Thou Shall Prosper: Know Yourself aka self-awareness

Thou Shall Prosper: Know Yourself aka self-awareness
self-awareness, know yourselfThe Third Commandment: Get to Know Yourself… aka self-awareness

Awareness, and within it self-awareness ranks really high on the list of what are the most predictive capacities for a successful life.

Why? Because unless you interface with reality, with the world, with others, with what there is to do accurately, your actions will be misdirected… your energies are going to be used to fight windmills, and those are not the hallmarks of a successful person… in fact, to be successful, you need to use all you’ve got to live well, act rightly, and think rightly. Continue reading “Thou Shall Prosper: Know Yourself aka self-awareness”

Getting along without giving up who you are…

Getting along without giving up who you are…

getting along without giving up who you areGetting along, working along, creating side by side is very hard… often hopeless. This article points to the right way that you can learn to get along… and have harmonious relationships.

Some of my students are working on distinguishing conflict… Telling conflict apart from everything that looks like, and maybe even feels like a conflict.

For decades I pondered why the Greek sages said ‘Know Thyself‘. What difference does it make if I know myself or not.

And I wasn’t alone. Approximately 99% of humanity knows themselves to a maximum of 1%, which is as if they don’t know themselves at all.

In my Starting Point Measurements I measure this as ‘self-awareness.’

So in the absence of knowing your self, you make up a self… and that I call your ‘precious I’. Who you should be… not who you are. Continue reading “Getting along without giving up who you are…”

Self-awareness: what is it and why is it crucial to have it?

Self-awareness: what is it and why is it crucial to have it?

Self-awareness is the rarest of all the human virtues. Why? because it is all inner. . . and unless you have it you won’t even know you have it. And unless you grow it, you can’t change.

This is one of the things I measure in the Starting Point Measurements.

The numbers I get are between 3% and 20%, with 20% is being rare: I only found, so far, one person with that level of awareness.

So what can you notice if and when you are self-aware? Continue reading “Self-awareness: what is it and why is it crucial to have it?”

Self-awareness… How to shift your state of being, how to toughen up?

Self-awareness… How to shift your state of being, how to toughen up?
3-ways-to-change-your-stateWhat is the easiest method to shift someone’s state of being?

We already know. Children, when they cry because they hurt themselves, can be brought out of crying by directing their attention to something more interesting, more engaging.

We use it in the Soaring Method.

I use it in almost every coaching conversation I have with people who are stuck in some unproductive state of being, like sadness, despair, maybe even resistance.

State of being, mode of being, beingness… all are outside of what you call self-awareness…

Self-awareness on the level of human is all physical and emotional.

Continue reading “Self-awareness… How to shift your state of being, how to toughen up?”

I have missed it… the trap of introspection

I have missed it… the trap of introspection

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.
~John Ruskin

When you have a narrow cone of vision, or watch something to close to it… so close that you identify with it, what you see is largely useless.

Try this: try to see your palm clearly while your eyes are only a centimeter from your skin. You can’t. And everything there will fill you will dread… without a larger context nothing makes sense, and everything feels threatening.

When you look at your feelings, your thoughts like you just looked at your palm, we call that introspection.

Some of my students go there, from time to time, instead of keeping distance between the observed and the observer, distance physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

The Amish Horse Training Method, the Playground method (the meaning), the Memes (Tree of Knowledge), the Attitudes (Approaches), and, of course the whole science of being able to tell a feeling from an emotion… aka the Marker Feelings… They all need you to keep a healthy distance and a neutral attitude… i.e. observe them from the “Observer or Witness” position. From Outside of yourself. 1

My webinars, my workshops, train you to distinguish for yourself what it feels like to create a distance, what it sounds like, what it looks like… to you.

What it feels like to be in Plato’s Cave… and what it feels like to be outside.

Life, thoughts, emotions, relationships, life’s purpose, liking… all look different in the “light of day”… i.e. outside of Plato’s Cave.

