-Bob Dylan
It is important to find time with yourself, or maybe I should say within yourself. You must find time to be alone, even to be lonely. This is when self-reflection happens, when you are deep in silence, in thought, and the person you must face is yourself.
I have always been a fairly reflective person, but the past couple of years, the spring of 2022, actually launched me further than simply being reflective, but making a study of self-awareness. I started to be more aware of my mind, my body, and my voice. I became more aware of what I was saying to others, the time I spent with them, and asking myself at the end of the day, “How did I conduct myself today?” I had to because I spent a couple of years in a great deal of physical and emotional pain. Pain is a great teacher, and as I once heard, pain will leave you once it has stopped teaching you. Not all pain has left, nor would I expect it to, or dare say, want it to, but much has subsided and I have been a good student.
The interesting thing about becoming more self aware is that you become more aware of how superficial many interactions are during the day and how many people are unaware. You see how people get stuck in their own negativity and problems, but rarely search for solutions. They either want a quick fix to their issues, have someone else solve their problems, or feeling the way they do is their norm and becomes comfortable to them. Many are even cruel in their interactions. It seems as if they have no idea how their negative presence and the way they carry themselves impacts others.
Think about the people that you see daily who complain constantly about the things they have no control over, but do absolutely nothing about the things they can control or have influence over. We all know people like this, and you may even be one of them, but the issue might be that you are not self-aware enough to notice. You do not realize the impact your negativity is having on others, or how much complaining you are actually doing. You are stuck and have no idea because it feels normal to you. This is where being alone and doing the work on yourself helps. With self-awareness, you start to take data on yourself and your actions and words. You become your own research.
I will talk a little more about self-awareness, but first be warned, it is not easy. It can be difficult to sit and be completely honest with yourself, who you are, who you want to be, and how you conduct yourself in the world. Honestly, you may even lose friends or others close to you along the way because they either don’t understand your journey or they are stuck in their own life, grazing like sheep throughout the day without fulfilling their true purpose. Sounds harsh? Well, sometimes to be completely honest with yourself is harsh. That’s the work you must do. Be honest and then offer yourself compassion. Be mindful that your journey with becoming more self-aware is important. It is yours, and you cannot pressure anyone else to become more self-aware. You have to work on yourself first before you can have any influence over anyone else. This is why the journey into becoming more self-aware can be lonely. We love to talk about how others should change, but we struggle to look within and change ourselves.
You will also fail often. For example, you will find yourself in a stressful situation and forget about being self-aware and mistakes will happen. You will try to “fix” problems, or even people, and none of it is within your control. It will push you to your edge, keep you up at night, and your intentions will be good, but you will have zero influence over the problem because you cannot do anything about it, or them, the people who have to own the issue. Then, through your practice of self-awareness, you will come back around and realize once again that you side-stepped into that space of trying to solve problems that aren’t yours to solve, or you may even have approached that spiral of negativity. Maybe you participated in gossip. Perhaps, your ego took over and you sought out praise or found yourself thinking that your ideas are superior to those of a colleague. Maybe you wanted to control every situation that you are in and did not realize your need for control was actually insecurity. Whatever the case may be, when you become more self-aware, you accept when you do stumble and fall, when you cause emotional pain to someone else, or enter a space with a negative presence. We are human, so it may happen, but if you are aware you will readily admit to your mistake and grow from it. You will make it right the next time. You will stumble less and find your stride.
