Knowing Oneself:

Understanding oneself during

middle and late adolescence
At the end of this module, you will be
able to:
1. explain that knowing yourself can
make you accept your strengths and
limitations and dealing with others
better;
2. share your unique characteristics,
habits and experiences; and,
3. maintain a journal
Activity1:
Prepare a short self-introduction that includes
facts about yourselves that you think your
peers or classmates do not know. Complete
the prompt: “Hi, I am _______________.”
Take turns in reading your self-introduction to
the class.
Activity 2: SELF-CONCEPT
Imagine yourself looking into a mirror.
Self-concept
• It refers to your awareness of yourself.
• It is the way people think about themselves.
• As a global understanding of oneself, self-
concept shapes and defines who we are
• The decisions we make, and the relationships
we form.
• It is our individual perceptions of our
behavior, abilities, and unique characteristics
—a mental picture of who you are as a
person.
Humanist psychologist, Carl Rogers
believed that there were three
different parts of self-concept:
Self-image

how you see yourself. Each individual’s

self-image is a mixture of different
attributes including our physical
characteristics, personality traits, and
social roles. Self-image doesn't
necessarily coincide with reality.
• It is the one that you actually see.
• It is the self that has characteristics that you
were nurtured or, in some cases, born to have.
• It is who we actually are
• It is how we think, how we feel, look, and act.
• The actual self is our self-image.
Self-esteem
• how much you value yourself. A number of
factors can impact
• self-esteem, including how we compare
ourselves to others and how others respond
to us. When people respond positively to our
behavior, we are more
• likely to develop positive self-esteem. When
we compare ourselves to others
• and find ourselves lacking, it can have a
negative impact on our self-esteem.
Ideal self,

• how you wish you could be. In many cases,

the way we see ourselves and how we would
like to see ourselves do not quite match up
• It is the self that you aspire to be.
Ideal self
• It is an idealized image that we have developed
over time, based on what we have learned and
experienced.
• It could include components of what our parents
have taught us, what we admire in others, what our
society promotes, and what we think is in our best
interest.
The Benefits of Self-
Concept
Happiness
• You will be happier when you can express
who you are.
• Expressing your desires will make it more
likely that you get what you want.
Less inner conflict
• When your outside actions are in accordance
with your inside feelings and values, you will
experience less inner conflict.
Better decision-making.
• When you know yourself, you are able to make
better choices about everything, from small
decisions like which sweater you’ll buy to big
decisions like which partner you’ll spend your life
with. You'll have guidelines you can apply to solve
life’s varied problems.
Self-control.
• When you know yourself, you understand what
motivates you to resist bad habits and develop
good ones. You'll have the insight to know which
values and goals activate your willpower.
Resistance to social pressure.
• When you are grounded in your values and
preferences, you are less likely to say “yes” when
you want to say “no.”
Tolerance and understanding of others.
• Your awareness of your own foibles and struggles
can help you empathize with others.
Vitality and pleasure.
• Being who you truly are helps you feel more alive
and makes your experience of life richer, larger,
and more exciting.
Personal Effectiveness

• means making use of all the personal

resources –
talents, skills, energy and time, to enable you
to achieve life goals.
• Our personal effectiveness depends on our
innate characteristics – talent and
experience accumulated in the process of
personal development.
Talents first are needed to be identified and then
developed to be used in a particular subject area
(science, literature, sports, politics, etc.).
Experience includes knowledge and skills that we
acquire in the process of cognitive and practical
activities.
Knowledge is required for setting goals, defining an
action plan to achieve them and risk assessment.
Skills also determine whether real actions are
performed in
accordance with the plan.
Here are some skills that will greatly
increase the efficiency of any person
who owns them:
Determination.
• It allows you to focus only on achieving a specific
goal without being distracted by less important
things or spontaneous desires.
• It may be developed with the help of self-
discipline exercise.
Self-confidence.
• It appears in the process of personal
development, as a result of getting aware of
yourself, your actions and their consequences.
• Self-confidence is manifested in speech,
appearance, dressing, gait, and physical
condition.
• To develop it, you need to learn yourself and your
capabilities, gain positive attitude and believe
that by performing right actions and achieving
right goals you will certainly reach success.
Persistence.
• It makes you keep moving forward regardless of
emerging obstacles – problems, laziness, bad
emotional state, etc. It reduces the costs of
overcoming obstacles.
• It can also be developed with the help of self-
discipline exercise.
Managing stress.
• It helps combat stress that arises in daily life from
the environment and other people. Stress arises from
the uncertainty in an unknown situation when a lack
of information creates the risk of negative
consequences of your actions. It increases efficiency
Problem-solving skills.
• They help cope with the problems encountered
with a
lack of experience.
• It increases efficiency by adopting new ways of
achieving goals when obtaining a new experience.
Creativity.
• It allows you to find extraordinary ways to carry
out a specific action that no one has tried to use.
• It can lead to a decrease or an increase of costs,
but usually the speed of action is greatly increased
when using creative tools.
Generating ideas.
• It helps you achieve goals using new, original,
unconventional ideas.
• Idea is a mental image of an object formed by the
human
mind, which can be changed before being
implemented in the real world.
• For generating ideas, you can use a method of
mental maps, which allows you to materialize,
visualize and scrutinize all your ideas, which in
turn contributes to the emergence of new ideas.