No. 2: Why self-awareness?
Kurt Weill's bubbly song, One Life to Live, was an anthem of mine pre-migraine. "I believe I'll only live once, and I want to make the most of it. If there's a party, I want to be the host of it. If there's a haunted house, I want to be the ghost of it. If I'm in town, I want to be the toast of it." I sang it at my recital for my vocal performance master's degree, and in my head many times since. I wanted to have grand adventures, and I wanted to try everything.* That was really living life.
Now, nine years into a low-level migraine, which appeared one morning in 2011 and has never left, I know that living life, really, is engaging with each moment of life as it currently is.** I spent a lot of time hiding, ignoring, and fighting the pain – and the consequences of it – not just because it hurt, but because I felt it was keeping me from living my life – or rather, the life I imagined I should be living. And those strategies caused anger, loneliness, depression, and additional pain. But when I learned to acknowledge my circumstances in any given moment, bringing my awareness to them, as crappy as they might be, I felt happier – happier, even, than pre-migraine days. Why? Because I felt more in control of my one life and more equipped to handle whatever might happen next.
That's why this newsletter is all about self-awareness. The basis of many mental wellness philosophies, including emotional intelligence, self-awareness helps you make more informed choices based on reality – not based on some imagined future or what’s happened in the past. The more aware you are of the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations you’re experiencing, the more you can make active decisions about whether you want to continue thinking and feeling those things, or not. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, says self-awareness is the key to assessing and changing one’s internal and external behavior. “Before you can change an automatic emotional response, you have to be aware it exists.”
Mr. Goleman defines self-awareness as “knowledge of one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.” I agree, but that feels like a lot to be aware of in any given moment. I propose a simpler definition: self-awareness is paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, and the possibility that arises from them.
With possibility, any current circumstance, however painful – a migraine, this pandemic, ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey – becomes just a bit easier to handle. Any given difficulty is no longer a setback, a holding pattern, a time of transition, or a big disappointment. It is just what happens to be happening right now. And who knows what will happen next?
rational confidence = all the enormous self-assuredness and strength of irrational confidence minus delusion.
rationalconfidence.com ~ kathleenstetson.com
*Yes, yes, perhaps I should have researched Weill's musical, Lady in the Dark, a bit more thoroughly before committing myself to loving One Life to Live. Though, to be honest, I'm not sure the fact that the protagonist is undergoing psychoanalysis during the whole show would have really swayed me away from embracing life via novelty and adventure – I think I needed a bigger wake-up call than that.
**Turns out, btw, that engaging with the seemingly mundane in life can feel like a great adventure. More on that in the coming weeks.