The best gift for
you-Self Awareness
Happy New Month! What are you grateful for concerning the last 9 months? what are you looking forward to this month and last quarter of 2020?
How well do you know yourself? What are your core
competencies? Limitations? Areas of improvement? Gifts/talents? How do you make
use of all your endowments?
Self-awareness is the beginning of living your life. Before
you understand yourself, you live at a very shallow level at best. At worst you
live a fake inauthentic life that is nothing close to who you really are. The
saddest thing that can happen to you is for you to live ignorant of who you
are. It is a travesty to the world and yourself.
When we fail to take the time to understand ourselves, what
happens is that we live life by someone else’s script. We quickly bend to the
opinions and preferences of others. We are left trying all manner of things all
of which don’t work and leave us frustrated. The key to a peaceful, guided and
contented life is to know yourself. There are no struggles to fit in for those
who know themselves and are comfortable in their own skin. You do not need to
fit in with the acceptable script. You are called upon to bring your unique
signature onto the things you do and this is only possible when you know what
that signature is.
The world around you does not need more of the same. We are
where we are because our collective thinking has brought us this far. This same
thinking cannot take us further than where we are. We must embrace new thought
patterns that will elevate us to a whole new level. When you fail to embrace
your uniqueness, you keep all of us stuck where we are.
So how self-aware are you? Your whole life this far has been
making you and preparing you for this moment. Nothing has happened by chance.
What can you gather from your unique experiences, upbringing, education,
interactions, connections and so on that you have been taking for granted. No
experience is worthless whether negative or positive. If only you can learn to
look at it from a different perspective, you might just realize that in each
experience lies a lesson or lessons that can serve you far much better in your
current station in life.
Have you taken the time to understand your gifts and special
abilities? Are you conversant with your talents? You will never exploit what
you don’t know. Precious stones and minerals rarely stay on the surface. They
are buried deep within layers and layers of soil. This is why you cannot
discover your gifts when you live at a shallow level. There is need to dig deep
and staying still plays a critical role in this regard.
In our busy world that is always in a hurry, taking time off
seems to be a foreign idea. We find it strange to put off our phones and
televisions, gadgets and gizmos and that is why we are just coasting through
life. We live in a world where we’d rather pass time binge-watching Netflix
series than connecting with our true selves. This is a sure recipe for an
ignorant existence.
We need to take back our lives by all means possible. We
need to ask deep penetrating questions of ourselves. We need to seek understanding
of why we are here? We must answer those philosophical questions that have no
quick answers. We need to connect with the one who made us and it requires a
stillness that is unheard of in our busy world. We need the calmness deep
within if we will open our eyes to what lies in there. This is much more
important than anything you can do if you are interested in living that
authentic life.
You also need to do it as a matter of urgency seeing as
there is no point living ignorantly. The faster you can get around to
understanding yourself the better for you because you have a longer time frame
to live your life authentically. Imagine living a life that flows out of the
deepest part of you from the days of your youth. There is nothing more
fulfilling than this.
Becoming fully aware of yourself or living consciously is
the best gift you can give yourself today.
Beyond knowing who you are, part of self-awareness involves
knowing where, when and how you are. There is need to figure out where you are
in life in each and every area. You cannot begin to make any adjustments in
your life until you are clear on where you currently stand. The key to this
kind of awareness is to place yourself in front of the mirror and scrutinize
the details of where you stand. There is a deep need for honesty in this regard
if you will make any meaningful change. You have to truly tell yourself I have
made this amount of progress for two major reasons. First it shows how much
gratitude you need to live with every day and secondly it gives you a clearer
picture of how much further you have to go. A good example is to have a look at
your current finances. What is your current financial position? How much do you
make regularly? What constitutes your recurrent expenditure? What is the exact
amount you spend on each line item? Where are the opportunities for you to
salvage something? Where can you make an extra coin? These kind of questions
force you to have a good hard look at yourself and to make the necessary
changes. There is no better transformation other than that which comes from a
point of intimate knowledge about yourself.
Ask yourself which dispensation you are living in. it is
important to know when you are living. Without that, you end up applying the
tactics of the Stone Age in this 21st century. When you live has a
strong influence on how you live. What used to be so far removed from the
common man 50 years ago, is very much within his reach today. What does it mean
to live in a world where we can do all our computing on a hand held device? We
have entered the dispensation of artificial intelligence. You must ask yourself
how you will live in this dispensation. How can I take advantage of the time in
which I live to accomplish much more than I thought possible? It is about making
the most of the time in which you live. Esther 4:14-Who knows whether you came
to the kingdom for such a time as this?
The next question is kind of cliché because we have talked about it ever since we knew how to converse. It is the question how are you? Many of us by default answer ‘I am fine.’ That is the answer you can give a stranger without much thought but when you are in the process of knowing yourself, you must go into the nitty-gritty of answering this question. You must delve into what areas are doing great in your life and what areas are ailing. You must use as much detail as possible to describe what it is that is currently happening in your life. So the next time someone asks you how you are, beyond giving them that short cliché answer, take it as an opportunity to really look at yourself and describe what you see. It can be a very daunting task. Not many people have the guts to look at themselves introspectively. This is because it reminds them of their humanity and how much work they still need to do on themselves. The picture is very ugly sometimes but someone has got to do it if they want to change what they will look like tomorrow.
Was this article helpful? Let me know how helpful it was for you in the comments below.
In my book Blessed to be a Blessing I answer the question of who you are from the perspective of Your endowments. You can check out it's intro by following the link below.
amazon.com/author/samuelmwinamo
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