Self aware: Optimize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses

As child care workers we must look after ourselves. We feel better about ourselves when we see and understand ourselves clearly. Kathy Mitchell leads us through six important areas of self-awareness ...

1. The accuracy of our self-perception
The ability to perceive one's behavior accurately is the first step towards changing weaknesses into strengths. The examples below show how:

a. Linda is able to perceive behavior accurately and thus take steps to improve her relationships and management skills.

b. Philip is unable to see his areas of weakness and therefore is not able to change and grow.

Linda is manager of a shop selling office equipment. A year ago she became aware that many of the 30 employees who worked in the shop were unhappy in their work. Linda had a series of conversations with her staff to find out the reasons for their dissatisfaction. Feedback about her behavior included the that some staff found her offhand and that also she rarely expressed appreciation to anyone. Linda accepted these criticisms and worked on avoiding 'put-downs' and on her skills in expressing-appreciation. Once Linda acquired better managerial skills, both morale and sales in the shop noticeably improved.

Philip has an unhappy relationship with his 12-year-old son Stuart. Philip locates the problem in Stuart and thinks “Stuart has to learn to grow up before we can be happy together". Philip's inability to assume some responsibility for better parenting skills helps to keep both Stuart and himself stuck in their repetitive cycles of negative behavior.

A focus on weaknesses and difficulties is a direct result of faulty self-perception, because one is not able to acknowledge also one's strengths and successes!

Accurate self-perception also helps one to be realistic about the role of mistakes and set backs. If you are able to see that mistakes and setbacks may be uncomfortable – but that you are learning all the time and beginning to improve, you are more likely to overcome your weakness. If, however, you see yourself as useless and stupid when you make mistakes, you are likely to give up on yourself and fall prey to self-doubt and self condemnation.

Accurate self-perception allows you to assume responsibility for your own actions, i.e. your feeling, thinking and action choices, without being crippled by anxiety, low tolerance of your mistakes due to unrealistic personal rules, and the inability to evaluate your performance accurately due an imbalance between responsibility and blame.

2. Unrealistic personal rules
One of the ways in which we block our own personal growth – and thus our strengths development – is by having an unrealistic set of personal “do's and don'ts" which governs the way we lead our lives. Inappropriately rigid internal rules are characterized by “musts", “oughts" and “shoulds". Ellis coined the term “mustabation" to refer to these harsh personal rules which keep us locked into our own weakness areas. For example, the feeling area rule that: “I shouldn't have negative feelings about other people" may interfere with open and honest communication necessary for intimacy! Other unrealistic personal rules include:

Thinking. I must not think for myself.
Relationships. I must always be liked by everyone.
Study. I must always learn and not make mistakes.
Work. I must always feel fulfilled in my work.
Leisure. Work must come before leisure.
Health. I must not acknowledge when my body feels stressed.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these? Discuss: What other unrealistic personal rules do you have? Make a commitment to change them into more flexible and realistic standards for yourself and others.

3. Blame-responsibility balance
We often attribute responsibility or blame as a way of explaining to ourselves what happens in our lives – and we often get this wrong. Below are some common errors that effectively block personal growth and sustain lifeskills weaknesses: 'It's my nature.' People may block themselves from change by saying that characteristics like laziness or excessive anger are their 'nature'. They fail to realize that such lifeskills weaknesses are learned and then maintained. 'It's my unfortunate past.'

People may blame their parents and others in their past when they feel they are not the people they would like to be now. These attributions of inadequate upbringing may or may not be accurate perceptions of how their weaknesses were initially acquired. However, for people who have left home, these are largely irrelevant to how they maintain their skills weaknesses in the present.

'It's my bad luck.' People often make their own luck. For example, a woman who keeps choosing inadequate partners may erroneously attribute her difficulties to bad luck rather than to her failure to develop choosing-partner lifeskills.
'It's my poor environment.' Undoubtedly, adverse social conditions like poverty, overcrowding, and poor housing may make it more difficult to develop certain lifeskills. However, we wouldn't be child care workers if we didn't believe that these effects could be changed!
'It's all your fault.' This absolutist attribution of blame is possibly the most common reason why people remain stuck with their poor anger management and conflict skills weaknesses. Why bother to develop your lifeskills when it is always someone else's fault! Responsibility for negative events is thus conveniently externalized to others.
'It's all my fault.' Blaming oneself all the time can also interfere with overcoming lifeskills weaknesses. Quite apart from causes being inaccurately identified, self-blame may erode the confidence that people need to deal with the real difficulties in their lives.

Guilt can be a constructive emotion if it leads to better lifeskills. However, guilt can be destructive if it brings about self-disparagement rather than self-improvement. Overinternalizing responsibility for negative events is a characteristic of very depressed people (Weishaar & Beck, 1986). Identify the attributional errors you use. Make a commitment to change your thinking about responsibility. Remember you are responsible for your own thinking, feeling and action choices.

