Self Awareness Requires That We Look Beyond Ourselves

Let me ask you this question: When you are aware of yourself do you do anything to allow yourself to become more aware? Do you try to change who you are, the way you act or the things you say and do in an effort to make yourself more aware? Or do you allow yourself to be a victim of your personality type? Is there anything you can do to change the way you are now or do you accept the way you are? If you answer no to any of these questions I have to assume that you haven't allowed yourself enough self-awareness to be able to make the changes you seek.


What does awareness mean to you? It means that you are more than just "you". You have more than just your body, you have your heart, your mind, your soul and you are capable of changing the way you behave to suit who you really are (not what society wants you to be). And if you are able to change this then that is a good thing because otherwise we don't know where we would be.

But sometimes we go further than just being aware. We start to be aware of the quality of our lives. We become more aware of the things we do and the impact those things have on our lives. So we are actively making changes in our lives. And then suddenly we start to be aware that the quality of our lives is improving and this is when we begin to look for ways to make the changes that we want to.

So what happens if we don't change? What happens if we stop trying to be more aware of who we are? What happens when we allow ourselves to revert to the way we were? What happens when we continue to use the same old habits that get us through life?

When we look deeper we realise that the way we see the world depends on how deeply we can delve within ourselves. And self-awareness is about looking deeper. It is not enough to be aware of things. We need to go deeper. We need to examine the things we do and the impact they have on our lives.

When we examine ourselves we can learn something. We can find out something about ourselves that might help us improve our performance or even save our job. We might actually find out that what we have been doing is not working at all and that we need to change. But what might that change look like?

That is a hard question. I am sure there are different answers but one of them might be "not a better place." I don't know. But maybe it's time to stop resisting that idea, look at it for a second and see if it might be a better place to be.

So if you want to develop self-awareness, first and foremost you must be willing to look beyond yourself. If you resist this idea, you will never fully discover your self. Instead you will remain oblivious to your own self. This is the most common mistake that people make when pursuing self-awareness. They get so focused on knowing about themselves that they fail to look outside themselves and just keep looking inside.

If you can let go of the idea that you need to know about yourself, you can then begin to really focus on what you want to do with yourself. This is a whole new process and one that doesn't happen instantly. It takes time and patience. And if you are prepared to put forth the effort, it will happen.

You will start to discover things about yourself that you never knew before. You will become aware of areas in your life where you need to make changes. You will realize that no matter how bad your life has been in the past, you have an opportunity to create a better place for yourself. Because you are aware of those things about yourself, rather than denying them or pretending they don't exist, you are now able to take advantage of them.


Let go of your past and denial and embrace self-awareness. Your present and your future will look much better. You will also find that you will be happier. This all begins by looking within. And once you do that, you are well on your way to creating a much better future for yourself.