How to know yourself? The sideways glance

Knowing yourself well is vitally important when you want to interact with reality powerfully.

What’s in the way of you knowing yourself well?

Illusions, delusions, flattery, comparison, arrogance, I could continue this list for a whole page.

So given that so many things are in the way, blocking or distorting your view, how do you get to know yourself?

Before we get to that, let us see what happens when your view of yourself is distorted, like an inkblot in the middle of a picture, or lacks information… like having a blank spot on a canvas?

Of course, like in everything, the Anna Karenina Principle applies.

All self-aware people are self-aware in one way, all not self-aware people are not self-aware, deluded in their own way.

I am going to think of the many people I know, each, in their own way, dealing with not knowing themselves as they are:

Delusions: thinking yourself smarter, better informed, superior to others thinking that your personal reality is real.

Many people in this group put themselves in a life situation where they can be the one-eyed person in the land of the blind. Most doctors belong to this group.

I have enough example of self-important, self-deluded doctors to fill this blog. As long as they are in their usual environment, they are OK… but when they are put in an environment where other people are smarter, etc. than them, they continue pontificating, advising, acting the smart person they think they are, and they get into all kinds of trouble.

If you are one of these people: stay where you are, and be satisfied with what you have, or alternatively be prepared for a lot of jarring experiences:

It is a jarring experience to have to feel reality… and have to rebuild your perception of yourself and life.

If you are one of these delusional people and strive to become more than you have been, you are advised to start considering reality, and start learning skills that will be able to put you, rightfully, into the position of smart, capable, etc. person, so you can win.

I have a few people in my circle who are at this place. I respect them, honor them. I admire them because they are striving to do the work, because they are willing to do the work to slowly match who they really are with their illusion of themselves.

There are all kinds of delusions… here are a few

• Delusions: thinking yourself stupider than you are.
• Delusions: thinking yourself more noble, more generous, more caring than others
• Delusions: thinking yourself worthless

I won’t consider going into detail, the categories speak for themselves.

Your delusions about yourself will keep you in a box, and breaking out of that box takes courage and effort.

So, how do you actually get to know yourself?

This is trickier than it sounds. If you keep looking at something the same way, if you are looking at the same things, you will always come away with the same conclusions. So the methods MUST be a way to see yourself or things differently. The easiest way is the sideways glance, looking from a different angle, without taking the memory and the decision with your eyes.

Looking from an attitude of ‘not already knowing’… If you think you know, no matter where you look from, you’ll see what you ‘already know’.

Often feedback from others can force you to look at yourself through their eyes. Feedback from others is the hardest to deal with. Your strong desire to look good at all cost makes it very very very difficult to allow another person to see you, and for you to see yourself the way they see you.

I think this is the reason people come to my calls with major trepidation and anxiety: They are afraid. ‘What will I find out about myself this time?‘ lol. It is normal, I have that to a certain degree myself: I am still human and nothing is going to change that.

One of my favorite methods is to find the source of inspiration first.

Find what moves you to tears

It’s taken a good 10 thousand pages of reading Neal Stephenson to actually pinpoint what about his writing that makes me want more of it… to the degree that he can’t keep up with me (not that he knows about me… but it takes a lot longer to write a book than to read it.)

Finally today I got what it is: It is the indomitable human spirit, or the indomitability of human spirit in his heroes.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going… but only a small percentage of humanity is tough. Which, pretty much, indicates to me that the human spirit is blocked, sleeping, or dead in most people.

The human spirit is the same as Life Force. Without a strong Life Force, without a strong human spirit, people want to live in quiet desperation, survive, draw back, ineffectiveness.

Neal Stephenson’s heroes are impossible to squash. Impossible to break. You can kill them, but you can’t discourage them.

When I read his novels, I feel that my life hasn’t been a mistake, I feel that there are people who I can talk to, that there are people who are willing and able to become Expanding Human Beings.

Find if what’s moving you to tears is about you or about the human spirit?

You may cry when you see love. You may cry when you see “happily ever after”. You may cry when you see success.

These cries are about you, about your longing, about what you would like to have but are probably not doing anything for.

Maybe these cries, these emotional incidents, are about unfinished business with parents, lovers, teachers, bosses… pay attention: it may be your clue that you need to do some work on your interpretation of the past!

My coaching calls are an excellent and inexpensive way to sort it out for yourself. It’s not an event, it is a process.

You want to get to a place where your grieving about yourself and your past disappears and only inspiration will make you weep.

It takes time, it takes work, but it’s worth it.

Author: Sophie Benshitta Maven

True empath, award winning architect, magazine publisher, transformational and spiritual coach and teacher, self declared Avatar View all posts by Sophie Benshitta Maven