“Well, maybe I will just go and live in a forest all by myself”, I told my therapist. I was in my mid-twenties, unhappy, feeling misunderstood and a little lost about who I was or was becoming. I wrapped up my existential crisis in this one sentence as if it was a reasonable solution.
He smiled into his long white beard—I am not making this Gandalf stuff up—and offered a view that has forever changed how I understand self-development and self-awareness.
“Hmm … it is much easier to get to know who you are when there is someone who responds. We get to know our selves when we interact with others, and the world”.
Self-awareness is an understanding of your inner landscape: your drives, desires and emotions. It is an understanding of how your inner world is shaped by your past experiences and by the outer world. It is the consciousness of your choices, actions and impact.
Self-reflection, time spent with yourself examining your reactions to the world, in quiet or through journaling, is one way to know yourself. But crucially, it is experiencing yourself in the world that feeds this introspection and, hopefully, a deeper understanding of yourself.
It is tempting to think of self-awareness as a selfie, a picture we take of ourselves, by ourselves, with the camera turned inward, yet most of what I know about myself has come from other people or what life has put in front of me. These present angles I could not see on my own.
Below I examine four of those angles.
I know myself when I am tested
If we are isolated from the rest of the world, our experiences become small and narrow. We do not meet the many possibilities that live within us. When we are exposed to the challenges, frictions and fractiousness of the world, we get to test ourselves.
With empathy, and by observing others’ experience, we can imagine how we might be in certain situations. Maybe we can even be the person we imagine ourselves to be. But we may equally never know ‘our true colours’ until we meet those situations.
I wasn’t aware that the person who knew how to look after an ill person lived within me. I wasn’t aware that the person who knew how to hold the sacred space of a loved one taking their last journey lived within me. Had I been isolated or protected from the losses and hurts of the world, I would not have known the parts of me that knew how to love deeply, the parts of me that saw caregiving as a sacred privilege, and the parts of me that would find a way to live again after loss.
I know myself when I know you
My mother bought my two girlfriends two fancy flour sifters. Just because they had admired hers. I grew up in a home of generosity, where my parents stretched themselves for others with whatever they had.
When I was eleven, my grand aunt returned to Sri Lanka after her husband died, with all her belongings in two twenty-foot containers. We didn’t live in a fancy big house, nor did we come from great wealth. But she lived with us for six months, her belongings strewn across the hall. I hated it. I was eleven, so I could be forgiven for not understanding. My parents, with grace and kindness, put up with her eccentricities and sternly kept my brother and me in check if we complained.
Watching my parents, I have learned about their kindness and generosity to others, expressed not through money but through a small thoughtful gift, or time or errands that are inconvenient. I have also learned that inconveniencing myself does not always come easily to me. Because I admire these qualities in them, I want to develop their kind of humanness in myself.
In that same way, I have watched an acquaintance who insists that his staff stand up when he walks in. I understand that he comes from a different generation where class was strictly defined, and his identity is probably tied up with feeling superior. I don’t want to be that person. I watch out for moments where superiority becomes part of my identity, and when it shows up, it becomes a site for unlearning.
When a trait in someone puts me off, it may also be something I dislike in myself. I am irritated when people procrastinate and don’t deliver what they promised. It is what I fear and dislike most in myself: my own procrastination, the rush to meet a deadline. Over time I have learned to be kinder to others, because I have had to learn to be kinder to myself.
Noticing what draws you to someone and what repels you is an opportunity for self-awareness. Growing up, we are often asked to write an essay about our role models. It is an exercise in naming the qualities and values we admire and might want to develop in ourselves. We often set these people against those who do not live these values.
The real lesson comes when we also notice the shadow side of those we admire, and the positive sides of those we oppose or even dislike. The generosity that makes someone willing to inconvenience themselves can, in excess, harm their own wellbeing. The man who keeps class systems alive might also be kind to those who work for him when they are in need. We could argue this keeps superiority in place, but also argue that no one is perfect. This is possibly the biggest lesson in self-awareness: what is human in me is also human in the other.
I know myself through your eyes
“You are assertive, you bring in a gentle assertiveness. And I know you can do this.” My client, the CEO of a multinational company, said this to me during a break I had forced in the middle of a team development workshop, when the process and outcomes I was hoping for were just not happening. It was early in my consulting career, and I was flustered and apologetic. I had asked for half an hour to regain my composure and rethink my approach, and admitted that I feared my lack of assertiveness was getting in the way of holding the container.
Gentle assertiveness. He gave me words for something I didn’t know I was, and framed it so that I could draw on his confidence. Since then, when I feel ‘not in charge’ or cannot claim space, I remember that moment and channel an energy that comes naturally to me.
It has also given me a lens to explore what it would mean to be assertive, to claim my power with more authority. When I try, I notice how it feels to go against the grain, and whether this is a part of me I want to develop. It is an ongoing inquiry.
In leadership development sessions, I often invite participants to use the Johari Window or the more sophisticated and detailed version of this exercise, a 360-degree feedback. These exercise not only confirm what we know about ourselves, but more importantly reveal our blind spots. Sometimes it is hard to see ourselves, and someone else can be that mirror.
I know myself when you hold space
When I felt ready to return to work after a personal loss, I asked trusted clients, colleagues and friends to help me reimagine my work. I called the process Reimagining Mihirini. I couldn’t see for myself how my clients were experiencing me, what they appreciated in me, and where my particular style and quality of work might find a place. My colleagues shared what they admired in me, and where I could develop further. Some clapped and some pushed. And I needed all of them.
When we can’t see ourselves, or feel stuck in how we think about ourselves, a space of care and non-judgment with a friend, family member or coach can help us find ourselves and imagine other versions of who we might be. If not this, what would be the point of self-awareness?
In a safe and caring relationship, we have the opportunity to be vulnerable, to unravel and be ourselves. We can let someone ask the hard questions, because sometimes that voice is kinder than the one in our heads. Asked kindly, we can respond with openness and tentativeness. We can draw confidence when someone else re-gifts our thoughts and words. We can shush the inner critic that drowns our fledgling dreams, and let them see the light of day in the presence of someone who encourages and supports us.
This is why my work as a coach is so close to home, and why I see it as a sacred space. I have not got here by myself. I have been held, seen and reflected back by another. And I am more myself for that gift. Whenever a friend or client enters this space, I hold my breath a little, because I know they are here to be heard and seen, so that they can see and hear themselves more clearly.
And every time I feel the pull of a forest or a cave, I remember the words of the Buddhist nun Ayya Khema in her book ‘When the Iron Eagle Flies: Buddhism for the West’:
“A spiritual life is lived in the world. It isn’t only what one does, it’s mainly how one does it. … The more we are in the world, the more confrontations we have, and these are often the cause of negative reactions. To learn to change our negative reactions to loving kindness and compassion is the great purifier in daily life. It doesn’t matter where we are; we can do that anywhere. Much better in the middle of the biggest crowd than sitting all alone in a cave”.
Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-black-smartphone-1344053/
