What is the actual purpose of understanding ourselves more deeply?
Lately I’ve been wondering if self awareness is actually the first step in a process instead of a destination.
Because a behavior can be understandable and still have an impact.
Understanding why something happens doesn’t erase the consequences.
I used to feel like understanding myself was the goal because understanding myself felt like progress.
And in some ways it is.
When we understand why we avoid certain ideas, why we play certain areas of life safe, why we procrastinate, why intimacy scares us, why we react the way we do… it gives us context.
It makes us feel less crazy.
But to me there’s a tug of war happening here. Between being compassionate and responsible.
Compassion for the root cause. And responsibility for the impact.
Because the moment we can explain a pattern, a reaction, a choice we’ve made, it feels like a full circle moment.
We feel a sense of completion.
“I know why I do this.”
And that feeling of knowing is so satisfying that it mimics the feeling of change.
But insight doesn’t automatically mean transformation.
Understanding happens up here in our mind while impact happens out there all around us.
I can exercise extraordinary self-awareness to be able to articulate the origin of every wound…
And still fall victim to the same patterns in my work, my relationships, even my own self worth.
These patterns, regardless of where they come from, are how I impact the world.
Who is absorbing the impact of my understandable behavior?
That question makes me feel like understanding ourselves might not be enough.
Maybe the most meaningful way to approach life is not by only measuring ourselves by the quality of our self-knowledge, but by the quality of the experience our presence imparts on the people closest to us.
That would mean holding true accountability for how our patterns impact others.
Growth is when our self awareness stops being a private realization and starts becoming a public change.
Maybe instead of asking:
“Do you understand yourself?”
The question is:
“Does your understanding make you safer to love? Kinder to work with? More honest in your art? More present with others? More capable of pursuing the life you want?”
Maybe our self awareness is not measured by how deeply we can explain ourselves…
But by how differently the people we love experience us over time.
Stay creative,
