Self awareness and reflection
Sub-Topic 1
Skills
Below are the skills in this Sub-Topic:
- I am able to gain perspective and take the time to step back and process events or circumstances during my day to day activities and decision making.
- I will actively seek out opportunities for self reflection and to learn from my experiences.
Advanced Skills
These skills are designed to assist with career, role and personal development. These should be considered once you are confident in the relevant skills above.
- I am able to encourage team members to reflect on their experiences and learn from others to support their personal and professional development.
Overview
Self awareness can be described as the ability to focus on yourself and understand how your actions, thoughts or emotions impact on your circumstances or working environment. If you are self aware you can objectively manage your emotions and often understand how others may see you. You can be objective and notice both emotional and physical reactions, often before anyone else notices them.
Reflection (or self/personal reflection) is simply taking the time to think about, evaluate and give serious thought to your behaviours, thoughts, attitudes, motivations and desires. You can take the time to understand what happened, why it happened, circumstances which may have lead to the issue (internal and external) and learn and adapt yourself for future, similar situations.
Taking part in supervision sessions, assessing and thinking about how you learn, how you develop and how you support yourself can improve your motivation and performance at work, as well as having a positive impact on your interactions with service users/patients.
Why is this importantWhy is this important
Taking time to consider what you wish to achieve and what motivates or drives you is important for your own personal and professional development. Reflection can often reduce the impact of a stressful or anxious situation.
Understanding your own behaviours and attitudes will assist you in working with service users and patients, especially at times of high emotion, distress or crisis.
Being self aware of your own needs is equally important particularly if you are sharing your lived experience of mental health services. Understanding your own boundaries to what and how you want to share your experience is part of the role.
Skills ReviewSkills Review
Having completed this sub-topic I will understand the importance of these skills.
- I am able to gain perspective and take the time to step back and process events or circumstances during my day to day activities and decision making.
- I will actively seek out opportunities for self reflection and to learn from my experiences.