Self awareness

SELF AWARENESS

Self awareness is like an onion,there are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you are going to start crying at inappropriate times.
Let's say the first layer of the self awareness is a simple understanding of one's emotions. For an example let's look at these basic level of self awareness,"This makes me feel sad","This is when i feel happy","This gives me hope".
We all have emotional blind spots. Often they have to do with the emotions we taught were inappropriate growing up. It takes years and efforts to get good at identifying blind spots in our selves and then expressing the affected emotions appropriately.
The second layer of the self awareness onion is an ability to ask why we feel certain emotions.
These why questions are difficult and often takes a lot of time to answer consistently and accurately.
For an example, questions like these; "Why do you feel angry? Is it beacuse you failed to achieve some goal. Why are you uninspired? Is it beacuse you think you are good enough?
This layer of questioning helps us understand the root cause of the emotions that overwhelm us. Once we understand the root cause we can ideally do something to change it .
But there is another, even deeper level of the self awareness onion. That one is our personal values: How am i choosing to measure my self? By what standard am i judging my self and everyone around me? Why do i consider this to be sucess or failure?
This level,takes constant questioning and effort, is incredibly difficult to reach. But it's the most important, because our values determine the nature of our problems and the nature of our problems determines the quality of our lives.
Values underlie everything we are and do. If what we value is unhelpful, if what we consider success/failure is poorly chosen, then everything based upon those values, the thoughts, the emotions, the day to day feelings will all be out of whack. Everything we think about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.