Self-Development
By: Rajeev Kirpalani
Tags: Self Development, Self Improvement, Professionalism

Photo by Alysha Rosly on Unsplash

While growing, we want to see ourselves as distinctive, rational, and orderly entities with personal skills, preferences, and characteristics. We also come by a sense of being connected with others. This intriguing phenomenon considered both philosophical and behavioral but with the dawn of 21 century, neuroimaging technologies started appearing in efforts to explore how the human brain supports the endpoint of this long pathway to a heterogeneous self. This piece of writing is going to give you a clear view of the perspectives of human development.

Cognitive perspectives:

Cognition related aspects like self-recognition and agency have been explored in humans by using neuroimaging techniques. Autobiographical memory and direct self-appraisals play a vital role in cognitive development. Autobiographical memory is event specific and is based on the knowledge of different happenings while direct self-appraisals are general. This is unfortunate that there are no fMRI studies to study Autobiographical memory in kids.

Socioemotional perspectives:

“What people think about me?” is the statement that describes a direct instance of socioemotional influences on self-development. There is no doubt that the opinion of others about us is being hypothesized for decades. Charles Cooley asserted that our self-understanding is based on the view people have about us. This thing is known as “the looking glass self”. As much as we interact with the people, our self-development advances. We were not born with the ability to look at ourselves with the eyes of others, we need to develop it. And only socialization can make it happen.

Moral perspective:

Moral development is actually connected with socioemotional development because we learn about what society considers as ‘good ‘and ‘bad’. Actually, moral development plays a vital role in our self-development because it stops us from reacting to our unchecked urges. Moral development is based on three levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional.

In the pre-conventional stage, we experience the world around us through our own eyes. In conventional, we see the world through the eyes of others. And in the post-conventional stage, when we start thinking about morality in abstract terms.

Self-actualization:

It refers to self-fulfillment and is based on our potentials. According to Maslow’s theory of needs, self-actualization is considered the last stage of development when humans achieve their full potentials including all the creative activities while still being reasonable towards his/her limitations. Everyone is capable enough and has an in-born desire to achieve the best. This is unfortunate that this growth often disrupts by failures. This process is varying from person to person. The one who achieves this stage is able to accept himself and the others as they are and shows compassion and empathy to everyone around him.

To sum up, there are uncountable perspectives of self-development but it is a quite complex and long procedure. Self-actualization is the final stage of our self-development but it is not easy to achieve that stage quickly. Since childhood, humans start developing cognitive, socioemotional, moral perspectives to achieve self-actualization. Every aspect has its unique value and they all are connected with each other and support each other.