4. Defensive perceptions
When we allow ourselves to see only what we want to see, we are giving way to the “Nelson-Jones reality principle" ... “if you cannot accept reality – create it!" “Defenses" (or defense mechanisms) is a term for the ways in which we handle incoming information which differs from our existing self-pictures. Defensive perceptions involve people in diminishing their awareness of life in order to remain psychologically secure and comfortable in the short term. However, they can also contribute to our maintaining weakness rather than facing them and making a decision to grow.

Below are some common defensive processes. We all use these from time to time, but do you make excessive use of any of these!

Denial. Totally warding off from conscious awareness feelings, thoughts and behaviors regarding as too frightening or threatening: for instance, clear evidence of your own hypocrisy.
Distortion. Altering feedback that you do not like to make it more acceptable to you; for instance, perceiving that you would have received better marks if your teacher had read your paper more thoroughly – when all the evidence points to the teacher being conscientious.
Intellectualization. Offering rational-sounding observations about your behavior which causes you anxiety; for instance, you have never developed adequate parenting skills because 'nowadays people are always so busy at work'. These defenses differ from excuses in that people do not face up to their behavior. In short, they deceive themselves as well as attempt to deceive others.
Avoidance. Avoidance is a common manifestation of denial: for example, by remaining unaware that you avoid developing certain lifeskills (like confronting people) that you find difficult.
Externalizing responsibility. Blaming other people rather than acknowledging your own responsibility for failing to develop your lifeskills.
Attack. 'Attack is the best method of defense.' Attacking and intimidating others who might provide negative feedback about one or more of your lifeskills – going for their jugular vein or disparaging their personality. Making up stories about yourself and others that make you seem in the right and them seem in the wrong.
Projection. Projection entails externalizing something that is internal; for instance, difficulty in the lifeskill of controlling your sexuality and setting yourself up as a guardian of public morality. In such instances people would do better to work on their own lifeskills.
Defenses against the good. Blocking off and diluting both the awareness of and also the manifestation of positive qualities such as generosity and concern for others. Being out of touch with our positive feelings maintains egocentricity. Possibly, humans are just as threatened by acknowledging their altruistic feelings as their less altruistic ones.

5. Negative self-talk
Another way in which we sustain our weaknesses is by negative self-labelling and negative self-talk. “I never get this right... “ or “I don't have a head for... “ Instead of perceiving ourselves in a balanced fashion, we overemphasize our negative points and underemphasize our positive points. This undermines our level of self-esteem and may erode our confidence and motivation to improve on our areas of weakness.

Identify negative self-labels which you apply to yourself -

I am...
I always...
I ...

Replace these with realistic positive self-labels. Negative self-talk may be contrasted with coping self-talk. Coping self-talk has two main functions: calming and coaching yourself. An example of coping self-talk might be “Keep calm". Another: “Let me take one step at a time, don't try to do it all at once."

Below are some negative self-talk statements ...

"I'm never going to be able to do it.”
"If I make a mistake it will be terrible.”
"The future is hopeless.”
"I can't stand setbacks.”
"I've tried before without success.”

Recognize some of your own negative self-talk. Try to translate this into (realistic) positive self talk. “I can learn to do this better... I'm sure I could manage this if I ... “

6. Fear of change
Our weaknesses can become well established habits if we allow them to. We can become very resistant to giving them up because we fear change. Here are seven possible reasons for fear of change:

Fear of the unknown – changing weaknesses into strengths requires risking new behaviors. The safety and certainty of old habits are no longer there.
Fear of making an effort – it may appear easier to stay as you are rather than making an effort to do things better.
Fear of losing the payoffs – For example, if you get your own way through sulking or violent outbursts you may fear that a more reasonable approach will cost you your influence.
Fear of disapproval – giving up weaknesses may bring you into conflict with others. For example, others may prefer it when you are quiet and docile rather than assertive.
Fear of inner conflict – during the transition from weakness to strength you may experience uncertainty and inner conflict.
Fear of failure – fear of not being able to cope with your new ways of behaving.
Fear of success – facing the consequences of improved functioning, for example, promotion, extra demands, etc.

Our own choice
As people who work with children in difficulties, we face two risks: one, we use ourselves as the tools of our trade; two, we do a job in which it is easy to become discouraged and confused. If we are going to put ourselves on the line each time we go on duty, we owe it to ourselves to be optimally aware of who we are, how we operate, where we go wrong, and how we can do things better. And we can offer no better gift than this to the children we work with.

Richard Nelson-Jones: Lifeskills: A Handbook. Cassell Education London. 1991