Have you ever walked into a room and the person there immediately starts to spew out questions, concerns, or even negativity at you? It is the very first time you interact with them on this day and this is their purpose, to blurt out what is on their mind. It’s like you ran into a brick wall of thoughtlessness and lack of courtesy. They do not even take the time to offer a greeting. Instead, they want to get their needs met and bring you into their negative space right away, most likely because they have been spinning in this space alone in their thoughts and now want company. I believe part of our lack of awareness as a society is we have seemingly forgotten common courtesy. A simple, “Hello, how are you?” would suffice. However, we have entered a world where information is at our fingertips and we want what we want now. A greeting and thoughtful formalities are out of place. I believe that this is one of the problems that we have run into in our current climate, and the lack of courtesy leads to other more powerful deficiencies such as, lack of empathy and compassion. This comes back to not being self-aware of what our interactions can do to others, whether they are positive or negative. I have even had people seem like they are burdened by my greetings. They give a sigh as if I have asked them to do something they despise. However, because I have done the internal work, I pause and realize that these types of people are actually suffering in some way and are not aware of their response or body language.
In many cases, we have also become unaware of what our words and actions can do to people. We can either enter a space with awareness and understanding, allowing our words and actions to be uplifting, or we can create a negative, often toxic, environment. We have all seen this, whether it is with family that did not pause to understand one another and take the time to listen, but instead entered a conversation with their beliefs and needs in mind first and foremost, or at work when people have used their words and actions as daggers because they also wanted their beliefs and values to be heard and think they are more important than others. This is insecurity. It is people seeking control and power that most likely feel like they do not have it anywhere else in their lives. I think over the years about negative or toxic situations I have witnessed at work, and it all comes from people who have obviously not done the internal work that they needed to. Otherwise, they would not treat people the way they do or create the climate they have. This is from having a lack of self-awareness, which leads to a lack of awareness of others. I look at schools that I have been in. It takes less than an hour to see that the leadership has sunk the climate of a building and there is a heaviness in the air. After a while, it is clear that the leaders are not self-aware and have caused harm. I have been through leadership programs. In fact, I have a masters degree in education leadership, and not once in my program did they ask future leaders to become more self-aware, and teach them how to do so, before trying to lead others. This is why most leadership often fails. However, those leaders have no idea that they have failed and their climate is poor because they are not truly aware. They have not sat with themselves in an honest way and asked the important questions to help themselves grow. They want the people they are supposed to lead to grow, but forgot to grow themselves.
Here are some questions I started with on my journey towards being more self-aware. I ask these of myself often:
How do you see yourself? How do others see you? Do you focus on solutions or problems? Do you have a high level of social/emotional intelligence? Are you a good listener or do you wait for your turn to talk? What are good and bad habits you have developed? What are my strengths and how can I use them to better the world? What are things I need to improve on so I can better the world, especially those I care about? What takes away my energy? What gives me energy? How do I treat others who can do nothing for me in return? How do I express my emotions? Am I self-sabotaging? Am I seeking validation? Are my relationships healthy and do I receive respect, and more importantly, do I offer respect? Am I kind to people who are not kind in return? If I am feeling unworthy, am I able to identify where that feeling comes from and then reframe my thoughts? What, and who, do I take for granted? What is one action that would improve my life? What is one action that would improve someone else’s life? Am I being true to myself and beliefs, and are those beliefs beneficial to others or harmful? Am I disciplined in my life or making excuses? Is the feeling I am having ego driven? If I do not like where my life, or current situation, is headed, do I have the confidence to change? Can I admit when I am wrong, and if needed, apologize to people that I have hurt in some way? Do I accept my circumstances or try to deny them? Do I try to control things that I cannot? Can I let go of the things I cannot control and move on? Do you complain too much, even to yourself? Am I holding onto something I should let go of? Have I forgiven the people that have wronged me? How would you like people to remember you? How do I want to live, knowing that I will one day die?
Take even a few of those questions and start to practice them daily. You will get a better sense of who you are and how you want to conduct yourself in life. Remember, this is not an easy journey. It is ongoing and you will often stumble into circumstances or emotions that you prefer not to be in. However, with practice, you will recognize it and be able to correct what is needed to get back on track to the life you want to live and how you want to conduct yourself. You are responsible for yourself!
