Depression and Metaphysics Depression and Music "Divorce Corp." Domino Effect Dreams - Waking Up Tired Dynamics In Relationships Dysfunctional 2005

Education ... It's Everywhere Ellie's Office - Therapists' Spaces Emotional Grid Emotions Emotions and Mental Processing Emotions in Motion Empathy - For Richer or Poorer Empty Nest Syndrome 2008 Empty Nest Syndrome 2014 End of Program: Player & Observer - Sacred Geometry is Changing End Time Anxiety Dreams Exercise - Is it okay to exercise before bedtime? Expectations of a Long Life Paying Attention to Unconscious Decision Making

Facial Symmetry, Health, Attraction, Golden Ratio Finding an 'Altruism Gene' Finding Your Spiritual Mission First Blood Test For Teen Depression The "Fixer Upper" - Never Try to Fix Anyone Flattery and Priase Flirting: When Does It Become Cheating? Focus, Attention, Distractions Kill Both Time and Quality Focusing Your Energies Food Cravings Food: Health Halo Effect Foodie - Is that you? Free Will - Explaining The Illusion of Free Will Free Will - How Much Do We Have? Friendship Files

Gambling Addiction Genetics and Your Personality Giving And Receiving Love Goals Gratitude - How Gratitude Can Improve Your Life

Hand Gestures Happiness 2010 Style Happiness Is the Key to Longer Life Healing and Energy Indexx Healing Techniques and Programming Health Habits That Are A Waste of Time Health Index 'Hit The Fan' Event' Hooking Up How often should wash your sheets, pets, hair and more? How to make positive changes in your life How Well do You Know Your Own Feelings? Humans And Animals, Souls Who Travel Together

Inner Child, Your Emotional Body Invisible Child, Feeling Abandoned In Your Power Is Anyone Truly Happy? Is Free Will an Illusion? Issues With Tissues August 2009 - Can Everyone Heal? Is there a positive side to allergies? It's All Inherited It's Who I Am, It's What I Do

Job Burnout Job Burnout 2012 Jobs: Part-time vs. Full-time Journaling, Healing The Loss of a Loved One

Karma In Soul Groups Karmic or Comic? What is reality? Knee Injuries

Lateness, Watching Your Watch Laughter As Therapy Let's Talk Fruits and Veggies Libra 2014 - Creating Balance - Visualization Exercise

Life In Any Reality In 2012 (Self Help) Life's A Soap Opera Listening To Your Inner Voice Live Your Life By The Numbers, The Numerologist and 2012 Living Together 2007 Loneliness 2009 - It's Not Your Fault Loneliness Kills, Study Shows Long Ring Fingers Are Attached to Good-Looking Guys Losing It..... Losing it in 2014 - Weight Loss, Exercise, Stress, Mindfulness. Meditation Loss of Control and Precognitive Beliefs

Making Mistakes and Coping Male Energy and Consciousness Male Soul in a Female Body Marriage in America 2012 Style Marriage, Living Together, What are the 2013 Trends? Meditations and Initiations With Music Meditation Increases Awareness of Subliminal Messages Memory Gained and Lost in Time Metaphors (Metaphysics) For Dummies Metaphysical Fix Metaphysical Set-up - Years Ago in Your Life ... Micromanagement & Macromanagement Mindfulness Missing White Woman Syndrome Mompreneur Motivational Meetings 2013 Multitasking

Narcissism Nervous Habits and Chakras No One Wants to Work Anymore No Regrets: Why 'Letting Go' May Be Key to Happy Aging Numerology Nutrition and Fitness Articles

Obesity Gene also a Happy Gene Observable Clarity and Reasonable Response Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Old Souls Older Women With Younger Men One Deep Breath Online Reviews and Decision Making Order From Disorder Organized People

Pack Rat Effect - Endowment Effect Panic Disorder, Anxiety Attacks Parental Favoritism Parenting ... 2011 Path of the Quester Peeling Away The Layers Penis Size Matters in Bed Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS) Personal Space Phone Call You Don't Want To Answer Positive Personality Disorder Powerful People Inspire Themselves Power of a Hug Power of Positive Thinking Preparing for a Break-up in 2012 Prerequisites For Marriage Programmed Misconceptions - Healing, Prophecies, The Soul Psychic Development Psychic Therapy 2015 Psychology Files The Psychology of Commuting

Rage Disorder Reading Emotions Reconnecting, Fathers Who Abandoned Their Children Reflections Regrets Reiki Healing and Energy in the Box, Getting Your Powers Back Relationships and Issues Relationships: Men tell me ... Women tell me Riding The Emotional Roller Coaster Road Rage - Walking The Walk Black and White ... and Red Running Away

Saturn Return 2015 Style - Moving Into Intu-ition Searching for Answers and Finding the Truth Secrets Self Awareness - Albert Einstein 2014 Selective Hearing Selective Memories of Your Past Self-Help Lists October 2014 Self-Multilation, Teens Who Cut Themselves Self Awareness, Who in the World am I? Self-esteem Self-help 1/11 Self-Help With Albert Einstein Senior Citizen Files Sexing Up and Dumbing Down of Work Force Sexting Sharing Your Journey Shifting the Energies in the Same Old Argument Signs You're A Truly Genuine Person Singling Out One Child in the Family For Abuse Sleeping Patterns, Snoring Sleepwalking Slinky Effect Smile Is Contagious Social Anxiety Disorder - Social Phobia "Soul" Spiritual Warriors Spirituality Induces Liberal Attitudes Stepping Stones Stock Market Junkie Stress-Breath Connection "Stressed" spelled backwards is "Desserts" Success 2012 Sugar Addiction 6 Signs You're Eating Too Much Sugar Suicide - 2011 Suicide - Getting Help in 2009 Sum of All Healing Synchronicity and Reality

Take a Moment As You Sit There Taking a Year off From Work to Find Yourself in 2011 T- Bar Experiment 2008: Visualization Telekinesis is Emotionally Driven Terminal Lucidity - Clarity Before Dying The Apology The Back-Story .... The Importance of Exercise The Matrix :: Are You Looking In Or Out? [Version 1 - Music - Scroll Slowly] The Matrix :: Are You Looking In Or Out? [Version 2] The Need To Heal ... Why Does Everyone 'Feel' That Way? The Need to be Heard, Soapbox Messages, Social Networking "The Secret" - Synchronicity Principle The Turning Point The Universe in a Nutshell Think Healthy, Eat Healthy Thinking Outside The Box Things Happen The Way They Are Supposed To Three Step Program To Third Dimension Tips For Women ... Reality Check July 2009 Tips to Overcome Work Fears Tools of Divination Tough Love Triggers of Awakening

Turning 40 1962-1963 - Turning 40 With Issues Turning 40 in 2014 and Loving It

Understanding Human Behavior, Genetic Reality Using Scents to Lose Weight Without Hunger Using the Right Brain - How to Unleash Your Creativity

Wake Up! Waiting Waiting Feeling Walking Styles Reflect Your Personality Warning Dream For Woman Ways To Manage Your Time Were You Born Into The Wrong Family? DNA Soul Journeys In Time What does your office space look like? What is my Purpose? The M.A.D. - Make a Difference - Moment What's your biggest professional regret? What to ask yourself when things go wrong When and why do we lie? When Antidepressants No Longer Work When Death Approaches Unexpectedly When Helping Others Becomes Frustrating When Should You Leave a Relationship? When You Raise Your Frequency Whining is the worst sound in the world Who am I? Why am I here? Finding Community Anchor, Partner Why Am I Here? Why Inspirational Talks Don't Work Why Learning Leads To Happiness Winter Depression Wired ... Tired ... Fired ... Hired Women wonder about their mom's sex lives The Word-of-Mouth Paradox Working Moms Working Moms 2012 Wounded, the Wounded Healer Why abused women stay in bad relationships Why is Exercise Important?

