Why self-awareness?
Laura DeMaria
With my workshop on self-awareness approaching, a friend asked me, why self-awareness, and what have you done to learn about this?
I think that self-knowledge is at the last frontier. On this planet, anyway. Well, and not including the bottom of the ocean. But you know what I mean.
We often are quite happy living alongside our own lives. I also think we are often quite happy concerning ourselves with other peoples’ lives, because it gives us an excuse not to have to look too deeply into our own.
The three tools I am teaching in this workshop - journaling, living one’s values, and prayer - are things I have spent years with.
I remember my first journal. I was in fifth grade, it was not much bigger than my hands, and had a lock I simultaneously loved and feared because I was pretty sure I would lose the key, and therefore access to the record of my inmost thoughts. I suspect I wrote a lot about my family and my pet gerbils.
Now, many years later, I have stacks of worn-out journals, and I know the distinct craving of needing to open my journal to work through something on my mind. Or, to return to something to understand where I was then. I have a lot of empathy for all the stages of my life.
As for values, several years ago a very wise person made me list those out and even put them in order of importance. And now I know when I am straying from them and acting out of accord with the person I am, and who I want to be.
As for prayer, that changed for me when I learned about Ignatian contemplative prayer. The act of self-questioning, of identifying my own attachments, and desiring to be rid of them to be closer to God, has reset the way I think. Thankfully, it has also shown me how close God is, at all times.
When we’re self aware, we are more likely to act in a way that is true. I could make a decision at work because I want to humiliate the competition, or because I want to act in the interest of my client (clearly, there is a right answer as to how to act there). But if I am not aware of my own motivations, I will act immaturely. You could think of one million examples of this.
So that is a snapshot. Be self-aware, and therefore be transparent. Not see-through, but real. Sweep away the cobwebs of self-disillusion. That is why I think it is important.
That workshop is February 8 - sign up today!