The self-skill relationship

Assuming we agree self-awareness, self-confidence, self-belief and self-esteem are core self-skills vital for a person’s achievement and fulfilment then immediately we could ask ourselves certain questions:

“Are they connected/related?”

“What effect do they have on each other?”

So lets consider the first question, “are they connected/related?”  My view is that they are.  Let me attempt to describe a scenario that substantiates this view. 

Considering the term self-awareness and broadly defining it as “an awareness of oneself, ones characteristics, strengths and limitations” then it seams logical that the more self-aware a person is the more likely they are to identify and understand their wants, needs and strengths.  The more they fulfil their wants and needs and achieve success using their strengths the more confident they think/feel about their abilities.  The more confident they are about their abilities the more they build their self-belief and the greater their chance of success is.  The more they achieve success the higher their self-esteem raises. 

Assuming the above theory is accurate then we could say; “they are connected/related?”  In fact we could describe them as a continuum, starting with self-awareness.

When considering the second question, “what effect do they have on each other?” I’ve continued to use my theory that self-awareness is the starting point.

By way of one scenario to describe the effect they have on each other I offer the following; consider a person who is un-aware of their own characteristics, strengths and limitations.  They don’t know their strengths and therefore begin tasks/jobs that don’t use them making it harder on themselves because they are not using their strengths/talents and they don’t know what interests/motivates them and therefore find themselves doing things that don’t fulfil their motivational wants and needs. 

We can easily see how this person could become less confident, have less belief in their abilities, achieve less success and develop lower self-esteem, which in turn can cause them to be less confident at the beginning of future similar activities.  Therefore the effect that low self-awareness has on the other self-skills can result in dissolution, demoralisation and lack of motivation.  Conversely high self-awareness can result in excitement, optimism, determination and a can do attitude.

When asked, “do you want to be successful?” many people if not everyone will be likely to answer yes!  Therefore becoming self-aware and recognising when we are in danger of entering into a downward spiral and re-directing our efforts thoughts/feelings/actions toward positive pathways that lead us to build our self-confidence, self-belief and self-esteem is the difference between failure and success.