Y.A.N.A. - You Are Not Alone You Can Never Go Back Your Happy Place Yo-Yo Dieting and Weight Cycling

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Self Awareness Files - Crystalinks

Cetacean intelligence refers to the cognitive capabilities of the Cetacea order of mammals. This order includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins.

Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. However, many other factors also affect intelligence. Recent discoveries concerning bird intelligence have called into question the usefulness of brain size as an indicator.[1] Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions,[citation needed] greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks.[2][unreliable source?][3]Allometric analysis indicates that mammalian brain size scales at approximately the or exponent of the body mass.[4] Comparison of a particular animal's brain size with the expected brain size based on such allometric analysis provides an encephalization quotient (EQ) that can be used as another indication of the animal's intelligence.

The discovery of spindle cells (neurons without extensive branching, known also as "von Economo neurons", or VENs) in the brains of the humpback whale, fin whale, sperm whale, killer whale,[15][16]bottlenose dolphins, Risso's dolphins, and beluga whales[17] is another unique discovery. Humans, the great apes, and elephants, species all well known for their high intelligence, are the only others known to have spindle cells.[18](p242) Spindle neurons appear to play a central role in the development of intelligent behavior. Such a discovery may suggest a convergent evolution of these species.[19]

Elephant brains also show a similar complexity to dolphin brains, and are also more convoluted than that of humans,[20] and with a cortex "thicker than that of cetaceans".[21] It is generally agreed that the growth of the neocortex, both absolutely and relative to the rest of the brain, during human evolution, has been responsible for the evolution of human intelligence, however defined. While a complex neocortex usually indicates high intelligence, there are exceptions to this. For example, the echidna has a highly developed brain, yet is not widely considered to be very intelligent.[22]

In 2015, it was shown for the first time that a species of dolphin, the long-finned pilot whale, has more neocortical neurons than any mammal studied to date including humans.[23] All sleeping mammals, including dolphins, experience a stage known as REM sleep.[24] Unlike terrestrial mammals, dolphin brains contain a paralimbic lobe, which may possibly be used for sensory processing. The dolphin is a voluntary breather, even during sleep, with the result that veterinary anaesthesia of dolphins is impossible, as it would result in asphyxiation.[citation needed] Ridgway reports that EEGs show alternating hemispheric asymmetry in slow waves during sleep, with occasional sleep-like waves from both hemispheres (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476053). This result has been interpreted to mean that dolphins sleep only one hemisphere of their brain at a time, possibly to control their voluntary respiration system or to be vigilant for predators. This is also given as explanation for the large size of their brains.[citation needed]

Dolphin brain stem transmission time is faster than that normally found in humans, and is approximately equivalent to the speed found in rats.[citation needed] As echo-location is the dolphin's primary means of sensing its environment analogous to eyes in primates and since sound travels four and a half times faster in water than in air, scientists[who?] speculate that the faster brain stem transmission time, and perhaps the paralimbic lobe as well, assist quicker processing of sound. The dolphin's greater dependence on sound processing is evident in the structure of its brain: its neural area devoted to visual imaging is only about one-tenth that of the human brain, while the area devoted to acoustical imaging is about 10 times that of the human brain[citation needed]. Sensory experiments suggest a great degree of cross-modal integration in the processing of shapes between echolocative and visual areas of the brain. Unlike the case of the human brain, the cetacean optic chiasm is completely crossed,[citation needed] and there is behavioral evidence for hemispheric dominance for vision[citation needed].

Some research shows that dolphins among other animals understand concepts such as numerical continuity (but not necessarily counting).[25] A recent study found that dolphins may be able to discriminate between numbers.[26] but that this ability "may involve mimicry. . . as dolphins are unsurpassed in imitative abilities among nonhuman animals".

Several researchers observing animals' ability to learn set formation tend to rank dolphins at about the level of elephants in "intelligence"[27] and show that dolphins do not have any unusual talent with problem solving compared with the other animals classed with very great intelligence.[28] Macphail in his "Brain and intelligence in vertebrates"[29] compared data from studies regarding learning "set formation" of animals. The results show that dolphins are skilled at performing this sort of standardized testing but not as adept as other animals in the study.

Dolphin group sizes vary quite dramatically. River dolphins usually congregate in fairly small groups from 6 to 12 in number or, in some species, singly or in pairs. The individuals in these small groups know and recognize one another. Other species such as the oceanic Pantropical Spotted Dolphin, Common Dolphin and Spinner Dolphin travel in large groups of hundreds of individuals. It is unknown whether every member of the group is acquainted with every other. However, there is no doubt that such large packs can act as a single cohesive unit observations show that if an unexpected disturbance, such as a shark approach, occurs from the flank or from beneath the group, the group moves in near-unison to avoid the threat. This means that the dolphins must be aware not only of their near neighbors but also of other individuals nearby in a similar manner to which humans perform "Audience waves". This is achieved by sight, and possibly also echolocation. One speculative hypothesis proposed by Jerison (1986) is that members of a pod of dolphins are able to share echolocation results with each other to create a better understanding of their surroundings.[30]

Resident orcas living in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington, United States live in extremely stable family groups. The basis of this social structure is the matriline, consisting of a mother and her offspring, who travel with her for life. Male orcas never leave their mothers' pods, while female offspring may branch off to form their own matriline if they have many offspring of their own. Males have a particularly strong bond with their mother, and travel with them their entire lives, which can exceed 50 years. It is interesting behavior, as it may seem that there would be no benefit from this except perhaps in hunting techniques, although they could join other groups to hunt. There are two interesting examples of this familial bond in males. Two male sons, identified as A38 and A39, constantly accompany their mother A30, despite the fact that she does not need protection and they can all hunt by themselves, and rarely leave her side. Researchers have noted that if one son wanders away, one always remains with the mother. Another example are the brothers A32, A37 and A46, whose mother (A36) died. Instead of the family disbanding, the three brothers remain constantly together[citation needed].

