GET TO KNOW YOURSELF : Self-awareness

Who are you, do you know yourself?

Self-awareness involves emotional self-understanding, emotional self-expression, self-acceptance, awareness of how your emotions impact others, and how you get impacted by other people's emotions , actions and behaviours as well. Your ability to effectively manage conflict, anger, and stress. Self-awareness is all about the awareness of your strengths and limitations as well.

Therefore, it's important for us to notice, learn, and let go of self-limiting stories regarding who we are, in order to live meaningful and fulfilled lives. We are not the negative stories we grew up being told, that we internalised, believed and continue to tell ourselves. We are completely different from that.

There are lessons, however, to learn about ourselves. If you are interested in going on this journey of inner introspection, reflection; inner journey of your inner self. Lessons to learn about the self is to look at who you are really:

Who are you when you are alone?

Who are you when you are with friends?

Who are you among strangers?

Who are you in your family or with your family?

Who would you say you are at:

church,

work; among your colleagues, your

supervisors, your subordinates?

among strangers, people you don't know ?

As you go on this journey, try and answer these questions. And allow yourself to regularly take a transformative journey to your inner self.

And whilst doing that, allow the following questions as well to guide you. For example,

if you could change anything in your life, what will that be?

If you are not content with the way things are right now, and with the way your life is right now, and the way you feel right now,

What could you do differently?

What needs to change and how?

What has to happen for you to say, I have inner peace, inner joy, I am okay and really mean it?

If you still feel a void despite having amassed material things, I think it will be critical to look internally.

What change has to occur for you to be less stressed, less anxious, and less angry, or to be able to cope better with life challenges?

Life is a journey, and in this journey, you're going to encounter challenges.

Remember, you are the author of your life.

Each day you wake up, you write your life story through free will, your thoughts, your actions, your

your behaviour, your emotions.

Whilst doing that, in this journey, you either choose positivity or negativity. Every minute, every hour, every week, every month, every year, you create a biography of your life through your words, actions, thoughts, decisions that you make, behaviour, and people you surround yourself with.

Therefore, as you write your life story in your life journey, take a pause, self-reflect, breathe, challenge your irrational or distorted thoughts. Analyse but don't over-analyse because it may lead to rumination. Notice unhealthy rumination tendencies that do not change what has happened.

What has transpired is history.

Evaluate how it looks to those who read your life, those you are interacting with, those you live with, those you work with. And most importantly, how does your life look to you?

You are the most important person in this life journey. You are the most important asset to your life.

What are you seeing when you do self-reflection?

Are you content with what you see?

Is it worth passing on to others?

Is it worth passing on to your future generations?

When you do self-evaluation as an author of your life journey, be genuine without being harsh on yourself. Do a thorough edit and admit where there is need for improvement. Delete what needs to be removed from your life.

Journaling is the most powerful tool to use when you want to transform your life, your mind, your thoughts, your emotions and your actions. Because journaling can help to open your eyes to things that you have been overlooking or blinded to, as well as inviting objective, constructive feedback. Feedback from others can help you notice blind spots for you to keep working on yourself.

You may have been receiving this feedback in one way or the other, but you've just been brushing them aside. There's no way that more than five people can keep on mentioning the same thing that they're perceiving about you and be wrong. For example, if people keep pointing out that you have anger issues, pay attention.

If people keep pointing out that you're needy, clingy, and lacking compassion, empathy, not easily giving or unable to share; stinginess, then, they cannot be up to 5-10 people that keep giving the same feedback and be wrong. It could mean it's time to reflect on that. Ask yourself thought-provoking questions in your self-reflection and in your journaling, such as:

if I said the same things I always say to myself, to other people, how will that impact them?

How will they feel about that?

Will they be happy?

If the things I do or say to others were done or said to me, how will I feel?

How happy will I be?

And if I'm not happy with myself and I can't stand myself, I'm uncomfortable spending time with myself and I can't love myself, how do other people experience me? And what am I projecting to them?