I am still learning to teach creating distance… teaching it with simple words…

It is, in my experience, the hardest thing to teach. You cannot connect to Source unless you can create that distance. You cannot muscletest accurately, unless you can create that distance. You can’t have a life that works, unless you can create that distance.

And I can’t explain to you how to do it… I even had a whole course once on just that… It was called “Detached” and it taught the participants, unsuccessfully, to step back.

So this is a work in progress… to teach it with words.

Participants who took my Playground, the Amish Horse Training, and the Money Attitudes workshops learned it through osmosis…

But how do you translate it to words… Sigh…

One of my students implemented a new practice: becoming an idea machine. He has committed to write 10 new ideas a day. I have tried: wicked hard… but gets you out of the cave. Why? Maybe because reality is a lot bigger than your cave? lol.

I hear the odd teacher or writer mentioning this issue… but they, so far, haven’t written anything that would help me help you.

OK… let’s see what are your options:

If you look at the illustration on the top of this page, you see four quadrants. The “archetypes” are 10% accurate… the truth value is what phd’s can create… low, but maybe we can use it for discussion.

The first category or archetype it talks about is the They spend their entire self-obsessed time in their mind. They want to get better, they are obsessed with self-improvement. This, counter-intuitively, has a positively negative effect on their “self-improvement”.

One interpretation of self-improvement is called the introspection mode—where you continually examine your thoughts and feelings—and it can get you stuck… inside Plato’s Cave, where you wanted to get out of… to begin with. Rather than becoming more self-aware, you lose touch with reality, the reality of yourself (and others).

You might be thinking that introspection is the same as self-awareness… but it isn’t. In introspection you honor all the thoughts and all the feelings as real… and then you think about it. Introspection is rehashing thoughts, and it doesn’t generate insights. For insight you need to see something from a distance… or you won’t see it.

90% of the visitors of this site start out as Introspectors. Their “thinking about themselves” score is sky high (above 90%), their delusion/inauthenticity score: ditto.

There is nothing wrong with them: they are looking at things inside Plato’s Cave, and even there they are looking from too close.

Too Much Introspection Can Kill You
Thinking doesn’t lead to knowledge.

Contrary to what you would expect, people who score high on self-reflection are more stressed, anxious, and less satisfied with their work and personal relationships. They are self-absorbed and feel less in control of their lives. No wonder: life is happening outside of Plato’s Cave… and that is not where they are.

Thinking about yourself is not correlated with knowing yourself.

Self-reflection and insights are an inverse phenomenon… they are inversely correlated. The more time you spend doing introspection the less insight you are able to gain.

Constantly inspecting your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors doesn’t mean you see the inner dynamic, the causation, the correlation. You are too close to it to see it.

You can gain insight from comparing introspection, where you are busy with your thoughts and feelings and meditation where your job is to simply allow your Witness to see the thoughts and feelings, from a neutral, sober eye perspective. In introspection you are “in it”… In meditation you are outside of it… or at the minimum, you have a distance between the observer and the observed.

Introspection involves thinking, categorizing, labeling, analyzing—you are evaluating your thoughts and emotions. Mostly from the systemic value point of view. Meditation is about being aware of what you are doing and just observe—you witness thoughts, feelings, reactions without judging them.

The Introspection Trap

You may approach self-improvement with a rigid mindset: that there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. You expect to find an answer that will fix what is wrong with you.

This does not work, because there is nothing wrong with you. You cannot fix what is not wrong.

It works to trust consciousness and appreciate the journey from where you are, what you can see now, and what is possible to see during the journey. When you allow consciousness to view what there is to view, reality, your behavior will change, inside and outside.

Consciousness, witness, observer are words I use interchangeably  to address that impartial part of “All-of-it” that isn’t concerned with right and wrong, good and bad, living or dying… That part of you is able to see where you deviate from the strait and narrow… and once you saw it, with Consciousness, you cannot unsee it.

Jon Kabat-Zinn said: “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” When Jon Kabat-Zinn says “in the present moment” he should say: not jumping into “ever/never” conclusions… right/wrong conclusions… that kind of conclusion comes from the mind… not consciousness.

