Johari Window

By definition, the Johari window is a technique used to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others, created by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, from whose names Joe and Harry that the concept is named. It is used primarily as a heuristic exercise towards self awareness.

It's a window which has four quadrants of the self:

A) Open and free area: the part of you that both you, and others know

B) Blind area: that part of you that you don't know, but others know

C) Hidden area or Façade: that part of you that you know, and others do not know

D) Unknown area: that part of you that neither you, nor others know

The aim of the Johari window is to work on developing or expanding A, the open quadrant

We did the Johari window in class the other day, and it was interesting when Kshitij pointed out ' If we can crack the fourth quadrant, isn't that what we'd call moksha or nirvana', and while most of the class laughed, I believe he was very close to the truth.

Growth, be it spiritual or cognitive....... is, after all, about expansion of consciousness. 

"For most people, the level of self-awareness is quite modest, and we all tend to operate on surface-level emotions and behaviors, adding our own interpretation through a set of complex, sub-conscious perceptual and egoic filters". 

Quadrant B, the unknown to self, has the blind spots which create the filter on how you see things.....it distorts what you see by applying meaning to given situations....which can often leave you feeling hurt, angry, judged and so on. And the surprising thing is that your blind spot is often visible to others, and just plain good old feedback can help dissolve the blind areas and expand the conscious quadrant from A into B.

And as you get more self aware, you get more secure and accepting of yourself, and you will then be willing to open up your own hidden area from quadrant C...... and that's how A expands into C.

The magic then happens in D, the fourth quadrant of the 'Unknown', which grows through the shared discovery. As A grows into B and C, you start to have frequent 'ahas' and they start to provide insights into the 'unknown area', and that's when there's more and more of you that moves into the open and conscious space, and the A grows, as the rest diminishes.

I thought it was quite fascinating....as process.... and as representation of process :)