On the path of self-esteem, we can carry out different self-awareness exercises. One of the most important is to identify what are personal strengths and weaknesses. This information helps us to have a more realistic view of our inner map.
For this, we can help ourselves from the johari window, a psychology tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. A window with four fundamental elements that allow you to identify four important parts of yourself.
There is a free area of yourself where you can find that information that you know and that others also know about you. For example, what have you studied and what do you do professionally? However, there is also a blind area, that is, an area that contains details that you do not know and that, however, others identify in you. For example, some defects.
The hidden area is that part where your secrets are found, that is, information that you know but that others ignore. And finally, in the unknown area you find unconscious information that you ignore yourself, and others too.
In order to know your strengths and weaknesses In an objective way, try to complement your own gaze with the feedback you receive from your closest friends and loved ones. For example, to receive feedback on your strengths, you can propose to five people in your environment that they send you a list of five positive points that they value in you via WhatsApp. You can explain to them that it is an exercise in self-knowledge for which you require their collaboration and they will surely be happy to help you.
When identifying these strengths and weaknesses we can take into account many different factors. For example, it often happens that when we observe an attitude that bothers us in another person, it is because that attitude is not recalling something of our own character.
Make a list of virtues that you appreciate in yourself and, also, identify your main weak point, that thief of energy that habitually stands in your way to happiness.
Strengths and weaknesses, although different, have points in common. They are not innate elements but they are trained. That is, you strengthen your virtues from the power of repetition, as well as those defects in which you reaffirm yourself time after time. But in addition, both elements are also focused on the direction of personal improvement. You improve yourself from the practice of virtues and, also, you have the opportunity to develop new virtues when you identify those weaknesses that you can correct through a gift as important as patience.
Through patience you can make your strengths are greater and your strengths weaker. Summer is a time of year very conducive to introspection. Encourage the habit of writing a summer journal. This can help you live a summer season by becoming more aware of who you are and how you want to become.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.