Self-Awareness is one of the most important things you can cultivate in your life.
The capacity to be self-aware is to self-reflect. To self-reflect means you have an experience and are aware of it at the same time.

To be conscious of being conscious. Reflected awareness.
Your self-awareness can observe your mind, emotions, feelings as a silent witness without becoming disturbed. It is just aware.

Through this you learn to disentangle yourself from your mind and emotions and thus loosen the grip of constant identification with the mind.

Sitting as the witness, the one who is self-aware, is like shinning the torch back at itself.
In any experience, whether it be sensory, emotional, or thought data, there’s the experience, the sensory, emotional, or thought data, and there’s your awareness of it. That’s self-awareness, the witness consciousness.

Through the practices of Yoga meditation when you sit as the witness, you slowly discover that you are not the mind.

You are not the thoughts; you are not the thinker. The mind is the thinker. It is full of thoughts, memories, emotions, likes and dislikes.
There is not a separate self in your head. It is the mind thinking and that is the job of the mind.
The mind is a subtle form of energy. It is an instrument for consciousness and used to navigate through life.

Awareness is the light that reveals what is going on whether it be in your mind, your body, or the world around you.
Your self-awareness must be stronger than your mind otherwise you mind will be your master. Any powerful thoughts, emotions, impulses can therefore de-rail you and overwhelm your sense of self.
So, remember. You are not the mind. You are not your emotions. You are not your likes and dislikes. You are pure awareness, consciousness in an embodied form.