Relationships in the orca population can be discovered through their vocalizations. Matrilines who share a common ancestor from only a few generations back share mostly the same dialect, comprising a pod. Pods who share some calls indicate a common ancestor from many generations back, and make up a clan. Interestingly, the orcas use these dialects to avoid in-breeding. They mate outside the clan, which is determined by the different vocalizations. There is evidence that other species of dolphins may also have dialects.[31][32]

In bottlenose dolphin studies by Wells in Sarasota, Florida, and Smolker in Shark Bay, Australia, females of a community are all linked either directly or through a mutual association in an overall social structure known as fission-fusion. Groups of the strongest association are known as "bands", and their composition can remain stable over years. There is some genetic evidence that band members may be related, but these bands are not necessarily limited to a single matrilineal line. There is no evidence that bands compete with each other. In the same research areas, as well as in Moray Firth, Scotland, males form strong associations of two to three individuals, with a coefficient of association between 70 and 100. These groups of males are known as "alliances", and members often display synchronous behaviors such as respiration, jumping, and breaching. Alliance composition is stable on the order of tens of years, and may provide a benefit for the acquisition of females for mating. The complex social strategies of marine mammals such as bottlenose dolphins, "provide interesting parallels" with the social strategies of elephants and chimpanzees.[33](p519)

Dolphins are known to engage in complex play behavior, which includes such things as producing stable underwater toroidal air-core vortex rings or "bubble rings".[34] There are two main methods of bubble ring production: rapid puffing of a burst of air into the water and allowing it to rise to the surface, forming a ring; or swimming repeatedly in a circle and then stopping to inject air into the helical vortex currents thus formed. The dolphin will often then examine its creation visually and with sonar. They also appear to enjoy biting the vortex-rings they've created, so that they burst into many separate normal bubbles and then rise quickly to the surface.[35] Certain whales are also known to produce bubble rings, or even bubble-nets for the purpose of foraging. Many dolphin species are also known for playing by riding in waves, whether natural waves near the shoreline in a method akin to human "body-surfing", or within the waves induced by the bow of a moving boat in a behavior known as bow riding.

There have been instances in captivity of various species of dolphin and porpoise helping and interacting across species, including helping beached whales.[36] Also they have been known to live alongside Resident (fish eating) Orca Whales for limited amounts of time.[citation needed] Dolphins have also been known to aid human swimmers in need, and in at least one instance a distressed dolphin approached human divers seeking assistance.[37]

Aside from having exhibited the ability to learn complex tricks, dolphins have also demonstrated the ability to produce creative responses. This was studied by Karen Pryor during the mid-1960s at Sea Life Park in Hawaii, and was published as The Creative Porpoise: Training for Novel Behavior in 1969. The two test subjects were two rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis), named Malia (a regular show performer at Sea Life Park) and Hou (a research subject at adjacent Oceanic Institute). The experiment tested when and whether the dolphins would identify that they were being rewarded (with fish) for originality in behavior and was very successful. However, since only two dolphins were involved in the experiment, the study is difficult to generalize.

Starting with the dolphin named Malia, the method of the experiment was to choose a particular behavior exhibited by her each day and reward each display of that behavior throughout the day's session. At the start of each new day Malia would present the prior day's behavior, but only when a new behavior was exhibited was a reward given. All behaviors exhibited were, at least for a time, known behaviors of dolphins. After approximately two weeks Malia apparently exhausted "normal" behaviors and began to repeat performances. This was not rewarded.[38]

According to Pryor, the dolphin became almost despondent. However, at the sixteenth session without novel behavior, the researchers were presented with a flip they had never seen before. This was reinforced.[38] As related by Pryor, after the new display: "instead of offering that again she offered a tail swipe we'd never seen; we reinforced that. She began offering us all kinds of behavior that we hadn't seen in such a mad flurry that finally we could hardly choose what to throw fish at".[38]

The second test subject, Hou, took thirty-three sessions to reach the same stage. On each occasion the experiment was stopped when the variability of dolphin behavior became too complex to make further positive reinforcement meaningful.

The same experiment was repeated with humans, and it took the volunteers about the same length of time to figure out what was being asked of them. After an initial period of frustration or anger, the humans realised they were being rewarded for novel behavior. In dolphins this realisation produced excitement and more and more novel behaviors in humans it mostly just produced relief.[39]

Captive orcas have often displayed interesting responses when they get 'bored' with activities. For instance, when Dr. Paul Spong worked with the orca Skana, he researched her visual skills. However, after performing favorably in the 72 trials per day, Skana suddenly began consistently getting every answer wrong. Dr Spong concluded that a few fish were not enough motivation. He began playing music, which seemed to provide Skana with much more motivation.

At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, it has also been observed that the resident dolphins seem to show an awareness of the future. The dolphins are trained to keep their own tank clean by retrieving rubbish and bringing it to a keeper, to be rewarded with a fish. However, one dolphin, named Kelly, has apparently learned a way to get more fish, by hoarding the trash under a rock at the bottom of the pool and bringing it up one small piece at a time.[39]

As of 1984[update], scientists have observed wild bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia using a basic tool. When searching for food on the sea floor, many of these dolphins were seen tearing off pieces of sponge and wrapping them around their rostra, presumably to prevent abrasions and facilitate digging.[40]

Whale song is the sounds made by whales and which is used for different kinds of communication.

Dolphins emit two distinct kinds of acoustic signals, which are called whistles and clicks:

There is strong evidence that some specific whistles, called signature whistles, are used by dolphins to identify and/or call each other; dolphins have been observed emitting both other specimens' signature whistles, and their own. A unique signature whistle develops quite early in a dolphin's life, and it appears to be created in an imitation of the signature whistle of the dolphin's mother.[41] Imitation of the signature whistle seems to occur only among the mother and its young, and among befriended adult males.[42]

Xitco reported the ability of dolphins to eavesdrop passively on the active echolocative inspection of an object by another dolphin. Herman calls this effect the "acoustic flashlight" hypothesis, and may be related to findings by both Herman and Xitco on the comprehension of variations on the pointing gesture, including human pointing, dolphin postural pointing, and human gaze, in the sense of a redirection of another individual's attention, an ability which may require theory of mind.

The environment where dolphins live makes experiments much more expensive and complicated than for many other species; additionally, the fact that cetaceans can emit and hear sounds (which are believed to be their main means of communication) in a range of frequencies much wider than that of humans means that sophisticated equipment, which was scarcely available in the past, is needed to record and analyse them. For example, clicks can contain significant energy in frequencies greater than 110 kHz (for comparison, it is unusual for a human to be able to hear sounds above 20 kHz), requiring that equipment have a sampling rates of at least 220kHz; MHz-capable hardware is often used.

