BUILDING THE LIFE YOU WANT

Carl G. Jung says, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”


In today’s colloquial understanding, self-awareness is a term that ties in with self-confidence, self-acceptance and social awareness. Namely, it signifies the knowledge you possess about yourself, your place in the world and your relationships with the people around you. The knowledge about what motivates you, what your likes and dislikes are, what you feel, why you feel it, how you influence and are influenced, what makes you tick.


I invite you this week to become aware of your feelings and your physical state in different situations, then take a moment to think about what happened and why. Do you always react the same way? Why do you think that is? What goes through your mind when you’re upset? Is there anything else you could think that would be more productive? There are no wrong answers if you are open, honest and without judgement. Remember: you are the only person you will have to live with for the rest of your life, so you may as well know who you’re dealing with.


Self-awareness is the first step for taking responsibility for your life. You can’t know where you want to go if you don’t know where you’ve been, where you are now and how you got there. Your experiences made you who you are, take the time in finding out exactly who that is and the benefits are guaranteed!


The more you know and accept who and what you are by your very own definition, the less other people’s comments will faze, influence or break you. Once you are self-aware, you will be able to listen to other people’s comments without feeling obliged to believe or be defined by them. You will learn to try feedback on for size with the power to reject it with no hard feelings, or accept it without judgement. You will recognise it if there is something you want to change and be able to take the necessary steps to get to where you want to be.

I am writing to you today from my old hometown in Germany. I´m visiting my family after having taken part in a very interesting Coaching seminar last week. This was the first seminar of the kind I took part in, and let me tell you, spending five 14-hour-days with 21 other Coaches is no mean feat. Imagine a suitcase, if you will, that on the way there is well packed and spacious, but on the way back you´re having difficulty fitting all the items you´ve acquired into it, to the point that you have to sit on it so it´ll even close. That´s what my head felt like, and I wouldn´t have it any other way. The certificate mentions a number of psychological tools I´ve learned how to use, but the experience and lessons in self-awareness simply don´t fit on one page. And that is something I´d like to share with you all today.

When you walk into a meeting room full of your colleagues, or into a bar full of strange faces, do you know what impression you give? Not meaning to scare you or anything, but chances are, it´s not the impression you have of yourself. You may feel nervous, but you may be perceived as being in control, or aloof, or even arrogant. Dito the perception you have of other people, they may not be as timid as you think they are. So how can you bring those two images a bit closer?

The starting point can only be "know thyself". Ask yourself what your motivators are, what behaviour in others makes you nervous, which triggers make you react in a calm, sad, offended or aggressive manner. A lot of self-awareness work is in retrospect, when you´re thinking about a conversation you had that didn´t go the way you planned it and you´re wondering where things started going downhill. Replaying the facts and fictions in your mind is a good way to look for clues of your own making. Why did you say this or react like that? Only you can know these things!

Once you know what makes you tick, I´d like to suggest to keep the following in mind: we´ve been programmed and hard-wired since our childhood, as discussed in earlier posts. Whenever you get negative or unpleasant impressions of other people, give yourself a minute to figure out if those might be the result of a projection of yours. For example, I know someone who has worked all his life. He gets angry and disappointed at his partner for sleeping in late on a weekend. Keeping in mind the concept of projection, it is reasonable to believe my friend is angry at his partner for doing something he would love to do, but doesn´t dare to due to his programming. Do you see what I mean? "What isn´t in ourselves, doesn´t make us angry" is a loose translation of a German saying coined by Hermann Hesse. This may mean someone´s doing what you would like to do, and seeing it makes you angry. Or someone´s doing something that reminds you of a part of yourself you would like to get rid of.

Byron Katie is using this knowledge in the "turn-around" part of her concept "The Work". In the seminar we used it after receiving negative feedback from members of the group. That way, we did get valuable feedback about how we appear to others, definitely something to keep in mind, and at the same time the others learned something about themselves.

In the extreme, the theory of projection may be abused to fend off any criticism of ourselves, saying "it´s all in their imagination". Faithful readers know that that´s not what I´m about. The thought I want to leave you with this week is the following: the more you accept yourself, and are at peace with yourself, the less others will be able to put you off balance.

Til next time!