Ep 54 The Gift of Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness involves learning to recognize and understand things like our moods, emotions, and internal drives. And for many of us, self-reflection can be hard to get a grasp on or even want to engage with at all. But in this episode, we look at numerous ways to work on this foundational piece of our lives towards the goal of living into a thriving life. Join us for the journey! 

Additional Resources
Book: Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney
Poem: Crossing Unmarked Snow by William Stafford
Book: Susceptible to Light by Chelan Harkin 

#Wellness
#Journaling
#Community
#Self-Reflection 

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Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Self-awareness, heroic leadership, self-reflection, wellness

Dominic Kaiser  00:06

Welcome to The Contemplative Life: Three pastors, friends and spiritual companions help us explore spirituality through a contemplative lens.

I'm Christina Roberts.
I'm Chris Roberts.
I'm Kristina Kaiser.  We're glad you joined us.  

Kristina Kaiser  00:24

Hello, it's great to be with you. Today we are talking about the gift of self-awareness. And just to kind of define that upfront, self-awareness is recognizing and understanding things like our mood, and our emotions and our drives.  What's driving me? What am I feeling? Why do I feel this way?  All that stuff.  Self-awareness. And if you're familiar with Chris Lowney's book, Heroic Leadership, he talks about self-awareness as one of these four pillars. And I actually love the book just to say.  I feel like it's a textbook for life. And he tends to be talking about things in that book as it relates to success in work, but I've taken it out of context, in my own world personally, just to say this is about life overall. And in particular, with self-awareness, I've tended to feel like if I was drawing out his pillars, self-awareness is the foundation.  You would put it on the bottom and everything else would build off of it. And so that awareness, again, is things like our actions, what's going on with my character traits? How do I lean into the things that I do? What virtues am I living by?  All of this becomes the building block. And so rather than self-awareness, being this topic of dread, maybe like, I've got to think about myself, I tend to find this to be a super inspiring topic. And I'm hoping that that will be true for all of us as we dive into this conversation.

Chris Roberts  01:59

Well, I appreciate you even naming that this could be a dreadful topic for some people. I don't know all the details around it but I think there's been studies that have been done, where people, you know, sit alone in a room, and they have to reflect. I think in this study, shock therapy, like they could get out of being alone by shocking themselves. And I don't remember all the statistics, but I do remember that, for some people, it can be challenging to be alone, to be contemplative, or to become self-aware. So I appreciate you naming that, because I think it can be challenging for some people.

Christina Roberts  02:37

Yes, that's pretty intense to do shock therapy over a self-reflection time. But I think you're right, it can be or maybe some people wonder, If I am leaning into self awareness, does that mean I am narcissistic, because I'm thinking about myself?  So I think that really defining what self-awareness is that it's recognizing and understanding our moods, our drives our emotions, I think that ties in with the contemplative. And it tends to be that often we talk about, let's just be aware.  We don't have to change, we don't have to fix but how are you being aware right now in your life? Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense that this would be one of those pillars that he describes.

Kristina Kaiser  03:14

Yeah, I think the good news in all of this is our character and our actions and all the things that we do, they're not fixed. Which might be something that we imagine. Oh, I've done this so many times, this must be true. But in point of fact, we are shaped and reshaped by every single experience that we have. And so if I come face to face with something in myself that is brutal, instead of being like, Oh, that's so bad. I thought I was so great. No, no, you know, the next action that I take is part of the journey and it shapes what is to come. And if I am able to keep taking those steps, that changes things because we're not fixed, we are shaped and shaped again, as it turns out.

Chris Roberts  03:57

I like you describing this idea of knowing ourselves as a journey, because I think that is definitely true. And there's a poem that I've been resonating with lately, and the title of the poem is called Crossing Unmarked Snow. And so that in itself is a journey right? But there are four phrases that stuck out to me at this point. And this is what it says:

 The things you do not have to say, make you rich. Saying the thing you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing the things you do not need to hear, dulls your hearing the things you know before you hear them, those are you and this is the reason you are in the world. 

Talking about knowing yourself. It is a journey and like the things that you don't need to say, making you rich. The things that you feel like you have to say, doing your speech and knowing what makes you, you in this world, I think is super important. And that's sort of the goal of what we're talking about with self-awareness.

Kristina Kaiser  05:12

I love it. It's so beautiful. And I think it is meaningful, because we can learn some new things. You know, recently, for example, I learned, I'd never heard about it before, but we were studying transference and countertransference. And even in reading it initially, I thought, like, Oh, I don't know how I would do this in my life, I don't have an example in mind. And then I am in training for spiritual direction. And so I have clients, but I have a supervisor and I have a peer group. And I'm not being paid for it, it’s all schooling. And I was talking with my supervisor about this emotion that I had. And as I was talking about this emotion, I didn't realize it was my emotion. And she said, is that their emotion? Or is that your emotion? And even before she got the question out of her mouth, I was like, oh, it's mine. That is my emotion based on my life experience. And I totally, because I felt that way, I was feeling all this empathy for somebody who was not even exhibiting that in the way that they were responding to me. And I was like, and this is how it works. This is what it means to be living in a world where we have emotions, and we don't necessarily always think about how we're engaging with those emotions. And I think I have a lot of emotions. I'm not always particularly thoughtful about them. And so it's really nice to be able to sit and say, Okay, what is going on in my world?