In addition to the acoustic communication channel, the visual modality is also significant. The contrasting pigmentation of the body may be used, for example with "flashes" of the hypopigmented ventral area of some species, as can the production of bubble streams during signature whistling. Also, much of the synchronous and cooperative behaviors, as described in the Behavior section of this entry, as well as cooperative foraging methods, likely are managed at least partly by visual means.

While there is little evidence for dolphin language, experiments have shown that they can learn human sign language. Akeakamai, a bottlenose dolphin, was able to understand both individual words and basic sentences like "touch the frisbee with your tail and then jump over it" (Herman, Richards, & Wolz 1984). Dolphins have also exhibited the ability to understand the significance of the ordering of each set of tasks in one sentence.

Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Scientific research in this field has suggested that bottlenose dolphins, alongside elephants and great apes, possess self-awareness.[43]

The most widely used test for self-awareness in animals is the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, in which a temporary dye is placed on an animal's body, and the animal is then presented with a mirror.

Some scientists[who?] still disagree with these findings, arguing that the results of these tests are open to human interpretation and susceptible to the Clever Hans effect.[citation needed] This test is much less definitive than when used for primates, because primates can touch the mark or the mirror, while dolphins cannot, making their alleged self-recognition behavior less certain. Critics argue that behaviors that are said to identify self-awareness resemble existing social behaviors, and so researchers could be misinterpreting social responses to another dolphin.[citation needed] The researchers counter-argue that the behaviors shown to evidence self-awareness are very different from normal responses to another dolphin, including paying significantly more attention to another dolphin than towards their mirror image.[citation needed] Whereas apes can merely touch the mark on themselves with their fingers, dolphins show less definitive behavior of self-awareness, twisting and turning themselves to observe the mark.[citation needed]

In 1995, Marten and Psarakos used television to test dolphin self-awareness.[44] They showed dolphins real-time footage of themselves, recorded footage, and another dolphin. They concluded that their evidence suggested self-awareness rather than social behavior. While this particular study has not been repeated since then, dolphins have since passed the mirror test.[45]

Research of the comparative cognition of the dolphin is one of the primary methods of the investigation of cetacean intelligence.

Examples of cognitive abilities investigated in the dolphin include concept formation, sensory skills, and the use of mental representation of dolphins. Such research has been ongoing since the late 1970s, and includes the specific topics of: acoustic mimicry, behavioral mimicry (inter- and intra-specific), comprehension of novel sequences in an artificial language (including non-finite state grammars as well as novel anomalous sequences), memory, monitoring of self-behaviors (including reporting on these, as well as avoiding or repeating them), reporting on the presence and absence of objects, object categorization, discrimination and matching (identity matching to sample, delayed matching to sample, arbitrary matching to sample, matching across echolocation and vision, reporting that no identity match exists, etc.), synchronous creative behaviors between two animals, comprehension of symbols for various body parts, comprehension of the pointing gesture and gaze (as made by dolphins or humans), problem solving, echolocative eavesdropping, and more. Some researchers include Louis Herman, Mark Xitco, John Gory, Stan Kuczaj, Adam Pack, and many others.

While these are largely laboratory studies, field studies relating to dolphin and cetacean cognition are also relevant to the issue of intelligence, including those proposing tool use, culture, fission-fusion social structure (including tracking alliances and other cooperative behavior), acoustic behavior (bottlenose dolphin signature whistles, sperm whale clicks, orca pod vocalizations), foraging methods (partial beaching, cooperation with human fishermen, herding fish into a ball, etc.). See: Richard Connor, Hal Whitehead, Peter Tyack, Janet Mann, Randall Wells, Kenneth Norris, B. Wursig, John Ford, Louis Herman, Diana Reiss, Lori Marino, Sam Ridgway, Paul Nachtigall, Eduardo Mercado, Denise Herzing, Whitlow Au.

In contrast to the primates, cetaceans are particularly far-removed from humans in evolutionary time. Therefore, cognitive abilities generally cannot be claimed to derive from a common ancestor, whereas such claims are sometimes made by researchers studying primate cognition. Though cetaceans and humans (in common with all mammals) had a common ancestor in the distant past, it was almost certainly of distinctly inferior cognitive abilities compared to its modern descendants. The early divergence of the human dolphin ancestry line creates a problem in what cognitive tasks to test for because human/dolphin brains have evolved so differently, with completely different cognitive abilities favoring their very different environments. Therefore, an anthropomorphic problem exists with exactly what cognitive abilities to test, how to test them, as well as the validity of the experimental results because of the completely different evolutionary lineage and environment human and cetaceans have. It was for this reason Dr. John C. Lilly proposed that developing a means of communicating with dolphins is necessary to have any future hope of communicating with an extraterrestrial organism of equal-or-greater intelligence to man, which also would have evolved in a different environment and evolutionary lineage.

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Contemporary Examples

Certain sentences and paragraphs capture a self-awareness that is more insightful than obnoxious or narcissistic.

There is some self-awareness over what they are doing, said Brooks.

But with self-awareness comes self-protection and a little paranoia.

It requires a huge degree of self-belief, a considerable lack of self-awareness, and a touch of delusion.

The women seem at once to have no self-awareness and to be hyperconscious of the way they will be portrayed.

Historical Examples

In the enormous evening only a little shiver of self-awareness was left to her.

After all, it's just a question of increasing their self-awareness.

His extraordinary self-estimate and self-awareness are equally noticeable.

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation.

Early words are a record of the self-awareness of the human, denoting body parts and elementary actions.

Word Origin and History for self-awareness Expand

self-awareness in Medicine Expand

self-awareness n. Realization of oneself as an individual entity or personality.

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Self-awareness | Define Self-awareness at Dictionary.com

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Self-awareness is important in every area of life, but it's essential when dealing with relationships. If you're aware of the things you say and do, you'll be able to recognize when your actions bother or anger someone else.It sounds straightforward, but it takes some adults years before they understand what this concept means, and how to apply it to their life.

What Does It Mean to Be Self-Aware?

Self-awareness means that you have a solid understanding about who you are and how you relate to the world. This means being mentally and emotionally present in situations, and understanding how your actions affect people. It also means that you're clued into to what you really enjoy and dislike.

This concept is not as simple in practice, however.

Many things in life can change us, for good or bad, and these changes cloud self-awareness. Some things that can wreak havoc on our awareness are:

Do You Have a Problem With Self-Awareness?

One sure way to determine if you've got an issue with self-awareness is that you feel everyone else is always to blame for things. For example:

In each of these examples, what's missing is self-reflection. If these sound a little like your own life, do some soul searching to determine if you could be more aware. Most us can be, so you're not alone. What's more, self-awareness is a continual process. The more you do it, the better you will be at determining how the way you think and act affects your own happiness.

Self-Awareness and Conflict

Another common trait of those unaware is an inability to give and receive apologies. When someone apologizes, they either may not accept it at all, or believe that the person needs to keep apologizing. They don't understand what it means to truly accept someone's apology and move on, and as a result they continually harm the relationship by rehashing old arguments.

