Blog - Quickies

As our world contends with a cumulative number of challenges, including the recession, environmental collapse, depleted resources, wars, famine, and political conflicts, we’re primarily focused on working towards external solutions. But a lot of these issues, from petty to prominent power struggles, can be traced back to a deeply ingrained internal issue: a lack of self-awareness.

Our economic system isn’t particularly conducive to self-awareness, or being honest with yourself about your motives and behaviour. In fact, it’s often quite the contrary. When the goal is to make as much money as possible, by any means possible, self-awareness becomes a counterproductive obstacle.

But if more individuals were able to dedicate themselves to raising self-awareness—a key element in instigating human psychological development and maturity—we may be able to tackle a lot of the global problems we face in a more progressive and fruitful way.

I had once read something in one my university psychology texts that there are generally two types of patients in psychotherapy.

One is the neurotic, whose problem is that he or she feels overly responsible for the problems in their life, beyond the normal scope of personal responsibility. They create an internal hell for themselves, because of excessive and irrational self-blame, self-hatred, and more. This patient is easier for the therapist to work with because the person has already taken on the first step, which is taking responsibility for their problems; the task is to adjust to an accurate and realistic range of personal responsibility.

The other type is the personality disorder. This person is usually referred to a psychotherapist because of repeated problems with others. Individuals with personality disorders often don’t see a therapist out of their own volition, but usually because they’re forced by others due to excessive problems in relationships, or dealing with life issues.

This patient is harder to work with because he or she often refuses to see any link between his or her actions or behaviour and the effect it has on others or his or her life. He or she usually sees everyone else as the problem. In contrast to the neurotic, the person with the personality disorder usually makes everyone else’s life difficult.

Thus, it’s harder for the patient to start taking responsibility. Accordingly, it’s harder for the person with a personality disorder to work towards self-awareness.

Self-awareness is one of the hardest, and often highly painful, things to do.

Often, most people will avoid pursuing it until they hit rock-bottom in life, or if they have to deal with a deeply difficult issue or life decision that requires introspection, such as health issues, breaking up with someone, or coming out.

In the struggles of social rights movements, for minority groups, gays and lesbians, or feminists, environmental movements, and in the fights of any activist group against corporate power or political oppression, one of the biggest obstacles comes from a lack of self-awareness, and self-honesty, on the part of their opposition.

Key to increasing self-awareness is learning to be able to see and feel the impact of your actions on other people, and to empathize with how others feel.

Someone lacking self-awareness may not want to care about how their actions impact on others. But if they were able to feel the pain, distress, or aggravation that they’ve caused others as if it were their own, or were able to see themselves how others see them, they would reconsider their decisions, or reevaluate their motivations.

You can see this in everything from political conflicts to personal relationships with friends, family, and coworkers.

If you’re interested in making the world a better place, or improving your own life, one of the most basic ways is to start with being more honest with yourself. Try asking yourself what the real reason is you’ve made a decision. Or why you treated someone a certain way. Or what you’re doing that’s causing the current problems in your life.

It may not be pleasant, but when it comes to personal growth, short-term pain can lead to greater gain in the long-run. For everyone.