Christina Roberts  06:47

And Kristina, I like what you're highlighting, because self-awareness doesn't necessarily mean sitting in a room by yourself. Reflecting on your point earlier, Chris, you're giving a wonderful example of: I have a peer group with whom I'm learning together with, I have this mentor in my life for whom I am sharing these experiences. And so I think as we are living our life, and it's sort of this action, reflection, action, reflection, we are acting, we are moving in the world. And then sometimes that is reflection with maybe a journal or a walk or a quiet or a poem. Sometimes it is through and with other people.  And hey, this is what's happening, and being able to have that reflected back to you, then turns into that self-awareness piece that then you can then go back and do some more action and reflection. So I really appreciate that cycle that we're drawing out today.

Chris Roberts  07:31

Yeah, and I appreciate you naming that there are different ways to go about self-awareness. And, you know, it can be in the context of community. But I also think there is something to being drawn into solitude. I think this notion of solitude, this drawing us out, into quiet spaces, to listen to ourselves is super important and super real. And I think I don't know that everybody should respond to solitude, I think it wouldn't hurt. I think you'll learn a lot of interesting things about yourself if you go away for a day, on a retreat or a quiet solitude to enrich your soul, I think it definitely couldn't hurt. But again, I know that people are in different places in our life, and they respond in different ways. And so I think it's important to name that.

Christina Roberts  08:33

Yeah. And I think to your point that, again, our personalities or seasons…I was just sitting with someone recently and journaling has been a practice that he's had in past parts of his life. And currently it hasn't been part of his life and had this desire to re-engage in journaling for some self-awareness. And just feeling like I don't even know where to start with this.   I have this journal and it feels intimidating to me, although I know in the past, somehow putting pen to paper, not typing does something for me. And so, he got his journal out. And he had a question that it came with. And I was like, Well, why don't you write that question at the top of the page, and then just see what comes up?  So we spent a few minutes doing that. And then I invited him to read it aloud. And then as he did, I'm like, what, what word is shimmering to you from your journal entry? And he just circled this one particular word that resonated with him. And then from there went on like another 10-minute reflection and going deeper on that particular word that led to a second journaling page about something that was totally different or maybe not different, but definitely deepening that initial question that he had. And it was beautiful to see this journaling practice unfolding, the self-awareness.  He needed that tangible moment with my pen and paper.  It was too hard maybe to articulate with words, but he could somehow do it that way. 

Where other people it's like, I sit down and I'm just crying.  There's something coming out of my awareness.  You know, I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, I'm disappointed in myself. And as I'm with that person, I invited them to reflect on what's going well.   I think you're tending to maybe beat yourself up and look at all the mistakes. And it was like this huge pause of like, wow, okay, I am showing up in this way, this way, in this way. Well, and that took sort of some deeper reflection and self-awareness that I don't think they would have done otherwise. And so I think even this idea of self-awareness is a gift. I love the title of this, it is a gift of self-awareness. And it can come in many different forms. 

Kristina Kaiser  10:33

And I feel like even some of your examples there, highlight this both and scenarios where like the journaling, one in particular. He's both with you. And then as he goes into his journaling moment, he's with himself. And they're almost like, somehow connected, they're together, which is also really interesting. So somehow, there's a both/and scenario. And it strikes me like in Lowney’s book, he has questions that people can ask themselves around self-awareness. And maybe the wording fits or doesn't fit for each individual, maybe you have to change it for yourself. But his first question is like, oh, what baggage do I need to get rid of? And so if I think about, you know, this emotion that I'm having that I'm then like, assuming other people have that same emotion as me in their same circumstances, well, clearly, that's some baggage for me, right? I need to work through that emotion a little bit. So now every time that I'm going to sit down, right, as I get still, I now have this as information and I can kind of come into a more grounded space, a deeper space, I can move forward with different intention, there's a different sort of thriving, that emotion won't become judgment towards somebody else. That's not even it doesn't even need to be there. The whole kit and caboodle.

