Self Satisfaction Survey
How well do you know you, and how happy are you with yourself?
No one who is perfectly happy and satisfied with his or her life needs EgoPilot. For those who would like to experience growth or improvement in some aspect of self or functioning, a self-satisfaction survey is a good place to start. This survey asks you to reflect on important areas of your self and your life, and to evaluate how satisfied you are with those areas or which you would like to see improved. This exercise provides important guidance when setting goals or targets for improvement. Without such targets, we are not likely to focus our efforts and resources strategically to get the outcomes we desire. We can end up like so many who get all excited about self improvement, get on the train, enjoy the ride for a while, only to find out that it did not take them where they thought they would be.
This self-satisfaction survey is about you and how you feel about your life. It helps to make things clearer and more manageable by organizing reflective questions around key aspects of the self and life functions. When we get a handle on where we are currently with these elements, we can then decide what we would like to improve, and which area is the most critical to begin with, and which area we are ready and able to begin to address.
This survey helps us answer two of the most important questions for personal development, where are we now, and, where do we want to be? It is the gateway to using the knowledge of who we are, and finding out how to get to where we want to be. I therefore highly recommend that you complete this survey. This will equip you with a framework through which to identify and reflect on the various aspects of you self as you complete the survey.
For the purpose of gathering basic feelings, we can use a simple scale of:
1- strongly dissatisfied, 2 - dissatisfied, 3 - OK, 4 - satisfied, 5 - strongly satisfied
You can then evaluate, rank, and compare aspects or your self based on their score value. Of course, no one will be perfectly happy about every aspect of her or his self. However, it is important to look at the positive areas and understand what makes them work for you. This survey will also help to identify the areas that need work, investments, or serious change.
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I would strongly suggest that you read the Framework For Self Understanding section before completing this survey. The overview provides a framework for examining and understanding the self. This is critical for understanding the survey design.
The Physical You
Your physical you is your body. It is the bio-mechanical machine that contains all of you. There are two aspects of the physical you. One is the aspect you consciously experience from inside your own head, your awareness, your sensations, your feelings, your thoughts and memories, your sense of yourself in the world. The second aspect of yourself is the one that can be seen from the outside. This is what you see when you look in the mirror and what others see when they look at you. These two aspects can be quite different at times.
As we build awareness and understanding of ourselves, we can bring these two aspects or views of ourselves into better alignment with objective reality, and therefore with each other. The physical self satisfaction survey can help us to examine various aspects of our physical selves and to subjectively review how we feel about them. Though we live in a world of objective reality, our subjective feelings do matter since this is how we experience the world, no matter what the objective truths are. Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, priorities, and decisions will be based on our subjective experiences and impressions of the world and our views of ourselves.
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So ask yourself the following questions and note your subjective feelings about them. A weighted scale can help, but you can use whatever method you chose to register you level of satisfaction or desire for change in each area.
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How happy are you with?:
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Your body type - race, height, weight, skin color or tone, parts and proportions...
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Your facial appearance - shape, size, eyes, lips, teeth, smile...
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Your hair - color, length, texture...
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Your gender - identity, definition, physical attributes, sexual preferences...
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Your age
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Your agility and flexibility
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Your strength and stamina
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Your diet and nutrition
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Your physical exercise and activity
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Your rest and sleep
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Your normal level of pain or discomfort
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Your overall physical health
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Please note that there are several aspects of your physical attributes that are not subject to change. However, there are things we can do to adapt to or accept things we cannot change. See more on this in the Change & Growth section.
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The Emotional You
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The emotional you is the part of you that connects the physical you with your conscious behaviors. Emotions works at very primitive and fundamental levels to ensure that you survive, find safety and security, eat and drink, and procreate. They are very necessary, very powerful, very function-driven aspects of humans. Without them we would not survive.
However, emotions can be a double-edged sword. They can also drive personally and socially harmful and destructive behaviors, if not understood, properly managed, and used strategically. Understanding your individual emotional profile and how well it works for you is critical, if you are to achieve you life goals and avoid significant problems. Misunderstood or mismanaged emotions can seriously sabotage our best efforts at goal achievement and the pursuit of happiness.
