What Is Self-Awareness?

Self-awareness is arguably the holy grail of inner peace, especially when you’re under pressure. But what is it? How do you achieve it?

As a teacher of self-awareness, I’ll be the first to admit that it does not always come easy. Given our human instinct to resist whatever challenges us to grow and change, self-awareness often involves a struggle.

To be more self-aware, I’ve had to cultivate a willingness to admit I don’t have it all figured out. When I feel really strongly that I’m right, I remind myself that I might not be. I look at my reality more objectively, and I admit when something is not working for me anymore.

These admissions never come easily. But addressing my emotional reactivity has been essential to getting me to a place of greater self-awareness.

When My Emotional Reactions Ran the Show

As a young mother, I tried to protect my kids from the impact of the dysfunction around them. Outwardly, we looked like the perfect family who had it all. But the real story unfolding inside the four walls of our home was a marriage buckling under the weight of inauthentic emotional reactions like shame, blame and guilt.

We lived like this for decades. If you could call it living.

For the longest time, I let my emotions run the show. I relied on what felt like a satisfying reaction rather than reflecting on what was or wasn’t actually working.

Firing off a sarcastic remark felt like I was being heard.

Pushing the blame on others felt like a solution.

Launching impulsively into action felt like the surest and fastest way to get the problem behind me!
In the heat of the moment, a full-blown emotional reaction felt like it was protecting me. Ironically, all it actually protected me from was self-awareness, and the change and personal growth that depend on it! Click To Tweet
In the heat of the moment, a full-blown emotional reaction felt like it was protecting me. Ironically, all it actually protected me from was self-awareness, and the change and personal growth that depend on it!

Unaware that I was making the choice to act out my reactions, I couldn’t see the lack of wisdom in it. After the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the end result was nearly always the same: a truckload of pain, confusion and an even bigger mess.

Gaining Clarity

By the time I mustered the courage to seek a divorce, my children were adults. I thought my newfound courage would empower me to close the door on the powerful and damaging reactive emotions I had been running on for so long.

It would. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

As I gained more and more clarity, I saw that the reactivity I had acted out during my marriage was still surfacing, even after my divorce. As Jon Kabat-Zinn said, “Wherever you go, there you are!” Needless to say, this was a hard fact to face.

By separating myself from an untenable situation, I thought my shame and guilt would disappear with it. Boy, was I wrong!

I still had a debilitating fear of uncertainty and enormous self-doubt about moving into the world on my own. In addition, I struggled with guilt and shame about my past life choices.

I had been acting out some very specific patterns for decades. And, over that long stretch, those patterns had become habitual. So, whenever I faced a stressful situation, I fell right back into them.

The hard truth was that like the deep, gnarled roots of an old tree, they weren’t coming out without real effort and determination.

A New Approach: The Practice

Eventually, I understood that If I wanted real change in my life, I needed a new approach. And that new approach became the fundamental Practice of my program, the Inner Peace Blueprint™, backed by a key Harvard study on the benefits of mindfulness. Researchers found that when practitioners of mindfulness focused awareness on their physiological state, it led to improved emotional regulation, which led to an empowered sense of self.

So, here is what I did:

Every time I felt myself getting hijacked by shame, guilt, self-pity, insecurity or fear, I interrupted those reactions by relaxing my physical tension and focusing on my breathing. This is the most basic technique I used – the Practice of posture and breath.

Using the Practice

I would do the Practice when:

I couldn’t trust myself (or others).

Insecurity hit me when I imagined being on my own after 36 years of marriage.

I listened to my children talk about their own reactions to the divorce, and fear and guilt washed over me.

Remembering to do the Practice took a lot of discipline, which was really not that surprising given the fact I had been reacting emotionally for my entire life, getting stuck in my head and going nowhere fast. My reactions were so familiar to me that they felt like who I was. They had become a deeply ingrained habit and really hard to break.

Not challenging this habit, however, was simply no longer an option. And the Practice was the best way I could see to get the job done, so I stuck with it. Every time I paused to relax my body and breathe, I experienced myself calming down, even if just a little. Over time I started to see how all the little bits of calm were adding up to a lot more calm.

What I Learned About Self-Awareness

With greater calm, greater self-awareness (which I define as “being able to see what I’m really up to”) came pretty naturally.

I paid close attention to what I said when I was under pressure: was it constructive or not?

Whenever I did something to get the pressure behind me and “make it stop!” I evaluated the effect. Did it actually help, or did it just dig the hole that much deeper?

Today, the Practice is still my primary self-awareness tool because it always brings me back to the now-moment. When I can focus my attention on my physical tension and release it through breath, I become more aware of my emotional state and can better regulate what I do and say as a result. This, to me, is the definition of self-empowerment.

This new way of responding to my reactions with the Practice helped me break the habit of acting out my reactivity and making things worse as a result. And this is what keeps me on a trajectory toward sustainable, lasting transformation. Even when I lose sight of how my reaction is distorting my perception, behavior and choices – I can be pretty sure that it is. Staying focused on calming down before I respond is always my best bet.

Now, I’d like you to think about an area in your own life that could benefit from a simple awareness practice like this one. I’d love to hear about it. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!