Self Awareness
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One thing is for certain; each
person has his or her own views, thoughts, and emotions. Even though we are so
different we experience similar patterns of self analysis which makes up who we
are today. These patterns are typically created by the end result of our
behaviors and viewed either negatively or favorable by our strongest critic,
the almighty self. It’s amazing how our growth is determined by how the self
translates our actions.
Self awareness is the ability to
formulate a summary of our behavior based on past and current thoughts and
emotions. It allows us to understand what’s going on in our heads and
why; self-victimization prevents us from accepting that we’re responsible for
it, and for what we do as a result.
Being self-aware is the ability to
see our true self without blinders. This is the first step in being true to our
self. It requires empathy, patience,
strength, humility, and love. One of the hardest things to do is to see our
self as fallible but that is what we are. We all make mistakes and we all have
our triumphs. The great ones are capable of seeing both polars and learn how to
merge them together to make them a better individual.
Below is a wonderful poem about
self-awareness:
The Man In The Mirror
When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you king for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t a man’s father, mother or wife,
Whose judgment upon him must pass,
The fellow whose verdict counts most in life,
Is the man staring back from the glass.
He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test,
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But the final reward will be heartache and tears,
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.
-Dale Wimbrow, 1934
As humans we generally spend our life living within the two
hemispheres or poles of self-thought. On one side, we play out our lives as
victims due to painful events in our past and learn to feel powerless when
confronting obstacles. These thoughts are what we call the victimization thoughts:
- Obsessing
about the ways we feel we have been wronged
- Complaining about
painful events without considering the role we played
- Using these
difficult events to justify negativity, anger, and/or create negative
reactions/behaviors
- Telling sad
stories from the past as a means of avoiding judgment or trying to win
approval
- Believing
that everything would be better if the world or other people would change
The
other hemisphere is the empowerment thoughts which requires self-awareness
- Consciously
choosing to let go of victimizing thoughts
- Considering
that we may have played a part in some of the most painful events from our
pasts
- Learning from
these events how we can respond proactively to similar events in the
future
- Feeding our
own emotional needs instead of coming to other people with a void that
won’t ever be filled
- Accepting
responsibility for our actions, and the consequences of them
- Realizing
things will only improve if we make a change, internally or externally
The fundamental difference between self-awareness
and self-victimization pertains to our acknowledgment that we have been hurt.
Self-awareness is about observing our response
to what happened; self-victimization is about feeding into the story of what happened.
Tips
to Achieve Self-Awareness
- Understanding
our emotions—what we’re feeling and what triggered it—so we can
effectively work through and transform our emotional responses instead of
using them to justify unhealthy choices.
- Recognizing
our destructive thought patterns so we can redirect them
- Noticing our
behavioral patterns and habits so that we can make adjustments to change
negative ones
- Understanding
our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, and how they influence what we
choose to do
- Accepting
that we are responsible for our actions—even if we developed certain patterns
in response to events from our past