self awareness

Anndddd, we're back! With a big topic; Self Awareness. Self-awareness is being aware of different aspects of the self including traits, behaviors, and feelings.When we become self-aware we are then able to recognize our strengths and weaknesses. This helps us  set goals for ourselves and to learn where we have to room to grow . Our strengths help us feel confident in our ability to improve on our weaknesses.Our worlds are filled with external factors that we have no control over. This makes it more important to at least control ourselves and our responses or reactions .


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The meaning of self-awareness is “knowing one’s internal states, preference, resources, and intuitions”. Self-awareness is all about knowing the one thing in life we do have control over: Our perception of our own world.Someone who is not self-aware encounters obstacles, sometimes the same ones repeatedly, and doesn’t understand why. Someone who is self-aware examines themselves honestly to get to the root of their problems. Despite encountering the same problems, someone who’s self-aware is better equipped to deal with these obstacles.Let’s say you’re noticing that people don’t like to talk to you much. A person that isn’t self-aware would just get frustrated, or maybe not even notice. A self-aware person examines the facts, and maybe admits that they  rambles too much, complain too much,doesn’t listen enough, isn’t engaging in the conversations, or isn’t being present. They are better able to accept the situation, in order to be more aware of what to improve.

In other words, the difference between someone who’s self-aware and someone who’s not is that  one has the ability to see The TRUE underlying issue. The "root”. Self awareness is our ability to observe and accurately identify our thoughts, feelings and impulses, and determine whether they are grounded in reality or not. Remove ego, remove anxiety. What is reality?
There are three levels of self awareness:

1. What you’re doing:  There is pain in life, and a lot of things that...well, suck . In the recent past, lets just say in the last month, how many times have you struggled in a relationship with someone close to you? How many times have you felt alone or isolated? unproductive? stressed? low energy? If you add those up, it could be a rude awakening like "damn..pretty much all month !" We avoid pain through distraction. We bring our minds to somewhere completely different. A place where we feel "safe" from the day-to-day pain of our world right?  We use movies, music, books, exercise, and sometimes other people. Although there is nothing wrong with some distractions, whats important here is that we are aware of our distractions. We need to make sure we are choosing our distractions and that they are not choosing us. We need to know when we are JUST mentally checking out. We can't binge on distractions. We do not heal that way . 

Most people drown themselves in an ocean of distraction. Ever notice how when we are stressed, we'll pull out our phones to check our busy calendars. Then we find ourselves scrolling tiktok for an hour. We think we are being so productive sometimes, “we're working” . Half the time we're fucking scrolling. We THINK we spend more time with our friends, our families and our children more than we actually do. We THINK we're more present in the moment than we actually are. The goal here isn't to completely remove all distractions and try to be this “perfect present human “ because the truth is , we're all learning and we’re all lost in a way. The point is to develop an awareness and take control of these distractions. Its to eliminate compulsion. Try  not to judge yourself either when you have these observations, but have the damn observations! The first step of self awareness is seeing where your mind goes, and when.

Level 2 has to do with what you are feeling . The most common reason we start to distract ourselves and not look within is because of what we are feeling. The emotions we are having become too difficult for us to deal with (or we just don’t want to) so we lean into those video games, the gym, the devices, the apps and unfortunately other people. Its a fear of being alone with your thoughts and sometimes even yourself. This is why meditating seems crazy to some people. Like, what? sitting with my thoughts? my feelings? omg hell no ! Level 2 is how we find out who we are! Many people do and will continue to stay stuck on level 1. Why? because level 1 feels good, its easier. You do something you enjoy to let time pass which will hopefully allow those feelings you hate so much pass as well. "Finding yourself" is actually feeling things, feeling and seeing how you perceive things, how you react and knowing when its time for growth and change. Sorry to break it to ya but you don’t JUST find yourself on your morning runs with music blasting your ear drums. You distract yourself with the same shit over and over because you want to avoid emotions and what is actually going on around you.

Level 2 is uncomfortable as fuck. People spend years in therapy trying to navigate level 2. It takes a lot of time and energy and effort and WORK to be comfortable with your feelings and just allowing them to take place. Unfortunately a lot of people stay stuck on level 2, wallowing in their emotions and bullshit or self pity. Especially ,for the people who have been bottling emotions for years prior. Its new , so its scary and I get it. 

Some people will even use spirituality to talk about this in a way that they'll say " I felt all these feelings, I had such a spiritual awakening! I transcended to higher consciousness and it was an absolute ego death and now I am healed!!!“ Part of being emotionally intelligent is being able to tell the difference on which emotions that you experience are important to act on and which emotions should be acknowledged and felt and nothing more. And sometimes, one emotion causes us to spiral into another and another and another and before we know it, we're trapped in this spiral of fucking chaos. So we also have to be aware of the things that actually deserve an emotional response, vs. the things we are emotional over because of our own egos. 

Level 3 is about seeing what are we missing? Whats the point? We have to really realize that a BIG chunk of our  thoughts, feelings, emotions, responses and reactions are really just a mirror.(If this confuses you, check my “we are all mirrors blog post). It’s a reflection of what we are feeling about OURSELVES in that moment or that point in time. This is why sometimes we use the people we love as an emotional punching bag. If I hate the way my day is going, or I hate myself, you better believe I’m going to turn against everyone around me because they're near by ,fuck it. It doesn't make this right, but in our minds its a way to justify our anger. In these moments we really have to try to listen to our hearts over our heads. Our hearts have already declared something, our hearts have already made a decision. Our minds are where we are trying to justify or explain our bullshit. 

I’m about to say something that might stun most people but here I go….Our memories are wrong. Our need to predict future pain is wrong. Those places do not exist anymore or yet.The past no longer exists in our world! The future isn’t even here!  Our minds naturally focus on pre existing beliefs. And its up to us to recognize and change that so that we don’t go completely insane and push everyone around us away. We even tell little lies to others, and ourselves so that things can go the way we want them to. This is a lack of self awareness and a strong need for control.  The most important thing is to recognize is that these are our weaknesses. Once we realize that, we know that they are only weakness, and we don't have to be slaves to our own brains anymore. It’s up to us to learn our stupid ass patterns, and the problems WE create for OURSELVES. "It’s not about removing your faulty psychological reactions. It’s about understanding them so that you can adjust to them. The same way we all have some skills and activities we’re better at than others, we all have emotions we’re better at than others. Some people are bad with happiness” but good at managing their anger. Others are terrible with their anger but relish their happiness. Other people never feel depressed but suffer uncontrollable guilt. Others never feel guilty but struggle with depression. Where are your strong emotions and weak emotions? Which emotions do you respond poorly to? Where are your biggest biases and judgments coming from? How can you challenge or re-evaluate them?"
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Practice mindfulness, seek therapy, get advice from others, have other people truly open up to you about your behaviors. Hold yourself accountable so you can see where you're fucking up here. This can be painful of course,  no one wants to hear this,  but it also can be really eye opening. Ask someone, a close friend or family member, who you are as a person, where they think you fall short, or even about your personality. Sometimes other people see us more clearly than we see ourselves because its harder to acknowledge your own faults then to "defend" yourself when people explain to you what yours are. It’s about self awareness and self acceptance. Knowing that none of us are perfect but being able to identify , point out, AND adjust where we fall short as humans. We're all here trying to be better (well, most of us are ) , but if we continue to walk around this earth full of distractions and truly disconnected from who we are, what the fucks the point?

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