“Self awareness,” is one of those characteristics that everyone claims to have some level of mastery over, but I’m going to have to disagree with about 90% of people.  Sure, every human is aware of themselves to some degree; The self-awareness I’m referring to is a more specific skill set which can help you overcome challenges and temper your emotional state.  But what is self awareness?  Can you learn to become more self aware?  Let’s start with the dictionary definition.

Self awareness (noun): Conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

Boom.  Definition acquired.  I thought I was going to have to take a stab at the definition myself, but this is actually a fine definition.  How is this valuable, and what does it look like in common practice? I’ll use a super-basic example involving my commute to work and my lunch money:

• If I buy lunch at or around my office, I can expect to pay $8-10 per lunch, which can total around $200 per month in lunches.  Ouch!
• The alternative to buying my lunch is making my lunch at home, which costs $2-4 depending on the meal – I eat a big lunch, so I’ll say $4.  That’s about $80 per month in lunches.
• At this point, people usually take one of two routes with this information.
  • GROUP A: They talk about how they “really should pack lunch more often,” but never do and feel some level of guilt or lack of discipline on the matter.
  • GROUP B: Alternatively, a person may commit to a new life of lunch-packing.  Most people seem to fail at this after a very short stint, and then jump back in with Group A with an even greater sense of guilt, lack of discipline, or failure.
• Self awareness: The money savings alone is not enough to motivate me to batch-create lunches on Sunday before the work week, or wake up earlier to make a lunch every day.  Unless this changes (which it might, if financial goals or situations change), I will almost certainly fail if I try to pack my lunches.  Deductively speaking, the extra work involved and slight decrease in sleep is not worth $120/month to me.
• Knowing this, I can be honest with myself about the fact that I don’t care enough about the extra $120/month to do the extra work of planning my lunches ahead of time, shopping appropriately, and making my lunches.  As a result, I will allow myself to be guilt-free about buying a $10 lunch and will not gripe to any of my coworkers about how I “really should pack lunch more often.”  No needless complaining about myself, no feelings of guilt or indiscipline, and no failure because I didn’t set myself up to fail in the first place.
• Conversely, I truly believe that soda is a horrible thing to put into my body (I love soda) and still have a desire to cut down on my expenses.  If I want to lower my monthly cost in lunches, I can drink water at the water cooler in my office and stop buying a soda with lunch everyday to shave off a cool $1-2 per day for a savings of $20-40 per month.  In this case, I’m avoiding a probable failure and trading it for a probable success.

This is a relatively minor example of what’s possible, but the basic outline is the same.  If you know your situation and yourself, you can control the emotional and physical outcome for increased happiness or decreased negative feelings.  The tricky part for most people is consciously knowing something about themselves – deep down, I may know in the back of my mind that I’ll never pack my lunch.  However, unless I consciously articulate and accept this about myself, it is a trap waiting to be sprung.

Some other super-simple examples of my own self-awareness…

• I know that playing guitar makes me happy, and that the smallest obstacle can deter me from playing.  If my guitar is in a case, I currently don’t have the motivation to take it out and play with any regularity.  As such, I’ve placed one of my guitars within arms-reach of a place I spend a lot of time sitting and watching/waiting (my computer chair). +1 Fulfilling activity
• I know that I cannot leave my iPhone apps alone if they have a badge icon (the little red numbers that tell you you have 2 missed calls or 4 unread e-mails or 3 software updates available).  I also know that I get massively stressed out if I’m thinking too much about work when I’m at home.  I also constantly play with my iPhone.  As such, I have a separate e-mail app for my work email with all notifications turned off.  I can still access the email to look something up if I need to, but the app will not beckon me to work with pesky sounds or icons and I will not accidentally see my work email piling up if I check my personal email because they are in two different apps. -1 Stressor

Now, I’ve used some really everyday examples of this stuff at work – email, lunches, and guitar – but the real magic of self-awareness comes from the bigger stuff.  I recently changed jobs from one that made me fairly unhappy to one that makes me much happier because I took the time to identify the specific factors that I found both precious and demoralizing.  I felt like my last job was unrelated to my interests, so I looked for a job related closely to a personal passion (online marketing).  I loved working with smart, young people at my old job so I made sure to find a place with a younger demographic and a high bar for accepting new job applicants.  I found punching a timecard for shifts and lunches demeaning and frustrating because I’m an adult and I don’t want anyone hassling me about showing up 6 minutes late if I have nothing scheduled and still get my job done.  As a result, I chose a company that offers a lot of autonomy over your schedule and your location.  I just found a place that fit the bill and went after the job I wanted until I got in the door.

Now it’s your turn – look critically at something you’re struggling with.  Is it your job?  Losing weight?  Keeping in touch with that friend from high school?  Pick something and dig deeper into the reasons that you allowed the situation to exist in the first place, and make sure you have honest and realistic expectations for yourself now.  The goal is to either leverage your self-awareness to increase your happiness (ex: putting my guitar within arms-reach) or to liberate yourself from a pointless negative feeling (ex: accepting the fact that I would rather pay $120 than pack 20 lunches in a month).

Let me know what you chose, and what you’re doing to increase happiness or kick a negative feeling to the curb!