I have never been a fan of big words. Most of their meanings are pretty heavy as their names! So, when I first came around the term ‘Self-awareness’ in my journey towards spirituality, wait who am I kidding! I started learning about self-awareness during one of my sleepless nights. I was just learning about mindfulness and here came another one that seemed to be closely connected to mindfulness.
When you start learning about something new, you should go easy instead of trying to take it all in at once. So, I planned to learn about this later. After all, I know myself pretty well. Well, who doesn’t? It’s our own selves we’re talking about here. I know my good traits and bad ones that I am not proud of. I am working on fixing them. If that isn’t self-awareness, then what is?
But that couldn’t be further from the truth and without this practice, my mindfulness didn’t really make sense. I started to scold myself every time I sat with myself. ‘Hey, idiot! Why did you call him even after that?’
‘Told you not to take that nap this afternoon.’
‘You keep making the same mistakes. What’s wrong with you?’
I barely could shut my inner critic up. It was tiring and frustrating. It felt easier to just ruminate on my memories or keep anticipating the future. My present felt too bitter to deal with. My own ‘self’ felt impossible to deal with. I needed a touch of self-compassion in the process that I didn’t know back then. We’ll talk about that in another one. This one is about my journey towards myself.
See, the problem is when you are not aware of who you are, your actions don’t align with the values and standards you so firmly believe in and you can’t look at yourself objectively. The day to day habits that you have formed as an individual, keep you chained up to see how you are becoming the least productive version of yourself. You end up in one blind alley after another since your fleeting emotional situations decide how you feel. You miss the bigger picture and feel stuck. Well, I sure did.
Sounds boring, right? That’s what I thought before understanding how to look at myself objectively! How does that work and most importantly, who does that? Why do I need to look at myself and be objective while others get away with being mean, insensitive? Well, let’s delve into how that really is helping me and see if that’s something you need in your life.
I knew that I am a flawed person and was okay with it because well, who isn’t? But, I didn’t like to think about those for more than a few seconds since I always ended up hitting the bottom of self-pity. I started to judge myself rather than really looking at my strengths and weaknesses. I loved it when people said good stuff about me and hated if there were fewer likes in one of my posts.
Once I started to learn about awareness, I realized I lacked internal self-awareness which means knowing your own set of standards, desires, passions, and emotions. When you truly know what you believe in and don’t try to comply with the social norms, you recognize what is making your relationship so toxic, you figure out why you hate your job, even you finally gather up the courage to show up as yourself to the world, something that your standards have always told you to do so that you can reach your potential.
External self-awareness on the other hand is being able to see how others see you. Did I really know how my friends, coworkers, boss, or family saw me? Well, I heard when they said I needed to put a check on my anger but I didn’t really listen. Why would I? They don’t seem to care how I feel. Listening is another skill I needed to improve to become truly mindful and self-aware. But I wasn’t ready to do that until I had to. When I started to look at how they are not feeling heard, I started resolving conflicts better. I started to see more smiles and felt better about myself.
Well, don’t let me fool you by saying that I have a 100% conflict-free life now where I never fret. Because I still catch myself yelling at mom. The difference is, I CATCH myself in the act and I tell myself how I believe that she never deserves to be yelled at and she is the best mom ever. That stops me midway and with regular practice, I have started to see how it’s not always the other party, who is responsible for the war. Sometimes it’s my inner child crying out for attention.
Well, now how to practice self-awareness other than sitting on a yoga mat and meditating? In a critical situation, when you are about to drop the ball, how do you stop? Well, that’s why they say you need to cultivate this, instead of just devouring the whole thing right away.
I started by asking myself why I am feeling the way I am. I wanted to know why it felt like I wasn’t really living; barely surviving. The answer was because I don’t really think the way most people do around me and I feel like an outlier.
Now I’ll stop here and tell you something that I wish I’d known earlier. ‘Why’ questions are amazing and gives you an idea of where you are going wrong but it leaves you baffled. Instead when I asked myself ‘What‘ do I dislike so much about living in my country that I am planning to move 11,000 miles away?’
My poor inner self replied, “I dislike being forced to get married and have kids right away just to keep the society happy and quiet. I can’t leave an abusive relationship because they’ve normalized staying in a toxic one to prove my loyalty. I feel judged and disconnected”.
Next question- Well, what would you like to do then?
: Freedom. I’d like to get married when I find the right person and feel prepared; not when they think I should do it. I’d like to stay in a relationship that doesn’t leave me bruised and heart-broken.
See how it was giving me all the answers I needed? I was more focused and knew what I needed to do. I had to leave to live in a country where I was allowed to lead a life that I want.
I was depressed for a long time asking myself the ‘why’ questions where I reached no conclusion. Most of them made me feel like life was being unfair to me and I was stuck, having nowhere to escape.
“What’ questions on the other hand helped me to discover my options and provided a solution.
I learned this from Dr. Tasha Eurich, who according to her website is “an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author”. She said,” Why questions draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential. Why questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious. Why questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future.”
That’s what has happened to me. I figured out what I had to do. Isn’t that mesmerizing? That’s something I have been practicing ever since along with trying to be more mindful. I have also improved my listening skill and will talk about that some other day.
As I keep saying, I am a work in progress and what you are reading right now is part of my journaling. Also, the empath inside me wants to help someone who is desperately looking for answers that are inside themselves all along. Be open to learning about yourself without being self-judgmental. You do that without even realizing it. So keep it in check. Ask close people for feedback and try to see yourself through their eyes, calmly. Then reflect on that without euphemism.
You’ll end up loving yourself a little more in the process. You are a lot more than you give yourself credit for. So am I and that eventually makes me feel content with myself after spending almost three decades with myself. That is worth my time and effort, indeed.
