Chapter 4 The Self

Chapter 4  The Self

The area of ‘self’ can be explored and widen into 4 types , which is:

(a)    Self-concept

(b)   Self-awareness

(c)    Self-esteem

(d)   Self-disclosure

(a) Self-concept

Self-concept is your image of who you are, it’s how you perceive yourself: your feeling and thoughts about your strengths and weaknesses, your abilities and limitations. There are some components of the self-concept.

(1) Others’ images of you

Looking-glass self: we’d look at the image or ourselves that others reveal to us through the way they communicate with us. We would look to those who are most significant in our life, such as family members, friends, and romantic partners.

(2) Comparisons with others

We compare ourselves with others, most often with our peers. This gives us a clearer idea of how effectively we performed. We will gain different perspectives when we see ourselves in comparison to our peers.

(3) Cultural teachings

Our culture instills in us a variety of beliefs, values, and attitudes about such things as success. Our ability to achieve what our culture defines as success, whereas our failure to achieve what our culture encourages contributes to a negative self-concept.

(4) Self-interpretations and self-evaluations

Self-interpretations are our reconstruction of the incident and our understanding of it. Self-evaluations are the value that we place or the behavior. Self-interpretation and self-evaluation are our standards that apply to our ethical and moral reasoning, beliefs and comprehension and conformity of things around us.

(b) Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the knowledge of who you are, of your traits, your strengths and limitations, your emotions and behaviors, your individuality, it is basic to all communication. Johari window, is a metaphoric division of the self into four areas.

(1) Open self

This self represents all the information, behaviors, attitudes, and feelings about ourselves that we know and that others also know. This size of the open self varies according to our personality and the people whom we’re relating.

(2) Blind self

This self represents knowledge about us that others have but you don’t. It’s important to reduce our blind self and learn what others know about us.

(3) Unknown self

This self represents those part of ourselves that neither you nor others know. This is information that is buried in our subconscious.

(4) Hidden self

This self represents all the knowledge we have of ourselves but keep secret form others.

We should try to increase awareness of our own needs, desires, habits, beliefs, and attitudes. Here are some various ways:
(a) Listen to others                                          (c) Seek information about ourselves
(b) Increase our open self                              (d) Dialogue with ourselves

(c) Self-EsteemSelf-esteem is a measure of how valuable we think we are. People with high self-esteem think very highly of themselves, whereas people with low self-esteem view themselves negatively. The basic idea behind building self-esteem is what when we feel goof bout ourselves. Here are five suggestions to increase self-esteem.
(1) Attack self-destructive beliefs
-Challenge beliefs you have about yourself that are unproductive or that make it more difficult for you to achieve your goals.
-self-destructive beliefs set unrealistically high standard and therefore almost always lead to failure.
(2) seek out nourishing people
-Nourishing people are positive and optimistic. They also reward us, they stroke is, they make us feel good about ourselves.
-Identification with people similar to us also seems to increase self-esteem.
(3) Work on projects that will result in success.
-We should select projects that will result in success. Each success will help build self-esteem.
-Each success will make the next success a little easier.
(4) Remind yourself of your successes
-We should focus on correct what we did wrong or identify the skills that we need to correct these failures. Focusing on failures can have some positive value.
(5)Secure affirmation
-We should remind ourselves of our successes with self-affirmation that we focus on our good deeds, our positive qualities, strengths, and virtues.

(d) Self-disclosureSelf-disclosure is a type of communication in which we reveal information about ourselves that we normally keep hidden. There are some factors that influence self-disclosure.
(1) who you are-Highly sociable people vs less sociable people
(2) Your culture- Different culture
(3) Your gender- Males vs females
(4) Your listeners- small groups, normally a groups of two people.
(5) Your topic and channel- information that we likely to disclosure