Chris Roberts  11:54

As you're saying that one of the things that comes up for me, in particular, in relation to self-awareness is, I think, sometimes in life, we've been given these concepts or these, I call them “life commandments”.  We've been given by other people that are close to us, these life commandments that we're living out. An example of that is wasting was a life commandment that was given to me by my parents: don't waste. And so I've been in places where waste is a great crime and sin. But in my own house, I'm giving these life commandments that have been passed down to my kids. And so instead of, what do I actually want to teach my kids about? The things that we have, about our food, about the toys.  Do I have to present it in the way that it's been presented to me? Or can I change that life commandment to something new? That would actually probably be more relatable to my own children? And the world that they're growing up in?

Kristina Kaiser  12:57

That's great. Yeah, actually, the second question in Lowney’s book is what are my goals? Right? So if the virtue is like, don't waste, if you will, why is that important? How does that relate to the story?

Christina Roberts  13:10

Yeah, and I think, the transference /countertransference, they're really big words, right? But it's essentially what's going on in us that we're putting onto another person, right. And I think we do that often. And, it kind of makes me wonder what happens when we don't have self-awareness. I think when we go through our lives without self-awareness, that's where either we end up in these crappy, judgmental, bitter sort of states, you know, to the extreme. Or even just stagnation where there's no growth happening, because maybe we're afraid of self-awareness. I mean, I think, depending on our image of ourselves, our image of God, if we think that we're going to be met with harshness and judgment from God, well, that doesn't sound very appealing for self-awareness. Versus this gentleness, this awareness that is bringing life and bringing us into greater fruition, and that's generative. And so I think even naming some of them, I think is helpful, could become a barrier to self-awareness, and then we don't have it. And then we end up sort of in this little silo where we're not thriving to use your words earlier, Kristina.

Kristina Kaiser  14:13

That's an excellent point, I read an amazing bit of information from Joan Chittister recently, where she talks about various sorts of things, right? If my God is a harsh taskmaster, then I'm walking around just throwing gauntlets everywhere. And how does that impact me? And then that question, because did I even know that I see God that way? Or was I just kind of living my life with these kinds of blinders on? And so yes, it helps us to recognize where my blind spots are. And then yes, as we discover them, oh, do I want those? Do I like that? Or do I really even believe that, which then allows me to move into this place of thriving? 

Christina Roberts  14:53

And I think of course, the classic verses from Jesus where the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God. with your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as self. Those are three pieces of loving: self-loving God loving & others, and all three of those playing into relationship with the world, right? And of course, you can expand from that. But I think that it is important that there is definitely a connection with how I'm relating to my ideas of God, myself and others that play into this.

Kristina Kaiser  15:19

Right, that is perfect. And it is something that we've talked about, the spiritual, the mental, the emotional, the physical, right? It does play into all of these places. That's a really good point. 

Well, thank you guys so much for this conversation. I feel inspired and energized. 

Now is the time in our podcast where we take a moment to talk about what we are into. So I'm eager to hear what you guys are into today? 

Chris Roberts  15:52

Well, we're in Advent season. And so one of my responsibilities is the music that happens in our faith community. And we have a lot of kids that are able to showcase their instruments with these sorts of Christmas tunes. And so it's been fun working with kids, and seeing music flow out of them. And so I've really enjoyed the music of this Advent season. And I've really been into seeing that come alive and others.

Christina Roberts  16:32

Nice. Well, I am into dog sledding. And so by the time this airs, our family will hopefully have gone on a dog sledding, or actually I think the correct term is mushing, dog mushing, is what we're going to be doing. But we've been looking into kind of fun winter activities to do. And so this is going to be one of our kids’ Christmas presents going on winter break up north a few hours to do dog sledding. And I've never done anything like this before, but it just sounded like a fun adventure. So perhaps on a future podcast, I will report what I'm into how it went. So I'm into planning our dog sledding adventure as a family.

Kristina Kaiser  17:07

They're both so exciting. I love getting to see kids play instruments and learn. And I am amazed by the culture here in Wisconsin towards dog sledding or mushing. It doesn't exist in New England, but our third child last year was sledding.  I don't even know what they're called, like chapters or something as part of their curriculum. So it is a really big culture here in Wisconsin, in case you live elsewhere. 

 I am into a new book that I got. It's a poetry book called Susceptible to Light. I had first heard of it in a group meditation thing, and somebody brought a couple poems from it. And I was so struck by them that they kind of spoke to the human and that connection to God, but in very everyday sorts of ways. And so I got this book, Chelan Harkin is the author. And I was reading some of the poems waiting for my kids to get out of school and I just burst out laughing in my car, then they just really touched you in a particular kind of a way. So that is what I am into.  

But thank you so much for joining us today. As you may have figured out, we very much value community and relationships here at The Contemplative Life. We talk about it all the time. And so we would love to hear from you. We'd love for you to drop us a line. Maybe tell us where you're listening from, or even let us know if you have questions or topics that you would like to see addressed here on the podcast. And so all of our contact info is right on the front page of our website, thecontemplativelife.net.  Thanks so much for being with us. We will see you again soon.