Introduction to Week 1 - Understanding Yourself

A big part of understanding how you work with other people is understanding yourself. You would think that knowing yourself is easy – after all, we spend every day as ourselves!

But, as this week will explore, knowing yourself can actually be a bit difficult. When you go to work, you bring your identities and your values, your life and work experience, skills and capabilities. Your desires and motivations, how you learn and how you relate to other people.

Plus, there are also unconscious influences – the patterns and habits acquired from your early experiences which may affect your actions and behaviours. Your understanding of yourself can be obscured by self-criticism or by arrogance.

Equipping yourself with the ideas and tools to untangle the complex picture that is you, is the foundation that is needed to grow in the workplace.

What can you expect from this week?

In the first week of the course, we introduce you to ideas and tools that will help you engage with two questions: “Who am I?”, and, “How can I know myself better?”. We will introduce concepts that are fundamental to the whole course. These are:

• Self-reflection, and how to self-reflect constructively.
• The unconscious, and how it influences your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
• Sources of self-awareness, and how to expand the boundaries of what you and your colleagues know about you.
• Identifying your feelings, and how mindfulness can help you be more present in the moment.

The ideas and tools in these activities will equip you to self-reflect, to deepen your understanding of your self and your behaviors in the workplace, and reflect on how you relate to your work colleagues.

Good luck as you start the course!

Discussion

Here are some questions to think about, to start off:

• How well do you know yourself?
• How much has your identity and knowledge of yourself changed over time?

Add your responses in the comments section below and introduce yourself to your co-learners.

We hope you enjoy the course! Coming up - keeping a journal.