I recently had my curiosity piqued by two new friends of mine. They were asking me questions on how to be more self-aware. They wanted me to explain further how I had been trying to do something like this for years and I couldn’t figure it out. I told them that I had tried it for a while, but I’d always find some sort of way to avoid it.
Sometimes we don’t even realize how much we’re trying and how much we’re avoiding.
Self-awareness is a skill you want to learn, but it is one that you will probably never be able to master. There are a lot of things in this world where you cant just do something, you have to learn how to avoid it. If you want to know more on why I think this, check out my interview with my friend.
I think this is one of those situations where I could have been a little bit clearer with my friend. Because if you think about it, the purpose of self-awareness is to be able to recognize and avoid the things we do that hurt ourselves, our relationships, our friends, our work. Why is that so important? Because if you want to change your life and improve your health, it helps to know where to avoid.
You do have to be aware of the things you are doing that are harming you, which is why I said that it helps to be aware of how much you are doing. But because we can’t just change our conscious minds, we have to change the unconscious ones. Like when I used to say to my boyfriend, “What I’m doing, it’s hurting me,” that’s because he was so aware of what I was doing.
You know, in the same way a lot of people say they want to be thin, but then eat a lot of pizza and exercise. I always say, what I want, its not what I do, but what I don’t do, its what I don’t want.
I just put that in quotes because people don’t say that they want to have a thin body or exercise every day. But if we did, then you wouldn’t have that little problem because you’d notice.
While it is good to think about our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, we are not in charge of our actions, so we should not allow them to overrule our desires. As always though, we should take care of ourselves first, so if you’re not eating right or getting enough sleep, you’re not going to feel any pain from the lack of self-awareness.
You are not the one who has to do anything except sit there like a stone. In fact you have the right to be tired, but you are not the one who has to get up and work out. You have the right to sleep in, but you don’t have to. You are not the one who has to go to the gym. You are not the one who has to eat right.
Being able to look at ourselves and say, “I’m sick,” is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves. It means that we get to see that we’re not the only one who feels tired and sad, that we don’t need to force ourselves to be happy, that we can easily just turn off the brain and sleep. We are not the one who has to take a shower, or brush our teeth, or clean our room.
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