We could all tell stories of people not being aware in their lives and causing harm to others, whether it be physically or emotionally. However, are we brave enough to sit alone with ourselves and think about when we have not been aware and possibly caused harm. More importantly, are we capable of bringing self-awareness, and self-examination, to our daily lives and being mindful of our interactions and actions. Afterall, we can only control our actions, not someone else’s. That is important to understand and be constantly aware of as we move from moment to moment during our day. It is a difficult task to be completely honest with yourself, but it is needed.
It is not healthy to go back and look at the past or have regrets. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the past. You do not have control over what happened to you and you no longer have control over the decisions that you made. With that, if you sit and worry about things that have not even happened yet, that creates anxiety. The key is to be self-aware and live in the moment. It does not mean you do not reflect on your past in order to learn from it or bring understanding, but you must accept that there is nothing to be done now and you must move on, hopefully with more wisdom. This is important for people, like myself, to put into practice for those who have past trauma. You need to figure out a healthy and productive way to look at what happened to you and then move to a place where you can live the life you want. Trauma can make us feel stuck. I know, I have sat in a place of anger and hate for the people who have harmed me. All it did was cause me agony, not them. I care about myself too much to not find a better way, and forgiveness and becoming self-aware was a gift to myself.
Also, you can still plan for your future and have goals, but if you are looking to the future in order to be happy, you will miss out on life. How many people have you heard say, “When I retire…” fill in the dots. Why wait? I have found that I have worried about things in the future that often caused me a great deal of anxiety, and I realized I was worrying about something that has not even happened yet, and much of what I worried about never happened. I caused myself a great deal of anxiety for nothing, and it was, and is, my responsibility to recognize and overcome that.
I was recently at the doctor for a consultation and they gave me a questionnaire asking me to check items in my health history to see if they are accurate. I came to an item that I paused at that read, “Health anxiety.” I asked myself at that moment, “Do I have health anxiety anymore?” I put a line through it and smiled. The practices that I have put into place. Practices like self-awareness, realizing what is within my control and what is not, and not worrying about things that have not even happened yet, have gotten me to a place in my life where I no longer have health anxiety. This was huge for me to be able to admit and cross off. It has taken a great deal of internal and external work to get to this point. This is an example of the power of self-awareness.
It takes courage to want to change. It takes patience with yourself. We all have room for growth. I believe that if we all took the time with ourselves to become more self-aware we would conduct ourselves differently in the world. We would approach tough situations differently, with more understanding. We would be more kind and offer empathy to others instead of always being so critical. The situations we find ourselves in, we would approach them with more wisdom and ask the question, “Is this within my control?” If the answer is “yes” then take appropriate action, but if the answer is “no” then let it go. I do this daily at work and in my personal life, and it does help to free up space for what I truly have influence over.
We are human and imperfect creatures. Thank goodness for that. I would not want to be perfect, nor would I not want a life where I did not suffer. My imperfections have taught me plenty and my suffering has given me the gifts of empathy and compassion. The wonderful thing about becoming more self-aware is that we start to allow ourselves some grace in life, but the truly remarkable part of being more self-aware is that we realize others are not perfect and we offer them grace as well. With that, you also recognize with a great deal of awareness when you must remove yourself from places, people, and situations that are no longer healthy for you. You do not need to stay in negative, toxic circumstances or solve everyone else’s problems. We control how we show up and we must own our actions. All of this is available through self-awareness and putting in the internal work that is necessary to live a life of virtue.
As I mentioned earlier, none of this is easy. It takes work to sit alone with yourself and be honest with who you were, are, and who you want to become. It’s a fantastic journey that will tire your mind and legs, wear out many boots, and try your patience and grit because the destination will never be reached and it is often rocky and thorny. While you are on this path, you will become more and more alone, your circle of people growing smaller, until you align with those who have also put in the work. When that happens, you will sit beside them smiling, often perplexed, at how absurd, confusing, and absolutely beautiful this life truly is. Enjoy the moments while exploring the path you are on.
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