By contrast, they rarely apologize when they should, and if they do it's a non-apology instead of a genuine acknowledgement for how they acted. Their focus stays on what someone else did instead of their own contribution to the argument. (Here's more about different types of apologizes.)

Being More Self-Aware

The first step to self-awareness is to look at past issues you've had with people and be honest with yourself. Sometimes it's so hard to think that we might have messed up that we don't allow ourselves to reflect on the actions we took to help prolong or cause an argument.

Admitting you have a part in how people treat you is a hard concept to embrace at first. The following thoughts can act as a warning sign for better self-awareness.

When you think these thoughts, turn the focus back to yourself and see if there was something you did to push someone's buttons, start an argument, or prolong a disagreement. If someone blows up at you and you feel it's "out of the blue," take a moment and see if perhaps you were pushing them toward anger or resentment for awhile. Sometimes subtle nagging or condescension builds, and a friend who put up with your negative qualities before will suddenly not stand for it any longer. This is a good time to reflect on your actions.

When you do have an argument, listen closely to what your friend is telling you. It can be really hard to hear negative things about our actions, but if a friend is hurt you might have done something without even realizing it. Ask your friend to share their frustration with you so you can learn. If your friend is done with you, then go back over the attitudes you've had toward them (that you thought were hidden) and see if perhaps you weren't as good a friend as you should have been.

Self-awareness is important in our relationships, but you also have to balance it. The act of self-reflection should be to determine how your actions affect your friendships, not to act as a martyr or take the blame for everything. Understanding your role and acknowledging the things you do wrong will help you keep a harmonious social life.

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How to Be More Self-Aware - Understanding Yourself

Awareness is the ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns.[1] In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.

Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware, or may be acutely unaware of an event. Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience. Insects have awareness that you are trying to swat them or chase after them. But insects do not have consciousness in the usual sense, because they lack the brain capacity for thought and understanding.

Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awareness or, self-awareness.[2] Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the qualia developed by other networks.[3]

Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central and peripheral nervous system provides more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mind might be aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousness.

Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the brain stem. Bjorn Merker,[4] an independent neuroscientist in Stockholm, Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in infants with hydranencephaly. "Higher" forms of awareness including self-awareness require cortical contributions, but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem which human beings share with most of the vertebrates. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasizes that this form of primary consciousness consists of the capacity to generate emotions and an awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. In the same way, people can become conscious of a feeling that they can't label or describe, a phenomenon that's especially common in pre-verbal infants.

Due to this discovery medical definitions of brain death as a lack of cortical activity face a serious challenge.[citation needed]

Down the brain stem lie interconnected regions that regulate the direction of eye gaze and organize decisions about what to do next, such as reaching for a piece of food or pursuing a potential mate.[citation needed]

The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations. One factor is "baseline shifts" due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areas that affects the neural processing of subsequent perceptual judgments.[5] Such top down biasing can occur through two distinct processes: an attention driven baseline shift in the alpha waves, and a decision bias reflected in gamma waves.[6]

Outside of neuroscience biologists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela contributed their Santiago theory of cognition in which they wrote:

Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.[7]

This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at organic levels that we don't usually consider to be aware. Given the possible relationship between awareness and cognition, and consciousness, this theory contributes an interesting perspective in the philosophical and scientific dialogue of awareness and living systems theory.

In cooperative settings, awareness is a term used to denote knowledge created through the interaction of an agent and its environment in simple terms knowing what is going on.[8] In this setting, awareness is meant to convey how individuals monitor and perceive the information surrounding their colleagues and the environment they are in. This information is incredibly useful and critical to the performance and success of collaborations.[9][10] Awareness can be further defined by breaking it down into a set of characteristics:[11]

Different categories of awareness have been suggested based on the type of information being obtained or maintained:[12]

These categories are not mutually exclusive, as there can be significant overlap in what a particular type of awareness might be considered. Rather, these categories serve to help understand what knowledge might be conveyed by a particular type of awareness or how that knowledge might be conveyed. Workspace awareness is of particular interest to the CSCW community, due to the transition of workspaces from physical to virtual environments.

While the type of awareness above refers to knowledge a person might need in a particular situation, context awareness and location awareness refer to information a computer system might need in a particular situation. These concepts of large importance especially for AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting) applications.

The term of location awareness still is gaining momentum with the growth of ubiquitous computing. First defined with networked work positions (network location awareness), it has been extended to mobile phones and other mobile communicable entities. The term covers a common interest in whereabouts of remote entities, especially individuals and their cohesion in operation. The term of context awareness is a superset including the concept of location awareness. It extends the awareness to context features of an operational target as well as to context of an operational area.

Covert awareness is the knowledge of something without knowing it. Some patients with specific brain damage are for example unable to tell if a pencil is horizontal or vertical.[citation needed] They are however able to grab the pencil, using the correct orientation of the hand and wrist. This condition implies that some of the knowledge the mind possesses is delivered through alternate channels than conscious intent.[original research?]

Awareness forms a basic concept of the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy.

In general, "awareness" may also refer to public or common knowledge or understanding about a social, scientific, or political issue, and hence many movements try to foster "awareness" of a given subject, that is, "raising awareness". Examples include AIDS awareness and Multicultural awareness.

Awareness may refer to anesthesia awareness.

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Awareness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Self-awareness is one of the first components of the self-concept to emerge. While self-awareness is something that is central to each and every one of us, it is not something that we are acutely aware of at every moment of every day. Instead, self-awareness becomes woven into the fabric of who we are and emerges at different points depending upon the situation and our personality. We are not born with self-awareness, however.

Researchers have demonstrated that the awareness of ourselves begins to emerge at around one year of age and becomes much more developed by around 18 months of age.

How Do Experts Define Self-Awareness?

When Does Self-Awareness Emerge?

Lewis and Brooks-Gun (1979) conducted some interesting research on how self-awareness develops. The researchers applied a red dot to an infant's nose and then held the child up to a mirror. Children who recognize themselves in the mirror will reach for their own noses rather than the reflection in the mirror, indicating that they have at least some self-awareness. Lewis and Brooks-Gun found that almost no children under one year of age would reach for their own nose rather than the reflection in the mirror. About 25 percent of the infants between 15 and 18 months reached for their own noses, while about 70 percent of those between 21 and 24 months did so.

It is important to note that the Lewis and Brooks-Gun study only indicates an infant's visual self-awareness; children might actually possess other forms of self-awareness even at this early point in life. Researchers Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, and Weiss (1989) suggest that the expression of emotions involves self-awareness as well as an ability to think about oneself in relation to other people.

How Does Self-Awareness Develop?

Researchers believe that an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate, a region of the frontal lobe, plays an important role in the development of self-awareness. The Lewis and Brooks-Gun experiment indicates that self-awareness begins to emerge in children around the age of 18 months, an age that coincides with the rapid growth of spindle cells in the anterior cingulate. Researchers have also used brain imaging to show that this region becomes activated in adults who are self-aware.

