Finding Yourself Again: Everyday Ways to Build Self-Awareness
- Justine Astacio, LMHC
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Self-awareness isn’t something you arrive at one day and check off the list. It’s something you build, slowly, through small moments of noticing how you think, how you move, and how you choose. This month, we’re exploring practical, everyday ways to reconnect with yourself. No big breakthroughs required, just gentle awareness that grows over time.
“Know yourself.”
It’s advice that’s been around for thousands of years, but it doesn’t exactly come with directions. How do you begin to know yourself? Where do you start?
The truth is, self-knowledge rarely arrives in one defining moment. It unfolds through many pathways: through the mind, through relationships, through experience, and through the body.
A 2022 study on self-connection describes self-awareness as knowing your internal states, preference, resources, and intuitions.* But that knowing looks different for everyone.
There’s no single right way to know yourself, only different ways of deepening your awareness.
Some people discover themselves through journaling. Others through trying new things, movement, or sound. There’s no single right way, only different ways of deepening your understanding of who you are.
Cognitive Pathways: Thinking Your Way to Self-Knowledge
This is the most familiar route, using your mind to understand your mind.
Journaling
There’s a reason journaling appears in nearly every wellness practice: it works. Writing helps you hear yourself more clearly. Research shows that regular journaling increases awareness of thoughts and values not only in times of stress, but in the everyday rhythm of life.
The key isn’t to write perfectly or fill pages. It’s about honesty and consistency. You’re not writing for an audience; you’re creating a quiet record of what’s happening inside you so you can notice what repeats, what changes, and what matters.
Before you begin, pause for a moment. Notice how you feel, not to fix it, just to know where you’re starting from.
Try writing on one of these prompts:
When did I feel most like myself today?
What drained my energy this week, and what restored it?
What am I avoiding thinking about?
If I could fully trust myself, what would I do differently?
Write for ten minutes. Don’t overthink it. Just notice what shows up.
Reflection and Therapy
Sometimes you need structure beyond self-reflection. Therapy or coaching offers that space, a consistent time to explore your patterns with someone trained to see what you might miss.
Even without a therapist, you can build reflection into your own rhythm:
Weekly check-in: What did I learn about myself this week?
Monthly review: What patterns am I noticing?
Yearly reflection: How have I changed this year?
Ask yourself:
What do I value that I haven’t named yet?
When do I feel most alive?
What keeps showing up in different parts of my life?
This pathway is about slowing down your thoughts long enough to actually meet them. Most of us think constantly, but rarely stop to notice how we think.
Awareness Through Action
Sometimes self-awareness doesn’t come from reflection. It comes from doing.
Each choice is a chance to learn something about yourself.
You might try:
Saying yes to something you’d usually avoid
Saying no to something you’d usually agree to
Exploring a new space or experience
Doing something that feels just outside your comfort zone
Afterward, pause. Ask: How did that feel? What did it teach me? Would I choose it again? Did it ignite my soul?
Keep gentle track of your patterns:
What activities lift your energy and which ones drain it
Which decisions bring pride and which bring regret
When you feel most or least like yourself
What you’re drawn to repeatedly and what you resist
Over time, these small observations form a map. They help you see what feels aligned and what doesn’t.
Self-awareness isn’t built through grand insights; it’s built through small, intentional actions that teach you what’s true for you.
Self-awareness isn’t built through grand insights; it’s built through small, intentional actions that teach you what’s true for you.
Embodied and Sensory Pathways: What Your Body Knows
Most advice about self-awareness focuses on the mind, but your body often knows first.
The tightness in your jaw, the shallowness of your breath, the ease you feel around certain people, these are all forms of knowing.
Research on self-connection emphasizes that awareness isn’t purely mental. Paying attention to sensations and emotions is central to knowing yourself. The body often carries information long before the mind catches up.
Movement-Based Practices
Movement can become a way of listening.
Walking meditation: Leave your headphones behind. Walk at your own pace and notice what surfaces, sensations, thoughts, memories, or emotions.
Body scanning: Slowly bring awareness through your body. Where do you feel tight? Where do you feel open?
Free movement: Put on music and move however your body wants. Notice what feels natural and what feels held back.
Breathwork: Notice your breath without changing it. Then experiment, slower or deeper, and see how it shifts your state.
When you move without judgment, your body becomes a partner in awareness.
Sound-Based Practices
Sound helps quiet the mental noise so you can feel more deeply.
Sound baths or therapy: The vibration of sound can calm the nervous system and open emotional awareness.
Vocal toning or humming: Your voice itself can create grounding vibration.
Listening awareness: Notice how different sounds or songs affect your body. Does silence feel soothing or uncomfortable?
Stillness Practices
Sometimes awareness emerges when we stop moving entirely.
Meditation on sensation: Notice what’s present without trying to change it.
Progressive relaxation: Tense and release muscles, noticing how relaxation actually feels.
Quiet sitting: Take five minutes to just be. No goal, no outcome, only noticing.
Stillness teaches presence, which is at the heart of all awareness.
Finding Your Path
Each pathway, cognitive, experiential, and embodied, offers a different doorway into the same truth: knowing yourself.
You might find that you need more than one. Journaling helps you reflect, while movement helps you feel. Therapy helps you see patterns, and sound helps you release what words can’t.
Try one pathway at a time. Notice what feels nourishing, what feels like effort, and what deepens your understanding of who you are.
That’s it. One pathway. One week. Just notice what you learn.
If you want guided support, you can explore somatic practices like Movement & Breath or sound therapy, but self-awareness begins anywhere you choose to listen.
The Ongoing Practice
Self-awareness isn’t a finish line. It’s a relationship that deepens over time. Some seasons call for reflection. Others ask for movement, stillness, or change. Sometimes your body knows first. Sometimes a pattern reveals itself in hindsight.
The goal isn’t to know everything about yourself. It’s to know yourself well enough to live in alignment with what feels true.
The goal isn’t to know everything about yourself. It’s to know yourself well enough to live in alignment with what feels true.
That kind of knowing is built gradually, through attention and compassion. Through your mind, your choices, and your body.
Start where you are. Use what’s available. Trust that you’ll learn what you need to know, right on time.
Where are you being invited to notice yourself more deeply, your thoughts, your actions, or your body?
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*Klussman, K., Curtin, N., Langer, J., & Nichols, A. L. (2022). The importance of awareness, acceptance, and alignment with the self: A framework for understanding self-connection. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 18(1), 120–131. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.3707