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How satisfied are you with the emotional you?
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Urges and impulses
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Emotional triggers
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Emotional intensity
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Emotional control
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Common positive emotions – appetites, drives, excitement, stimulation, anticipation, motivation
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Common negative emotions – fears, stressors, anxiety, depression, loss, insecurity
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Your level of patience, tolerance, flexibility, adaptability
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Your level of motivation and drive
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Your level of inhibitions and barriers to action
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Your normal moods and emotional stability
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The Intellectual You
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Your intellect has to do with your intelligences, your learning, your knowledge base, your reasoning and thinking, and the beliefs, values, and priorities you develop using what you know or believe to be true. Since the human intellect drives a significant amount of our conscious behaviors, (remember that emotions drive the most fundamental ones) it is critical that we understand how it works, how it is developed, how it affects our choices and behaviors in the real world.
We can't examine our intellect by looking at the mirror. Therefore, we must use some honest reflection and introspection to better understand and evaluate our intellectual functioning. It is important to clarify that by intellect, we are not here referring to characteristics such as those measured by IQ tests or psychometric assessments, those those measures are related to intellectual capacity. The intellectual you is more than just measured intelligences. It is the sum of your applied intelligences and learning and the subjective pictures and maps of reality that you create and use to navigate your way through life.
How satisfied are you with the intellectual you?
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Learning styles - how you best acquire and integrate new information
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Learning abilities - ease or difficulty of learning new things
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Scope of knowledge of important things - what you know
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Depth of knowledge of important things
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Critical thinking skills and abilities - identify, compare, contrast, cause-effect relationships, differentiation, logic, fallacies, evaluation...
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Creative thinking skills and abilities -- integrating information and patterns to form new elements or patterns, translating know or existing patterns to make new applications, products, or solutions
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Core beliefs - what is real outside of your head, your subjective pictures of objective reality
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Important values - what is important in life
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Life priorities - what is more important than what
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Important ideals - things you should strive for even if they are not fully achieved
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The Social You
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Our social self is the aspect of our self that is expressed in our relationships. Human beings are inherently and necessarily social. We could not be born, develop and grow to maturity, or procreate without the involvement of others. Most of our life and conscious experiences occur in the context of social relationships. These relationships shape and adapt us in very fundamental ways. For these reasons, the definition of our social self matters.
How satisfied are you with the social you?
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Non-choice relationships
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parents
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siblings
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children
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other family members
Choice relationships
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spouse
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lover or life partner
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close friends
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other friends
Situational relationships
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co-workers
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boss
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employees
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neighbors
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club/voluntary organization members
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government officials
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other _________________________
Social roles and functions
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parent
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provider
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worker
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professional
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community member
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citizen
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leader
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other _________________________
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Social identity
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racial identity
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gender identity
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ethnic/cultural identity
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religious identity
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professional identity
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group or organizational identity
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national identity
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human identity
The Spiritual You
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This is the most important part of the conscious you. Yet it is often the most misunderstood and overlooked. It is where all of your conscious experiences are registered. This is where the positive and negative impacts of all the other aspects of your self and life accumulate. Your spirit is the conscious center of your subjective universe. It is influenced by all that you are and affects all that you are.
How satisfied are you with the spiritual you?
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Your feelings of pleasure, reward, and satisfaction
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Your level of hope, confidence, and optimism
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Your level of patience and control
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Your feelings of empowerment
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Your feelings of freedom and self-determination
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Your feelings of orientation, control, and balance
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Your feelings of achievement
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Your feelings of contentment
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Your feelings of gratitude and appreciation of life
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Your feelings of love and altruism
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Your feelings of joy and happiness
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Your peace of mind
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Careful guided introspection using the above questions can glean very useful perspectives of how satisfied we feel about ourselves and various aspects of our lives. Note-taking and reflection on this information can provide us with important target areas for self development, improvement, major change, or more exploration. EgoPilot Tools & Guides can assist with structured forms and guidance for building your self profile and documenting self exploration information.
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