Self-awareness is one of the essential qualities that an international student or any student must possess. Without self-awareness, students tend to be disrespectful, cannot handle rejection, and deal with adversity.
It tends to make them blind as to how their words and gestures can potentially impact them. Self-awareness is the ability to be aware of your emotions, habits, strengths, and weaknesses to analyze the far-reaching consequences, both good and bad.
Now that we know of its importance let us try and understand how you can use the experience of being an international student to develop self-awareness.
Human beings can justify anything that they may do, but the rules change conveniently when the same is done to them by others. The beautiful thing about our brain is that it starts believing the baseless excuses that we make for our irresponsible behavior. If you want to be aware of yourself, the first tip is to stop lying to yourself.
This will help to build your character and make you realize the ‘loss,’ in terms of wastage of time or embarrassment faced, you have suffered due to your actions. It will lead to introspection, and you will know about your weaknesses and strengths.
The independence that you taste when you study abroad is fantastic. But this also means that you are not around those who used to help you to become aware of your strengths and weaknesses. It is difficult sometimes to hear constructive criticism from people whom you have known for a lesser amount of time. So, instead of listening to all, listen to a few trusted friends or professors. Just looking for feedback from friends or professors isn’t going to change anything. What you need to do is work upon them.
Know of your trigger points, the ones that make you feel vulnerable because of which you behave in a manner that has a negative consequence. It is equally important to know the kind of things that intrinsically motivate you. Avoid the former and try to focus upon the latter.
This is the most cliched line that we have all heard, but it doesn’t dilute its relevance. If you keep repeating your mistakes, you cant expect a different result. An international student needs to realize the amount, financially and otherwise, you have sacrificed to be able to study abroad. The time is limited, and you need to utilize it to the optimum. Making mistakes is not the problem, but repeating them will take you further away from your goal.
Every morning, when you wake up, before rushing towards social media, take a few moments to breathe and analyze the day before and accordingly plan for today.
The most important tip is to never give up on yourself. You are your most excellent motivator and the most prominent critic. Use this to become better each day so that your experience of studying abroad becomes more fruitful.