Types of Self-Awareness

Psychologists often break self-awareness down into two different types, either public or private.

Self-Consciousness: A Heightened State of Self-Awareness

Sometimes, people can become overly self-aware and veer into what is known as self-consciousness. Have you ever felt like everyone was watching you, judging your actions, and waiting to see what you will do next? This heightened state of self-awareness can leave you feeling awkward and nervous in some instances. In a lot of cases, these feelings of self-consciousness are only temporary and arise in situations when we are "in the spotlight." For some people, however, self-consciousness can become a chronic condition.

People who are privately self-conscious have a higher level of private self-awareness, which can be both a good and bad thing. These people tend to be more aware of their feelings and beliefs, and are therefore more likely to stick to their personal values. However, they are also more likely to suffer from negative health consequences such as increased stress and anxiety. They sometimes tend to ruminate on events and feelings and may experience more depression.

People who are publicly self-conscious have a higher level of public self-awareness. They tend to think more about how other people view them and are often concerned that other people might be judging them based upon their looks or their actions. As a result, these individuals tend to stick to group norms and try to avoid situations in which they might look bad or feel embarrassed.

More Psychology Definitions: The Psychology Dictionary

Browse the Psychology Dictionary

References:

Crisp, R. J. & Turner, R. N. (2010). Essential social psychology. London: Sage Publications.

Froming, W.J., Corley, E.B., and Rinker, L. (1990). The influence of public self consciousness, and the audience's characteristic on withdrawal from embarrassing situations. Journal of Personality, 58,(4), 603-622.

Lewis, M. & Brooks-Gunn, J. (1978). Self knowledge and emotional development. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.), The development of affect: The genesis of behavior, 1 (pp. 205-226). New York: Plenum Press.

Mullen, B. & Suls, J. (1982). Know thyself: Stressful life changes and the ameliorative effect of private self-consciousness. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 43-55.

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What Is Self-Awareness? How Does It Develop?

Self Awareness is having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions. Self Awareness allows you to understand other people, how they perceive you, your attitude and your responses to them in the moment.

We might quickly assume that we are self aware, but it is helpful to have a relative scale for awareness. If you have ever been in an auto accident you may have experienced everything happening in slow motion and noticing details of your thought process and the event. This is a state if heightened awareness. With practice we can learn to engage these types of heightened states and see new opportunities for interpretations in our thoughts, emotions, and conversations.

Why Develop Self Awareness? As you develop self awareness you are able to make changes in the thoughts and interpretations you make in your mind. Changing the interpretations in your mind allows you to change your emotions. Self awareness is one of the attributes of Emotional Intelligence and an important factor in achieving success.

Self awareness is the first step in creating what you want and mastering your. Where you focus your attention, your emotions, reactions, personality and behavior determine where you go in life.

Having self awareness allows you to see where your thoughts and emotions are taking you. It also allows you to see the controls of your emotions, behavior, and personality so you can make changes you want. Until you are aware in the moment of the controls to your thoughts, emotions, words, and behavior, you will have difficulty making changes in the direction of your life.

Self Awareness in Relationships Relationships are easy until there is emotional turmoil. This is the same whether you are at work or in your personal life. When you can change the interpretation in your mind of what you think you can change your emotions and shift the emotional quality of your relationships. When you can change the emotions in your relationships you open up entirely new possibilities your life.

Having a clear understanding of your thought and, behavior patterns helps you understand other people. This ability to empathize facilitates better personal and professional relationships.

Develop Self Awareness Self awareness is developed through practices in focusing your attention on the details of your personality and behavior. It isnt learned from reading a book. When you read a book you are focusing your attention on the conceptual ideas in the book. With your attention in a book you are practicing not paying attention to your own behavior, emotions and personality.

Think of learning to be mindful and self aware as learning to dance. When learning to dance we have to pay attention to how and where our feet move, our hands and body motion, what our partner is doing, music, beat, floor space, and other dancers. Self awareness isnt learned from books and the Tango isnt either. In my years of study and working with clients I have discovered many useful techniques that accelerate the learning. I have incorporated these techniques into the Self Mastery audio course. The first four sessions are available free.

In the process of these sessions I am not telling anybody what to believe, how they should think, or what they should do. I am basically sharing with people exercises in raising their self awareness. When you become more self aware you instinctively begin to see aspects of your personality and behavior that you didnt notice before.

If you have an emotional reaction of anger or frustration, you notice many of the thoughts and small triggers that build up towards those emotions. You also notice moments when you can change the interpretations in your mind, or not believe what we are thinking. In this heightened awareness you instinctively make better choices in your thought process long before an emotional reaction or destructive behavior.

Making changes in your behavior is much easier to do when you catch them early in the dynamic, before the momentum of thought and emotion has gathered steam. The changes in your mind, and behavior become simple and easy steps when you develop self awareness. See the Self Mastery Course for the step by step process and exercises. You can also learn about these practices from the book Mindworks: A practical guide for changing Thoughts, Beliefs and Emotional Reactions.

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Self Awareness - Pathway to Happiness

Although it is probably one of the least discussed leadership competencies, self-awareness is possibly one of the most valuable. Self-awareness is being conscious of what you're good at while acknowledging what you still have yet to learn. This includes admitting when you don't have the answer and owning up to mistakes.

In our highly competitive culture, this can seem counterintuitive. In fact, many of us operate on the belief that we must appear as though we know everything all the time or else people will question our abilities, diminishing our effectiveness as leaders.

If you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that really the opposite is true. Because whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. So rather than conceal them, the person who tries to hide weaknesses actually highlights them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and self-awareness.

It's easy to see how pretending to know everything when you don't can create situations that can be problematic for your entire organization. On the other hand, when you take responsibility for what you don't know, you benefit both yourself and your organization.

On an interpersonal level, self-awareness of your strengths and weaknesses can net you the trust of others and increase your credibility -- both of which will increase your leadership effectiveness.

On an organizational level, the benefits are even greater. When you acknowledge what you have yet to learn, you're modeling that in your organization it's okay to admit you don't have all the answers, to make mistakes and most importantly, to ask for help. These are all characteristics of an organization that is constantly learning and springboards to innovation and agility -- two hallmarks of high performing organizations.

Most likely, your strengths are what got you to this point in your career. As your role in your organization changes, you must be careful not to overplay a former strength to the point that it actually becomes a weakness.

For example, let's say you're great with detail and have done good things for your organization as an individual contributor and get rewarded with a management role. Continuing to delve in the details once you're responsible for projects and people will cause you to lose ground with 1) your reports, who will feel unnecessary; and 2) your superiors, who may rethink your readiness for managerial responsibility.

Acknowledging the need to become better at anything is only the beginning, and it's often the most difficult step in the whole process. In many cases, individuals successfully come to the realization that something's not working but have no clue how to change it into something that works.

