Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
CHAPTER I
The Oxford Languages defined self as a person's essential being that distinguishes
them from others. It is a person's specific nature or what so called personality that makes
an individual unique. Like what on the old sayings have stated, One's self is one of the few
things that cannot be stolen from you. It is because an individual itself is unique and already
shape at it is. There are no exactly the same individuals, each one of them differs from
certain aspects that make their own sense of self.
The experience of the self includes consciousness of one’s physicality as well as
one’s inner character and emotional life. In the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, he
considered self as the source of consciousness, which is the agent responsible for an
individual's thoughts and actions, or the substantial nature of a person which endures and
unifies consciousness over time.
Thus, one's self has a significant relation to its conciousness, it's either his/herselfconsciousness or conciousness among their surroundings and other people.
Self-consciousness, and self awareness are somehow synonymous to self
understanding or self knowledge. This is where the questions How well do you know your
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
self takes place. It was stated in one of the articles written by Dr. Mariette Jansen (2013),
that the only relationship that really matters in life is the one that people have with
themselves. No matter how they think or worry of their relationship with others at the end
of the day it's their self only who travels with them throughout their lifetime. That is why
it is vital to know the importance of knowing their own selves.
Knowing oneself better has a lot of good things to contribute to their own personal
life. Examples are better self-improvement, If they know themselves well, they could
easily improve the things they might have lacking of. Another one is Good decision
making, knowing oneself means they are aware of the things that can help and make them
happy and the things that are not. Additional to that, knowing oneself better is also linked
in building their self confidence because by knowing who they are and what they stand for
in life can help to give them a strong sense of self-confidence.
Furthermore, according to the past studies, a way of better understanding others is
by understanding oneself first. It is usually done through empathy. Hence, to understand
others and their feelings means to emphasize with them.
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
Bruno Mirchevski, (2019) stated on his article that there is an interesting correlation
between selfawareness and the perceptions of empathy, as many believe that this is actually
the first step towards understanding other people.
Empathy has been used to describe a variety of related phenomena such as the
ability to discriminate the emotional states of others, the capacity to take the perspective
of another, and the evocation of a shared affective response, among others (reviewed by
Wispé, 1987)
However how can an individual do something for others, if they cannot do it for
themselves in the first place? That's why it is crucial to better understand onself first in
order to comprehend other people.
Knowing oneself is important but understanding other people is just as important
as understanding one's self. It is because individual have to understand other people to coexist since, coexistence is the pillar that sustains many aspects of human life.
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
As highly-sociable creatures, achieving a peaceful, effective, and harmonious
coexistence not only helps to guarantee the survival as a group, but also helps to promote
well-being and progress.
Peaceful coexistence helps individuals greatly because it serves as the line between war
and peace.
Existing studies suggests that there is a close link between getting better in
understanding oneself and improvement in social intelligence.
According to Böckler, Herrmann, and Trautwein et al. (2017) in their study about
Know Thy Selves: Learning to Understand Oneself Increases the Ability to Understand
Others revealed that the degree to which participants improved their understanding of
themselves reflected in the number of different internal aspects they could identify—
predicted their improvements in high-level of Theory of Mind performance over training.
Meaning understanding oneself involves a social cognition which simply depicts that in
order to understand others, individual need to understand oneself first and vice versa. The
study found that the more participants recognized these internal aspects of personality, the
better they became in understanding the intentions and beliefs of other people.
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
Another research from the American psychologist Cook-Greuter (1994) stated that
understanding oneself and others has something to do with the development in the period
of human’s maturity. Personality development, according to her just remark, is a
sequence of self understanding stages, based on the stages of personality development.
And each such stage is characterized by its own structure and ways of selfunderstanding.
It only means that not everyone has the ability to understand oneself and others
better. There is a specific stage or age where the self-understanding and social cognition
can be done or practice. Based on the past studies, Individuals who are in their early
adulthood developmental stage ages 20-40 are the ones that has the capability of
understanding their own self and others too. It is because they have experienced life enough
to reflect on themselves. They have been learned right socialization and met a lot of people.
In this stage, they have already so much stories to tell and have already see and understand
how the reality works which led them to realize what kind of person they are and how
empathy takes place.
With this, the researchers find the interest in further understanding oneself and
other people by knowing oneself better. Understanding or knowing oneself is very vital, it
is necessary because an individual must be aware of their own strength, weaknesses, likes
and dislikes. Also, knowing and understanding oneself part would help oneself to make
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
much better decisions, it will help in improving decision making habits, in setting and
reaching appropriate goals and altogether living more productively and efficiently.
In addition, this case study was conducted to know how to understand the self and others
better because understanding oneself and other people would help promote peaceful
coexistence and lead this world to a peaceful life, and a peaceful life helps people to
improve and be a better version of themselves.
Knowing oneself and others better result of this case study will be beneficial to the
students, teachers, and parents to know themselves better and the people around them. It
will help them understand themselves to create a better connection and understanding with
the people around them. Hence, it will be helpful for them to balance their personal and
professional life and determine and recognize what motivates them.
However, to perform the study, the Researchers should suggest different factors to
consider in understanding oneself.
By this, they can know their strengths and weaknesses to help them make better
decisions in their lives, which will improve their way of thinking and aid them in achieving
their goal. Furthermore, this will help to discover themselves more, which will assist them
to effectively communicate with other people and lead them to more effective solutions on
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
knowing oneself and others better and how they will they act upon the above-mentioned
factors.
Statement of the Problem
This study aims to further understand the self and other for people currently in their
early adulthood by significantly knowing oneself better.
Specifically, the researchers would like to answer the following questions:
1.
How may the profile of the respondents be described in terms of:
1.1 age
1.2 sex
1..3. Marital Status
1.4 Occupation
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
2.
As an adult, how well do you know yourself?
3.
What are the things you have done to know yourself better?
4.
What are the importance of knowing oneself and other people?
5.
What are the effect of knowing oneself and other people better?
Significance of the Study
Respondents/Students. The study was conducted to help people that are not able to
understand other people as much as they understand themselves and to people that are not
able to understand themselves as much as they understand other people.
Researchers. The researchers will prove or pinpoint the things that understanding the self
and others is important as it helps us in our decision making, to decide properly in life, it
also helps us to appreciate other people, knowing our weaknesses and to cope with it and
turn it into our strengths. The need and ability to understand others guides us that this
capacity of understanding others has amazing power for social change as well as important
Understanding the Self and Others: A Way of Knowing Oneself Better
for the next big think for social net working to build career and relationships. It could be
considered as greater miracle taking place through each other’s eye for an instant.
Future Researchers. The Future Researchers can apply this study to have a basic
knowledge for their case study or research. They can rely on this to strengthen their study.
The future researchers can use and pass the knowledge within this case study.