Self awareness is hard
Self awareness is hard to do, and it’s never a completed task - there’s always more. If anybody tells you they are completely self aware, take it with a large pinch of salt. Having said that - Self awareness can be learned, and we all already have it in some measure.
There’s a set of ideas in Gestalt Psychotherapy that can be roughly condensed to Hindsight, Insight and Foresight. We all have hindsight - we can look back and say “Oh! I did this! I wish I had done that!”
If we bring attention to those times of hindsight, we can re-evaluate them with a more pragmatic approach. Could you really have done something different? Are you judging yourself for not having a crystal ball in the moment and foreseeing the outcomes? Are you just looking for ‘things to beat yourself up about’?
Ultimately, self awareness here is the ability to step out of the ‘hindsight’ story and ask yourself: ‘What is the story I am telling myself? Is it familiar? Is it a pattern?’
The pattern bit is important. We have patterns of feelings, thoughts and behaviours, and when we give ourselves a hard time with hindsight stories, we’re fulfilling a pattern.
If we develop the self awareness to sport those patterns, then we begin to move towards insight.
One day you’ll find yourself doing the thing you would normally come back and give yourself a hard time about - sometimes we say we are an ‘observing adult’ watching ourselves with a sense of ‘I can’t believe I am doing this!’ and being so surprised it’s hard to step out of it in the moment... And that’s OK, this is a developing skill. Self awareness in the moment takes practice and kindness to ourselves, and it’s to be celebrated when we get to a point of recognising our patterns when we are actually doing them!
The thing about awareness in the moment is we start to have options about our actions - we can make new choices, decide to do something different… And sometimes we won’t, and that’s OK.
The next and final stage comes hot on the heels of ‘Insight’ and that is ‘Foresight’.
There’s a poem by Portia Nelson* that is quoted in many places - as I write this it’s on her Wikipedia page - called ‘Autobiography in Five Short Chapters’ and it sums up the process of arriving at Foresight beautifully
When we have Foresight, we recognise that we are in a position where we could get to those patterns of feelings, thoughts and behaviours we didn’t like, and we choose to do something else before we get anywhere near them.
Do read the poem, it’s short and, I think, brilliant.
*Portia Nelson was also an actress and singer - you’ve probably seen her as Sister Berthe in The Sound of Music singing ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ !!