Lesson 1: Knowing Oneself

INTRODUCTION TO PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Essential Question: How can knowing oneself make someone a better person?

The Johari Window (Luft,1969)

 A mechanism designed to help an individual grow through learning more about oneself and others.

Open

- the information about the person, his attitudes, behavior, emotions, feelings, skills and views will be
known by the person as well as by others.

Blind Spot

- Information about yourself that others know in a group but you will be unaware of it. 
- Our primary goal is to lessen this

Hidden

- Information that is known to you but will be kept unknown from others.
- This can be any personal information which you feel reluctant to reveal. This includes feelings, past
experiences, fears, or secrets.

Unknown

- This area is not known to the person and others. This area remains untapped and undiscovered until the
time or opportunity comes such an emergency or crisis situation that calls for one to act instantaneously.

Known to Self Not Known to Self

Known to Others Open Blind Spot
Not Known to Others Hidden Unknown

Aristotle

 “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

 “the happiest person are those who are evaluating and improving their own self and the unhappy people are
those who usually indulged in evaluating and judging others.”

Personal development

 starts with knowing yourself. Before you start to build and improve your relationship with other people and
before you can identify and set your career and life goals, you should know yourself first.

DIMENSION OF THE SELF: Physical, Psychological, Spiritual

Self

 what an individual see, perceives, and defines oneself apart from others
 These dimensions of self serve to remind us that we are not fixed- that freedom to change combined with the
ability to reflect, anticipate, plan, and predict allows us to improve, learn, and adapt to our surroundings.
 By recognizing that we are not fixed in our concept of “self,” we come to terms with the responsibility and
freedom inherent in our potential humanity.

3 Dimensions of Self
 1. Physical
2. Psychological
3. Spiritual

Physical Dimension

 Revolves around the physical body of a human being; its processes, functions, mechanisms, and chemistry
 Responsible for giving us the ability to move our muscles, to perceive our surroundings, and to think of the ideas
and opinions that bring wonders to our lives and of others
 Can be measured, observed, and calculated

Spiritual Dimension

 Allows us to view ourselves in a spiritual level – as spiritual beings

 Cannot be observed but can be subjectively altered and perceived by the person
 Holds a relevance to a perceived existence of God, of a greater good, or a Superior Being relating to the humble
individual

ATTITUDES AND ITS COMPONENTS: Affective, Behavioral, Cognitive

1. Affective
2. Behavioral
3. Cognitive

Attitude

 a settled way of thinking and feeling about someone or something

 Manifests itself as a behavior, as a representative of personality
 Can be both implicit (thoughts or feelings that conscious awareness does not cover) and explicit (can be
perceived consciously and expressed accordingly)

Explicit Attitude

Imagine you’re out with your friends and meet someone new. This new acquaintance is wearing an Ateneo shirt
which happened to be your favorite team. You decide you already like this person and start a friendly conversation.

From an attitude perspective, you consciously noticed the shirt and determined that this was obviously someone
with which you would get along. Your attitude is at the conscious level, was deliberately formed and you are able to
tell someone else about your attitude.

Implicit Attitude

Imagine the same scene. You’re out with your friends. You notice some of the strangers around you but don’t meet
anyone. You talk with your friends but you feel extremely uncomfortable and you have no idea why.

In this scenario, it would be possible that one of the strangers near you reminds you of someone from your past that
you greatly disliked. Your attitude towards this person is what is making you feel uncomfortable.

However, the attitude is at the unconscious level, was involuntarily formed, and you have no idea it’s there, so you
couldn’t tell anyone about it.

Attitudes

 Evaluating statements or judgements concerning objects, people or events.

1. Cognitive Component
 The opinion or belief segment of an attitude
 Evalutation - Is the way we think, is a component of attitude is only a viewpoint.

“I believe spiders are dangerous”

2. Affective Component
 The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude

Feelings - Used to represent emotions directed to the self, environment or others.

“I am scared of spiders”

3. Behavioral Component
 An intention to behave in a certain way toward something or someone

Action - Action form or manifestation of attitude.

“I will avoid spiders and scream if I see one”

Examples:

Negative Attitudes Towards Supervisor

Cognitive

My supervisor gave a promotion to a co-worker who deserved it less than me. My supervisor is unfair.

Affective

I dislike my supervisor

Behavioral

I’m looking for other work

How One’s Attitudes are Formed

 A human being learns as it interacts with it’s environment, thus it experiences.

 Experience as most say, is the best teacher.
 Attitudes can form consequently through this, either from personal encounters or observed
consequences.
 Can be shaped through various ways such as learning, experience or conditioning.

Factors That Affect Attitude

1. Social factors – influences attitude heavily.

 One’s role in a social environment
 Social norms
o dictates what and what not to do in a social situation
 Influenced by parent, elders, or peers.
2. Learning – associating what we have observed with the attitude that we see and employ the same mindset
when faced with similar circumstances.
 Practical use of classical conditioning.
 Example: watching a McDo commercial where customers look happy and satisfied after eating
3. Operant Conditioning –it is a matter of consequences, pleasant or unpleasant that our attitudes towards it is
affected. Modified by reinforcement or punishment.
4. Modelling– When someone particularly close to us, a person we admire or adore, or a parent does something, it
is more that likely we would be doing the same thing they are doing.
  Celebrities set trends for their fans, and the fans that relentlessly adore and admire their idols tend to end
up wearing the same fashion trend their idol is using, or spreading an action or imitating his or her
behaviors.

Attitude

 is a prominent factor in personality.

 If you know how it is created, you can know how to handle it especially when you need to.

Self Concept And Self Esteem

 are learned variables.

Ex: If one is raised in unsupportive home filled with verbal degradations, one would probably feel and think that he or
she is a burden to blame for familial problems. On the other hand, if an individual is raised in a fostering or nurturing
environment, his or her self-concept and self-esteem would be more positive, making one feel secure, integrated and
sure of oneself.

Self Concept Self Esteem

 Cognition to self, what we think and know about
our identity, personality, and individuality
 Requires a lot of self-evaluation and reflection to
be able to say that your self-concept is high
 Informational
 Example: I am short. I have dark hair.
Focuses on our attitude about ourselves
 How we value ourselves, given the positive and
negative feedback we receive
 Emotionally inclined
 Example: I think being taller would be better. I
think my hair should be light because pretty girls
have light hair.

Low Self Esteem High Self Esteem

• usually a result of bad cognitions learned from  confident
upbringing, social factors, and environmental factors.  high degree of self-acceptance
• insecure  tolerance to what others think of them
• A whim to be like or look “superior”  optimistic
• people pleaser
• pessimistic

How to overcome low self-esteem or bloated self-esteem and self-concept

1. If low self-esteem…

Develop his or her personality to give way to an enlightened and more evolved outlook in life

2. If bloated self-esteem and self-concept…

Keep grounded or keep learning and grow into a better, more actualized individual

Summary

The self has three dimensions: Physical, Psychological and Spiritual

Attitude composes of Affective, cognitive and behavioral

Attitude can occur in our awareness or off our awareness-explicit or implicit

Attitude can be shaped through various ways such as learning, experience or conditioning
Self Esteem and Self Concept are two different concepts. Self Esteem is how you feel for yourself while self concept is
what you think of yourself