This difficulty to see in yourself what others see so easily is what makes the path to self-awareness so challenging. One way to get started is by soliciting and listening to feedback from those who work with you.

There are several ways you can get feedback about your work performance. Formally, you can get it through 360 multi-rater assessments. In a 360, peers, superiors and reports anonymously provide feedback on all aspects of your behavior.

Informally, you can make time once a day to reflect on the day's events, e.g. how people reacted to you, how fluidly you were able to work with or manage others, etc. To do this effectively on your own requires a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence, or EQ as it's often called, is defined as awareness of your own and others' emotions, and how they are impacted by situations. Some people are simply born with a high EQ but with diligent introspection it can be cultivated to a degree in everyone.

If you fall into the latter category, another more practical method that falls somewhere in between the formality of a 360 and the informality of quiet daily reflection is to get in the habit of doing regular post-mortems on every project in which you are involved. In order to do this effectively however, you must learn to do two things: ask good questions, and listen without justifying or defending your actions.

The skill of asking good questions can be invaluable to you and your organization. When the question is about your own performance however, it can be harder to be objective about negative feedback. When you show that you are equally open to all types of feedback, you demonstrate self-awareness and the willingness to learn.

Plus, asking questions models a solid, transparent approach to problem-solving and decision-making that benefits everyone in an organization. But perhaps most importantly, it models that it's okay not to know everything, which encourages everyone that it's okay to be constantly learning.

By modeling habits of good self-awareness you help to create a more self-aware organization. An organization that is self-aware is open to learning and better equipped to adjust quickly to changes as the marketplace dictates. This ability is the defining characteristic of a learning organization and possibly the most compelling reason all managers at all levels should include self-awareness in their development goals.

Once you've solicited feedback it's crucial that you listen without justifying your actions or people will stop giving you feedback. Moreover, when you are busy defending your actions, you miss what the person is trying to tell you.

If on the other hand you listen and accept feedback without defending yourself, you're more likely to hear what you need to hear, increasing your credibility with the person giving you feedback and creating a trust bond that will enable them to continue providing useful feedback in the future.

No doubt most of us would answer with confidence that we are pretty darn self-aware. Before you take self-awareness off your development radar screen, consider this: According to research* on management styles, you're more likely to be unaware of your behavior and how it impacts others if normally tend to operate at the extremes.

For example, at one extreme are the "Originators." Originators tend to be quick decision-makers who aren't afraid of confrontation or taking risks. On the other end of the spectrum you'll find "Conservers." Conservers are much more rule-bound and conflict- and change-averse. Most people fall somewhere in between these two extremes and are aptly labeled as "Pragmatists." Pragmatists don't either seek out or avoid confrontation. More practical and flexible, they tend to focus on issues in the order in which they need to be resolved.

So if you identify more with the descriptions of the Originator or Conserver, this may be an indicator that you are not as self-aware as you think you are. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of management styles, the benefits of greater self-awareness should be incentive enough to consistently seek (and listen to) as much feedback as possible on your performance at work.

When you pretend to know it all and never admit mistakes, you model behavior that can have negative consequences for yourself and your entire organization. Conversely, when you are self-aware enough to openly admit missteps and concede that you still have plenty to learn, you turn mistakes are learning opportunities and give people permission to be collaborative without fear of appearing unqualified.

To begin to increase your self-awareness, seek feedback on your performance from others by asking good questions and listening without justifying or defending your actions. Remember, organizations benefit far more from leaders who take responsibility for what they don't know than from leaders who pretend to know it all.

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Self Awareness and the Effective Leader - Inc.com

Developing Self Awareness A Historic Practice Self awareness is the key theme in the meditation practiced for centuries by the Buddhists. They advised staring back at your thoughts. Matthieu Ricard, a respected Buddhist monk said: "One may wonder what people do in retreats, sitting for eight hours a day. They familiarize themselves with a new way of dealing with the arising of thoughts."

"When you start getting used to recognizing thoughts as they arise, it is like rapidly spotting someone you know in a crowd. When a powerful thought or anger arises, you recognize it. That helps you to avoid being overwhelmed by this thought." Self awareness is a powerful method of controlling your mind.

Developing Self Awareness The Difficulty But, developing self awareness is not easy for everyone. Eugene Gendlin, created his Focusing therapy to help people to achieve self awareness. It is a psychotherapeutic routine, which has helped thousands of people to develop self awareness and to calm their distressed minds. But, Gendlin noted that only certain clients really benefited from his therapy. Such people had higher scores on intelligence, ego strength, character and self-control, emotional stability, tender mindedness and introspectiveness." They repressed less, were less defensive, more self-disclosing and were willing to attribute difficulties to internal causes.

Those who instinctively attribute their troubles to external causes may not benefit from these pages. Their minds reject the possibility of effective self improvement. But, dear reader, your interest in reading these pages indicates your suspicion that internal causes may also be the cause of your emotional problems. You fit into the category that can be helped. You can develop self awareness.

Developing Self Awareness The Importance Of Attention Self awareness depends on the innate ability of your mind to focus its attention. William James, the father of American psychology, defined attention as "the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneous objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are its essence." When you pay attention, you can instantly feel the touch of cloth on your shoulder, a tightness in your hands, or a thought as it arises in your mind. Attention is a neuronal process.

Maunsell discovered that attention triggers increased neural activity in the observed circuits within your mind. At the same time, attention inhibits activity in the immediate surroundings. Maunsell had studied neural signals in the visual area of the cortex of monkeys, when viewing a swarm of dots on a computer screen. He was able to correlate the firing of specific neurons, with recognition of the movement of specific dots. When the animal focused on just one of the dots, the directed attention caused the neurons that signaled its motion to fire more strongly. At the same time, neural signals related to other dots were attenuated. When you pay attention, you can highlight your thoughts and and your cortex perceives them.

Developing Self Awareness The Observer & The Observed Millions of years of evolutionary development assembled a triune brain within your mind. Within it, a rational prefrontal intelligence and lower level mammalian and reptilian brains constantly develop competing survival strategies. Typically, the common sense in your prefrontal regions seeks a rational strategy. Anger searches for a successful aggressive strategy and fear, for a sound defensive one. If these searches fail, your feelings of fear, anger, or disappointment become more intense. Your turmoil increases, when fear or anger instinctively trigger visceral reactions. But, your common sense sees failure as merely another event.

Your prefrontal brain also brings you your conscious awareness. That awareness can be overwhelmed by your sensation of fear, anger and the related visceral reactions. But, the same region can direct attention to isolate and observe your own emotional responses. I can feel the fear. With practice, you learn to observe the impulsive thoughts arising from lower levels. You learn to sense the visceral responses of your body. The common sense of your prefrontal regions is responsible for such self awareness. Since that observing region is independent of the lower levels, your viewpoint becomes free from troubling emotions. Self awareness frees you from torture by your animal instincts. All it needs is a little practice.