Mindfulness is the practice of noticing the degree in which we are identified with our thoughts and beliefs. It’s creating space for:

Awareness, not thinking
An attitude of openness and curiosity, not judging
Flexibility of attention, not resisting

I don’t think mindfulness is a good word… but maybe you’ll connect to it… albeit I have never met a man or a woman who practiced mindfulness and WAS “mindful”… meaning: not thinking, not reactive, not resisting.

When you fall into the introspection trap, you spend all your time in Plato’s Cave. 2

Self is a sea boundless and measureless.”
~Kahlil Gibran

Self Reflection is judgmental…

To know yourself is to accept yourself. I call that Unconditional Love… where the two selves you have form a relationship of love and acceptance, regardless of what one would expect, mistakes, faults, weaknesses. Like an ideal mother would accept an imperfect child. An impossible ideal… But you can get closer and closer to it.

My two selves, just measured, are 8% from each other, or that Unconditional Love. This is why I can take the abuse of that Psychic witch who has been tormenting me. This is why I can be OK not knowing stuff that I SHOULD know… except you know what you know, and can work on finding answers to what you don’t know… I am OK with that.

The further your two selves are, the less tolerance, the less patience, the less elbow room you have for yourself to be.

When I ask people what they want most, they want to be free to be themselves.

But the jail-keeper, the task master, the slave driver is themselves…

Self-awareness is achieved through observing and accepting who you are, how you are, warts and all—not who you should or shouldn’t be. Acceptance is embracing every part of your self, not just the nice ones.

Thinking about yourself isn’t correlated with knowing yourself. It can sometimes create the opposite effect: the more time you spend in introspective mode, the less self-aware you become.

You can spend a whole weekend doing introspection and, come Monday, you won’t have improved your self-knowledge.

People with higher self-awareness are more confident, more creative, communicate more effectively and build stronger relationships.

I have been reading the books of a guy, I call The Dude. I can track how his self-awareness grows… how he got out of introspection/unconsciousness mode… and what he did to achieve that. I am going to schedule a webinar to teach it… watch out for my emails…

To increase your self-awareness you need to look outside, not just inside.

Focusing too much on yourself is a trap. You put yourself in the center of the Universe… and expect others to see you as you see yourself. They won’t… they will see you the way they see you. 3

The Path of The Self Aware Person

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
~Aristotle

Developing self-awareness is not a goal, like an Olympic gold medal… it is nothing until you get it. It is on a scale between 1-100… My self-awareness is 70%. Whatever is lacking in my life is a consequence of not having a full self-awareness, yet I am reasonably happy, reasonably healthy, reasonable able to live comfortably, and am fulfilled.

The four aspects of the self, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual need to be observed in tandem and grown in tandem

Being obsessed with understanding your inner-self can get you stuck. You probably call your inner self how you feel… while the rest of you is left in the dark.

Self-awareness, the non-judging, not-too close awareness of your different aspects, your behavior, your place in the world, how you affect other people, makes you more confident. Because you can see.

And anything you can see, you can adjust.

What if you find that your word has no power?

What if you find that your word has no power?

One of the hardest things for anyone is to know themselves. 1

And not knowing yourself is the cause, not just correlation, of the most misery.

Why you don’t know yourself? Thousands of reasons… knowing yourself also obeys the Anna Karenina Principle.

This article will not be about that. This article will be about the price you pay for not knowing yourself.

Continue reading “What if you find that your word has no power?”

Own what owns you. Owning it means: you allow it to be

Own what owns you. Owning it means: you allow it to be

Own what owns you. Whatever you allow to be allows you to be.

One of my favorite movies is M, a 1931 German thriller by Fritz Lang.

At one point in my life I wanted to have a life about movies. I didn’t know I was an empath, but I knew that I got a lot more depth out of movies than anyone I knew… and I knew that I had some unique ability to say something that was new, about every movie. Continue reading “Own what owns you. Owning it means: you allow it to be”