Self-Awareness: A Super Simple Process
In the past blog we highlighted the importance of asking ourselves 1) what is possible?, and 2) what is attainable? -- when it comes to self-awareness. From these questions we discovered that the way self-awareness can be helpful is through knowing yourself better to lead yourself better down the road ahead. It's in aligning conscious and subconscious realities to produce health through a life of integrity and alignment.
Now that we are on the same page with understanding self-awareness as a worthy endeavor that is both practical and attainable, we need to address the process that makes it actionable.
My Accidental Journey
My own journey with self-awareness really began by happenstance. Early on in my professional golf career, I had created a website to keep family and friends up to date on my results and progress (ultimately to save me time from having to relay the same information over and over again). The immediate outlet for this was blogging on my website, and thus began my writing journey. I never liked to write and I had always been a numbers-guy growing up (hence the accounting and finance degree), yet as I began to write more consistently, I began to enjoy the process more than I ever expected.
What I came to realize during that time was that not only was writing beginning to be enjoyable, it was incredibly helpful. By being forced to take the time to recollect past events, synthesize what happened, and then convey what I was taking away from it, I began to see how necessary this process was for actually learning from the tournaments I was playing in.
This was the dawn of my personal journey in realizing the importance of practicing self-awareness, not just talking about it. And it all began with the process of discovering.
The Starting Point: Discovery
The place we all begin in our self-awareness journeys is the point of discovery. Discovery, per Wikipedia, is "the act of detecting something new, or something previously unrecognized as meaningful." It's like uncovering a hidden treasure that was buried in your backyard all along; like finding your keys in your pocket after upending your entire house in the search for them; like learning a new keyboard shortcut on your computer that saves you at least three seconds every time you use it; like reading an obscure author who's writing totally blew your mind; like... you get the point.
When it comes to self-awareness, discovering why we did what we did is an essential piece in extracting learning from what was "previously unrecognized as meaningful." Without taking the time to reflect, recollect, process, and synthesize, we end up missing out on the gold that awaits us in our own backyard, so to speak. Far too often we go in search of the new instead of processing and refining the old, failing to make something new out of what was already there.
Each day provides so many opportunities for us to discover ourselves more and more deeply. Yet those discoveries all rely heavily on the necessity of making time to discover why we did what we did, why we experienced what we experienced, why we produced the results we ended up with. This act of meaning-making is always done in reflecting back on what has already transpired. It is this vital act of discovering that is the point where we all begin our journey into deeper understanding of ourself.
The Next Step: Understanding
Once we have put in the reps of discovering, we will begin to recognize patterns and tendencies that often show up, previously unrecognizable to us. This is the fruit of discovering well, yet we mustn't stop there. We need to take the next step forward on our journey of self-awareness, moving to a place of understanding.
Understanding is a word closely tied to the concept of comprehension, meaning: you have a knowledge about how something works. When applied to self-awareness, understanding implies you are more aware of how you work and what your common tendencies are in different situations and environments. The only way you can begin to understand yourself is if you've taken enough time to discover yourself during step number one. While we never graduate beyond going through the process, each step always builds upon the other.
The more we understand about ourself the more we are able to see our own actions, and reactions, in real-time. As we grow our awareness of the implications of our thoughts and actions as they are happening, we heighten our ability to choose a different though or action in real-time, especially if we have seen the pattern produce undesirable outcomes.
The Third Piece: Optimizing
If discovering is awareness in reflecting on the past, and understanding is awareness in recognizing in the present, then optimizing is awareness in preparation for the future.
By putting in the reps, both in the discovery phase and the understanding phase, we begin to have an awareness around our own tendencies and patterns in life to a degree that we are able to start seeing future occurrences before they happen. This foresight allows us to prepare, or prime ourselves for the situations when our tendencies often prevail, in order to optimize ourselves to make the decision or take the action that will better serve us or those around us. This process of optimization is the tangible fruit that self-awareness can bear. It is the part of the process where the work you have done up to this point culminates in an external reward, the superpower of not being a slave to our own tendencies and unconscious, or even conscious, habits.
Optimizing is that future orientation that affords us the opportunity to choose who we want to be and how we want to show up in different spaces. It is the place where self-awareness becomes proactive and begins to shape our future. It is the stage where full alignment is more possible, and integrity is more attainable.
Putting It All Together
So what is the reward?
You get to go back and start all over again, except this time it is one notch deeper. Once one layer of yourself is uncovered, there will always be a next layer to start working on. Humans are infinitely complex beings, which means our lifetime won't suffice for the excavating that can be done. This is actually one of the most hope-filled realities in that there is never not a chance to make progress or to grow in our own understanding of ourself.
What a beautiful journey we each get to be a part of! How much more vibrant will our lives be when are consistently doing the work of discovering, understanding, and optimizing, in better knowing ourselves to better lead ourselves?
“Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.” —Jim Rohn
The only way to know the difference between success and failure, as Jim puts it, is to do the work of Discovering, Understanding, and Optimizing.
