This
could be the hardest post for me to write to date. Seeing as this month our
focus is on mental training I knew I wanted to discuss self-awareness.
Self-aware is not exactly how I would describe myself. When a person is
self-aware they tend to think about what they are thinking and act instead of
re-act. I always re-act, you could look at me funny and I would be distraught
and angry with you the rest of the day, even if your strange look was
attributed to the sneeze you were fighting back. Some people would describe
this as being sensitive, perhaps that is part of it, but the other part is not
being aware of my self enough to realize that a dirty look is no reflection on
my awesomeness.
Earlier
this week I wondered how someone who struggled with self-awareness so much could
possibly depart knowledge on the subject to other people. I decided to seek
other peoples opinions by posing the following question to my Facebook friends,
“Pop Quiz
Everyone, What do you think it means to be self aware?” I only got one
response. I decided that either no one really cared about my question or no one
really had a clue what it meant to be self-aware. Just FYI the one response I
got was from my aunt and was rather insightful, she said, “How you see yourself
as a person. The good and bad and what you can do to improve who you are. Great
book to read, leadership and self deception”. I have yet to find this book, but
look forward to reading it when I do.
At this point I was getting a little
worried, I had nothing to write about. I new that I wasn’t terribly self-aware
as a person and that it possibly had to do with how I perceive my actions and
myself. Next stop Google, I was sure someone out there had to have a clear
picture of being self-aware. Searching
for self-awareness online results in 1,000 advertisements for self-help
programs to aid you increased self-awareness. I found it strange that none of
these companies seemed to have a clear definition of what it was to be
self-aware, but whatever it was they could definitely help you improve it. At
the top of all these advertisements was my favorite source of new knowledge,
Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines self-awareness as the capacity for introspection
and the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the
environment and other individuals. Introspection is examination of one’s own
conscious thoughts and feelings. I decided if I wanted to be more self-aware I
needed to analyze my thoughts on a more regular basis. I decided that I would
write down my thoughts and what I thought about them on regular intervals
during the day. This social or personal experiment lasted less than four hours
and didn’t really help me analyze my thoughts or re-act less often. I would
write down how and why I was angry and become angrier.
I do believe that to become self-aware we
need to analyze our thoughts on a regular basis and handle them in a positive
none re-active way. I also know that this is very important for climbing. When
you become scared, nervous, or frightened on a climb, you need the ability to
step away mentally from the situation and analyze it. Perhaps, the thought you
are having has to do with the certainty of falling or getting injured. The
normal reaction to this type of scenario, at least for me, is tears and
frustration. Being more self-aware means to analyze these thoughts of fear and
determine if they are actually valid? Generally, the fear that I might fall is
valid, I am learning to climb and thus I will make mistakes and that will
result in a fall. However, I prepare and climb routes that will have safe falls
or I take at bolts and calm myself and prepare physically before going on. Therefore,
the fear that I am going to get seriously injured is not valid and I should let
it go so that I can focus on the goal at hand. What thoughts do you have when
climbing that deter you from the goal at hand, and how can you analyze them in
the future instead of just reacting?
Climb
On,
Kyli
“Your
visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks
outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
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