The WHY: Unlocking Life with Self-Awareness
Think of the people you admire most in the world. I bet they have some fundamental traits in common — they can articulate their “why,” they know how to look inward and get to know themselves at any moment, they live with intention, the kind that comes from knowing what kind of life they want to lead on a deeper level.
It seems like most of us live auto-pilot, impulsive lives. The moments of connectedness and self-awareness seem like the exceptions, not the rule. The people who embody authenticity seem to be extraordinary and living a life the rest of us aspire to, but don’t know how to live.
This contrast is what I believe holds the key to each of living the life we want.
Over the past few years, I’ve been on this journey of understanding myself and learning to live a meaningful life. Of going from exhaustion and feeling like I was just repeating a bland day over and over again with no way out to a life I’m excited to discover more of. I used to have a job I hated, worked for a boss I didn’t respect and who clearly didn’t respect me, and shouldered a constant doubt about whether I was good enough when I had always been the quiet one, the most-improved, the misfit on the outside looking in, the awkward adult-child who didn’t know how to adult.
I felt like I wasn’t living my life, that I was an extra in my own movie. I could see the life I wanted, but I had no idea how to get to it.
Today, I live a life of awareness of who I am and confidence in the belief that I can rely on myself to figure out anything I want to or have to tackle. This mental model has allowed me to be well on the path of a career I love, see myself constantly grow and build the grit to tackle these very topics and aspire to help teach others the same, and find myself in the company of an amazing partner, family, and friends.
I’ll be the first to admit… I’m not a credentialed expert. But, like you, I wanted to learn how to change my listless life into one that I was stoked to live. A life of my own choosing that didn’t feel like second best. So I set my sights on figuring out how — and I documented the whole process for you.
I firmly believe the first step to unlocking that life is self-awareness.
Why? Because most of the discontent we experience in our lives comes from situations when we act without knowing our why. When these actions add up, as life tends to do, we end up in situations that may or may not align with our true desires and make us feel like we don’t have the life we want.
When I say desires, I don’t just mean the easy answer. You need to understand yourself deeper than just wanting a good job, the right partner, your next trip… You need to understand what these things should feel like, what outcome you are truly chasing, what values you want to live your life by.
This is where self-awareness comes in.
All through life, we are taught to walk a path of society’s expectations. The “lucky” ones of us are given a structure of K-12 to get an education and build a good foundation for our lives. The entire time, we are trained to seek external validation — test scores, grades, the popular kids’ approval or invite. The problem? When you live for someone else, you lose yourself. Nowhere in these formative years are we told how to build our lives for ourselves. A life guided by our values — a life of reflecting, seeking input to improve, and evolving ourselves in service of our dreams.
Arguably, this is the most important and impactful education we should receive — the worth and practice of self-awareness to unlock the rest of our lives.
As Frederick Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can endure any how.”
We get trained and spit out into college, jobs, dating, raising a family and yet all we talk about are ranks, salaries, promotions, net worth, the constant search for better and flashier… We talk about these things because they are easy to see and measure. However, these metrics don’t judge and reinforce the truest inputs that should define our lives. The things that do go on defining our lives even when we’re not paying attention to them.
Our values are ever-present and directing our lives, whether voiced or silent. Conscious or unconscious. Deliberate or impulsive.
We feel like we are living in a rat race. We feel unfulfilled, don’t know our purpose, or feel listless and lost… on and on we face troubles that I believe are caused by our never learning how to discover ourselves. School teaches us how to intake and demonstrate knowledge, to perform on the metrics of life, to calculate external worth. It does not teach us how to become ourselves, how to grow ourselves. I believe that’s how we end up in our spiral of feeling like a mess, not knowing where our lives are going, or feeling like adulting is hard.
Sound familiar?
Let’s break this cycle by building a habit of self-awareness.
We’re starting to shine a light on this with the recent dialogue on mindfulness, but it’s a reactionary measure, a re-discovery. It’s incomplete.
What if we learnt to discover in the first place? What if we learnt how to travel on the path of living our truest and best lives? What if we learnt how to ask and answer the questions that solve our daily troubles and pave the way to our dream lives?
I will be releasing weekly material sharing my journey to show you how you can start living your own dream life.
- Understanding your Filters
- Choosing your Reality
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Original post here.
