I’m referring to the works of psychologist Daniel Goleman.
The key point here is that he says that “self-awareness” is a psychological state we can have when we are aware of our habitual patterns of behavior. In other words, we are aware that we have habits, routines, and responses that are out of our control.
This is the first time I’ve taken the time to read this book, so I’m really struggling to wrap my head around the concept, but I think I get it. I can’t help but think of that scene in The Matrix when Neo first meets Morpheus after he wakes up from the Matrix. He’s not in a state of self-awareness, but he is aware that he is Neo.
This is the most common misconception about self-awareness. The idea is that we are aware that we have habits, routines, and responses that are out of our control. This is a great way to look at self-awareness, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about how effective self-awareness is at controlling our behavior. Self-awareness is what it does for us when we know our habits, routines, and reactions are out of our control, but we aren’t aware of it.
Well, for self-awareness to work we have to be aware that we are aware of ourselves. That is, we have to realize that we have certain habits, routines, and responses that we are able to control. And this is what we call “self-awareness”. We also have to be aware that we are aware that we are aware that we are aware that we are aware that we are aware that we are aware of ourselves.
And if we are aware of ourselves, then we have to be aware of our actions. And, if we are aware of our actions, then we have to be aware of our habits, routines, and reactions. We can know ourselves and our habits, routines, and reactions, but we cannot know our actions. No one can know every action we will ever take, for every action we will ever take there is a chance that we will have no idea about it.
So, to make sure we’re aware of our actions we can choose to do something. We can choose to act. We can choose to take a risk. We can choose to do the right thing. And, we can choose to be open to what’s around us.
That is the beauty of the self-awareness approach. It allows us to recognize that we have choices, without us having to make any decisions. It teaches us that we are not alone, that there are some people who care about what we do, and they will be on our side if we need them to be.
That is why we are so incredibly grateful to have these new options in place for people who want to be self-aware. It is our hope that this new feature will allow us to choose to be self-aware without any outside influence. We hope that it will also help us to be better human beings for having the awareness to choose to be self-aware.
We think.