In your life journey processing, as you are doing your life journey processing and reflection, be your authentic editor and auditor as you examine various aspects of your narratives that may be holding you back. You may discover a lot about yourself such as tendencies to have these self-defeating thoughts, tendencies to ruminate, negativity, sarcasm, and pessimism, anger issues, fear, self-loathing, self-condemnation tendencies that actually steal your joy and your inner peace. You may be saying, but then how do I find myself?

You can rediscover ways in which you could rewrite your life story and your life journey by rewiring your brain, by reframing and restructuring your thoughts, the way you perceive yourself to start perceiving and looking at yourself differently. You can delete all the cookies. Deleting the cookies is all about deleting all the negative things that you grew up being told that you bought into and you believed, and you stored in your brain and took them to be true.

When in actual fact, they may not be true at all about yourself. Yourself beliefs, your self perception, your self concept, you can start by deleting all the negative things you grew up being told such as:

“You are ugly”,

“You are too short”

“You are too black”

“You are too skinny/thin”

“You are too tall”

“You're not kind”.

“You are not clever like your brother/sister/cousin etc

“You are this, you are that, you are this, you

are that” etc

and made you believe ;

“ I am dumb”

“I'm not intelligent”

“. I will never make it in life”

When you grow up being told that; then you actually start believing it, it gets stored in your brain, and becomes part of you. Instead, you can replace all those cookies with new empathic information.

It's what we call data in- data-out; when you put wrong data in, “garbage in, garbage out” ; it is wrong data that will come out. So, we want to put good data into your brain through affirmations, positive self-talk, self-validation, self-empathy, and meditating on what's positive about you, augmenting your strengths rather than magnifying your limitations. Remember, nobody is perfect, you are human.

Failing which, seek counseling or find a life coach. You have the ability to revolutionize your life by challenging your inner critic. That inner voice that's always saying,

“I'm not good enough”, “ I'm not intelligent enough”, “I'm not pretty enough”,

“I cannot get married”, “I cannot succeed in my studies”, etc.,

Silence your inner critic that keeps telling you, you cannot make it. Choose self-awareness,

self-understanding, and what stories about your life to keep and which ones to revise, or put behind to reshape your personal masterpiece.

You are your own masterpiece. Become the artist of your own life through self-development, emotional self-awareness, emotional self-expression, and self-motivation for self-liberation from the past, from your past and probably from your present painful situation. Your painful past, from abusive relationships, from adverse childhood experiences, from grief, from guilt, from gender-based violence, from addictive behaviors, and so on.

You can liberate yourself. Learn to reach acceptance about the past that you had no control over, and you cannot change. Learn to be comfortable in your own skin; notice, acknowledge and validate emotional related to the past.

Notice when you attempt to feel that inner void with material things, misplaced love, people pleasing tendencies, unhealthy friendships, drugs, alcohol, and other unhealthy coping strategies. Create healthy boundaries to reduce getting depleted emotionally and mentally. Learn to embrace yourself.

Notice when you are being an enemy to yourself. Nobody is perfect. Yes, you have limitations, but you also have strengths. Focus on your strengths and work on the limitations that you may have.

Remember, the only person that can destroy you is you. So, get to know yourself, your needs, your likes and dislikes, your strengths, your limitations, your thoughts, your emotions, and how they impact on your behaviour and on the behaviours of other people.

You are the scriptwriter of your life, and you can do this if you trust the efforts of your journey, your reflection, your introspection in your life so far.

Lastly, focus on that happier self. Happiness is possible and doesn’t have to be materialistic, it is inner joy that even materials cannot fill. If you believe it, inner peace is possible, and only you can work towards achieving it.

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TO KNOW YOURSELF: SELF-AWARENESS,

https://podcasts.apple.com/bw/podcast/new-beginnings-counsellingbw/id1798959087?i=1000715778969&r=36