Developing Self Awareness Proprioception And Relaxation Developing self awareness merely requires systematic observation. But, it takes a few days. As a first step, use your sensory ability to become aware of the position of your body with your eyes closed. Proprioception is the distinct sensory ability, where nerve impulses from the stretch receptors in your muscles inform your brain of the beginning and end of each joint movement. Lying in your bed in a dark room, you have the capacity to become aware of the position of your limbs with your eyes closed. Sense this feeling. This can be your first step into self awareness.

Also become aware of any tightness in your muscles. Consciously tighten and relax your muscles. Such a practice will enable you to better control the responses of your body. While lying in bed, practice tightening and relaxation all the way from the muscles in your toes to those in your neck and eyes. Within a couple of weeks, you can learn to relax on demand. Tensed muscles can trigger angry, or fearful thoughts without your awareness. Relaxing your body is the first step in removing the chatter of troubling stress messages. It is then easier to pay attention to the vast inner worlds within your mind.

Developing Self Awareness The Cause Of Stress Your mind works at lightning speed by actively searching for solutions to the problems faced by you. An animal escapes from danger by finding a suitable hiding place. It searches its own memories for the nearest shelter. Animals have hiding places. People are less fortunate. In the modern world, running away is not an option and problems have no immediate solutions. There are no instantly available hiding places. Your mind searches for ways to escape from your problems, or to remove obstructions. Emotions are triggered, when these internal searches lead to frustration.

Emotions often have an unpleasant quality. Medical texts report that pain is felt in two waves, separated by an interval of a few tenths of a second. The first is a sensation of pain, which is sharp and localized. The second is an emotional drive signal, which patients report as being a more disagreeable sense of hurt. Stimulation of certain nerve cells in the temporal lobe causes a patient to feel the awful dread emotion. Emotions are real nerve signals in your nervous system. Self awareness is the ability to independently identify emotions as and when they occur.

Developing Self Awareness Identify Your Primary Concerns Self awareness becomes easier, when you categorize the storm of emotions within you. The Self Improvment Plan presented in this website can put you quickly in lucid touch with your most troubling concerns. This method of self assessment depends on the capacity of your mind to get swiftly to the essentials, such as when you prepare a simple shopping list. The procedure will bring to your notice troubling issues such as the conflicts between career and personal life.

When you evaluate the list subsequently, RI, your common sense, takes charge, differentiating the facts from your emotional responses. Self awareness is the skill of consciously identifying your emotional outbursts. You gradually become familiar with the viewpoints of the animal intelligences, which attack you with their warped strategies for survival. In the process, self awareness isolates your common sense, and frees it from emotional turmoil.

In subsequent steps, the Self Improvement Plan lists the various options available to you. Reality will then dawn on you that there are no immediate solutions to quite a few of the problems you face. Acceptance of such unpleasant facts in life will help still the emotional storms within. Settling your primary concerns will lead your attention to uncover the simpler emotions like envy, jealousy, guilt or irritability, which trouble you. Self awareness is the key to stilling such emotions, which spoil your calm.

Developing Self Awareness Envy And Jealousy For most emotions, we experience only a mild sense of discomfort. But, such emotions like envy and jealousy trouble many good natured people. These emotions are not shameful feelings. They are the responses of the deep wisdom within your mind to personal failure. Jealousy originates from fear or anger over the prospect of failure in achieving a desired goal. Career growth, a partner's love, or a mother's undivided attention are usually the threatened goals.

Envy originates from regret, leading to anger, over one's powerlessness to get an alluring asset owned by a perceived equal. Self awareness helps you to notice your discomfort over such events. Identify the failures in life, which haunt you. Then you can act to prevent failure in future, or learn to come to terms with it. When such failure does not trouble you, envy, or jealousy will not trouble you again.

Developing Self Awareness Low Self Esteem Some people are burdened by persistent internal voices, which tell them that they are failures. Their low self esteem may be caused early in life, by bullying even as they were too timid to fight back. They may be very successful people, but these early critical voices persist. For every success story, there are many ordinary workers. Low self-esteem can punish them with crippling reminders of being failures.

Self awareness can recognize these troubling messages. Recognition of such messages will quiet the harsh voices. Common sense will put their lives in proper perspective. Overcoming low self-esteem will not work miracles. It will not convert quiet people into extroverts. But, it will still turmoil. They will feel comfortable about not being the life of the party. Not burdened by persistent inner criticism, they can go on to discover and exploit their innate talents.

Developing Self Awareness Empathy Self awareness can improve your capacity to communicate with people. The human brain has a mirror neuron network, which uses sensory clues to enable a person to experience the feelings of another person. In experiments with monkeys, researchers report that specific neurons fire when an animal reaches for a peanut, pulls a lever, or pushes a door. Iaccomo Rizzolati and Vittorio Gallasse discovered that neurons in the same regions also fire, when the monkey watches another monkey perform similar actions. In humans, neural signals, which signify pain were reported when watching another person being pricked by a needle. Your mirror neurons enable empathy by making you experience the feelings of the people you communicate with.

Self awareness can strengthen your sensitivity to people, when you pay attention to sensing their feelings. Insensitivity to this massive world of information, which is available to you within your own mind, can weaken all your interactions in life. How do they feel about your decisions? What are their motivations? Strengthen your capacity to empathize by being open to the nerve signals, which your brain sends you, based on its assessments of their objectives and motivations. Become aware of the feelings of others.

Developing Self Awareness Controlling Anger Anger is merely a punishing viewpoint. It destroys your peace of mind and ruins your relationships. Self awareness can change that viewpoint. Once changed, your mind will not shrink back to its narrow views. The stressful anger signals originate from the amygdala, an almond sized organ in your brain. When they are stilled, controls pass to the common sense of your prefrontal brain. You can't wish your anger away, because your mind disregards such wishes.

You mind will respond intuitively to practical experience. First, your mind needs to be convinced that anger is a problem and not a solution. Second, you need to come to terms with the pivotal sources of your anger, reducing its causes. Third, you need to become aware of and detect the onset of anger, whenever it raises its head. Your attention to the telltale signals from your amygdala will gradually still any remaining anger signals. Each time your common sense wins, your neural circuits will have put an end to one knee jerk response. Self awareness can save you from seething against the inevitable thorns and barbs of life and accept it as it is, with its many unexpected potholes.

This page was last updated on 31-Dec-2013

Back in 1902, the great sage Ramana Maharshi offered to his pupil a method of reaching an enduringly happy state, where there is no mind.

Developing Self Awareness Developing self awareness makes you understand your feelings, your behaviour and your actions. It gives you the clarity and freedom to change all those characteristics you want to change to achieve your goal.

The Body Window Find health and healing through the use of your body as a tool for intuition. Your body is a 'window' to your true self or your soul. You can be free of pain and dis-ease by learning how to use this intuition!

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Developing Self Awareness - Effective Mind Control