The Painful and Beautiful Journey to Self-Awareness

The double-edged sword that cuts through everything

On a recent coaching session, one of my clients asked me about the experience of becoming self-aware of certain patterns. Did these realizations blow my mind? Shatter my reality? Was it joyful or miserable?

What ensued was an insightful exploration and a few good laughs. Our multi-faceted conversation took me by surprise—I hadn’t thought much about this level of introspection and what it’s changed in my life. It inspired me to transcribe and share my reflections.

Self-Awareness is Beautiful

Self-awareness is the ability to have a conscious understanding of your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You objectively perceive your strengths, weaknesses, preferences, values, and goals—as well as your subjective emotions, motivations, and thought patterns. You clearly see the context around the various aspects of yourself and how they relate to each other and the external world.

There are many benefits to self-awareness, including:

• Regulated emotions and reduction of stress

• Elevated confidence

• Decision-making aligned with your values

• Fostered empathy and deeper connection with others

• Improved communication and stronger relationships

• New opportunities to practice self-acceptance and self-love

• Increased self-improvement and growth

Being self-aware empowers you to navigate the world with clarity, wisdom, patience, compassion, pragmatism, and serenity. But these gifts don’t often come free—they are earned through lived experience.

Self-Awareness is Painful

Seeing yourself clearly can be a double-edged sword. The dark side of this process is pain and discomfort, as you shed a skin that no longer fits.

As we move through life mostly through unconscious patterns, we tend to view the world with an external lens. We observe and react to things outside of ourselves, automatically tripping our triggers and casting our judgments. We can be quick to blame others for their faults and mistakes, without exploring the depths of our own culpability.

Imagine holding a mirror to your soul and observe the darkness—your flaws, your mistakes, your choices, and what they have done to your life and the people around you.

It can be emotionally overwhelming. You may find yourself sinking into self-criticism, spiraling in self-doubt and uncertainty. Your body will pulse in discomfort as stored-up resistance and trauma surface, manifesting as a variety of symptoms: crying, headaches, fatigue, muscle pain, tension, sickness, gastro-intestinal issues, etc.

You might finally realize that you’ve been acting outside of your best interest your whole life, unleashing a floodgate of sadness, guilt, shame, anger, frustration, and regret. And it doesn’t end there. What you are also experiencing is a death of an old version of you. More on that later…

THIS is agony.

No wonder we’re all so reluctant to look inside and ‘do the work’. What fool would ask for this kind of experience?

The Shock of Discovery

The truth is, we’re often not asking for it. Life has a way of kicking you in the ass when you least expect it. Not because you want it, but because you need it. Self-discovery is a non-linear process, often emerging out of unseen and unexpected corners of your life.

It may happen when someone points out a pattern they observed in you, in quiet reflection, during a performance evaluation, through a story shared, from a freak accident, or taking in a piece of art. Sometimes, something in your life needs to completely blow up, leaving you lying in the ashes, slowly putting the pieces back together.

Though it may be emotionally shocking and disruptive, this experience brings something profoundly important: awareness and understanding. As your nervous system puts a pause on your ‘life’, you’re given an opportunity to explore what happened. You get to inspect the situation, the origins, the stories, and the beliefs that drive the behaviors.

We sometimes miss this opportunity, opting instead to numb, suppress, or avoid the discomfort. You know the drill: binging on that tub of ice cream, downing that bottle of wine, smoking that weed, racking up that credit card debt, playing those games, blaming those people, flipping on that porn—whatever floats your boat, it’s all good. It’s what you need to do to survive through that moment. But when you can let those coping mechanisms go and sit with the discomfort; that’s when you wake up and see the truth.

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

This emotional response is in part a grieving of an old identity. Look back a decade or two. Are you the same person? Would you make the same decisions as you did before? Would you repeat the mistakes you made when you were younger? Probably not. You’ve changed, you’ve grown, you’ve become aware of the consequences of your actions.

We are all in this lifelong process of discovering who we really are, shedding an ego that has been conditioned and programmed by others. A persona we cultivated in order to survive in a dangerous and stressful environment. As we become aware of our past and our patterns, as we learn our lessons—the universe has a beautiful way of presenting us new situations that allow us to practice our new wisdom… if we so choose.

When this opportunity arrives—a peculiar event that feels familiar and triggering—you may notice something new happen. It’s as if time freezes and you can witness the situation from a new point of view. You remember the feelings you had the last time something like this happened. You know how things unfold. You see the situation more clearly, from a broader perspective.

You now have a choice. You can choose to respond, rather than react. You can choose to do this with fear & anger, or love & compassion. You can choose a path that feels authentic to you. Or perhaps you choose to simply observe it and let it be, at peace in your neutrality.

This is you embodying your higher self.

It Changes Everything

Becoming self-aware will reshape your entire life. You may find yourself dramatically adjusting your circumstances and your relationships. What once you used to tolerate and cope with, you can no longer allow in your life.

Do I want to stay in this unhealthy relationship?

Do I want to work at this soul crushing job?

Do I want to eat this food that makes me feel awful?

Do I want to keep punishing myself with this destructive habit?

Do I want to continue sacrificing who I am to please someone else?

The answer to these questions will show you how much power you really have. Self-awareness opens the door to making conscious decisions. When you decide for your authentic self, you step into your true power.

How to Develop Self-Awareness

This is by no means a comprehensive guide to finding self-awareness—life does a good enough job of that on its own. But here are some tips to make the process a little easier.

• Create space for mindfulness and self-reflection in your daily life.

• Cultivate a journaling habit to tap into your subconscious.

• Rest after a difficult event, listen to your body and give it what it needs.

• Seek feedback from trusted friends, family, or professionals who can offer a fresh and honest perspective.

• Avoid fixating or putting unnecessary weight on external perceptions of you.

• Practice self-love and compassion, especially when things get tough.

Though the journey to self-awareness may not be easy, on the other side is a peace and joy that’s difficult to find elsewhere. You’ll know you’re on the right track when you can look back at a once brutally painful situation and laugh about it. It may take some time, but you’ll eventually realize how silly you were. In the grander scheme of things, it was much ado about nothing. But oh, what a beautiful lesson to be found in that nothing.

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What I’m Doing This Week

Gratitude

I’m grateful for expansion, connection, and flow.

Lesson Learned

Surrender must be fully embodied in order to truly manifest what is right for you.

Listening to

Repeat Until Death by Novo Amor

Watching

So simple yet puzzlingly paradoxical.

Reading

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can Be Cleaned Within 10 Years Says Ocean Cleanup Project

More to come. Let’s get it done, humanity!

Self-care

Meditation, volleyball, parasite cleanse, naps, stretching, weight lifting, squats, sunlight, reiki, deep tissue work