What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-awareness?

Answer 1

For me, my emotions seem to be very strong and in effect take over my decision making. Emotions are important but left unchecked, they can be hazardous to our lives. Being self aware helps me stop, come to grips with them process the information without bias and react intelligently or rationally.

Sometimes I feel that it's easy to be too hard on yourself for mistakes. Ultimately though, I believe that there isn't any real downsides to being self-aware. It's part of what makes us humans unique and probably what allows us to function so well in a civilization.