A big part of the self growth journey is learning how to be self aware. The way I see it, self awareness is connecting the dots from the stimuli to our consequential state. The focus is not on the stimuli itself, but our own experience.
I am ________
I do ________ because ________
I like ________ because I am ________
I believe ________ because ________
I’m feeling________ because ________
________ triggered me because ________
Our job is to be honest with ourselves and find out the why of things. Only through awareness can we make intentional changes.
Some people are too afraid to know the why because it means taking action. Once you know, it’s impossible to “unknow”.
A dear friend of mine recently got married and she knows that her husband wants to have a family. Having kids is a commitment she made when she decided to get married. But deep inside, she doesn’t have the motivation to have kids.
She said: “I’ll just have them because I already promised”. I asked her if she wanted to find out where this resistance was coming from. She said: “I don’t want to find out that I don’t want kids and have to get divorced. If I don’t know and I have them anyway, then I hope to grow love being a mother.”
Digging deep comes with responsibility to be true to ourselves, to be accountable for our actions.
Self awareness is a constant exercise, we evolve constantly and we never finish knowing ourselves completely. We might discover hideous aspects we despise about ourselves. And that’s when being self-compassionate and open to change makes us evolve into our most authentic version – the version in which you love yourself no matter what.
We must live with consciousness and conviction that the choices we are making are for us.
Something that you can ask yourself in situations that trigger you:
- What am I feeling? Focus on the emotion, the body sensation, the thoughts crossing your mind.
- What triggered this? Ask this to yourself after you’ve allowed yourself to feel the emotion fully. Focus on labeling and describing the stimuli without blame.
- What led me here? Focus on remembering past experiences, and beliefs and values that could be related.
We might not always find the answer instantly but noticing and asking this to yourself without blame and guilt will allow you to react more consciously when you experience this again.
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Truly yours,
Steph
