An Experiment to Gain Self-Awareness
I wanted to write my first ever blog post on something that I have been thinking about and honestly struggling with for a little while now. And that thing is self-awareness. It’s about knowing what makes you unique, knowing what you are good at, what qualities are special to you, and knowing what you are interested in. That also means being able to answer those big life meaningful questions like “Who am I really?” and “How can I bring value to the world?”. This can be more difficult for some, like me, than others, especially if you’ve never stopped and thought this way before, instead bouncing from one daily activity to the next. But putting in the work to getting to know yourself, I think, can help make life a little easier and more enjoyable in the long run. I am trying this experiment by becoming more self-aware through this blog post, because hopefully it can help others in a similar situation and inspire them to reflect in the same way.
Why Am I Doing This?
I’ve always been an observant and deep-spirited thinker so these kinds of existential questions were never a stranger to me. But throughout college and even after graduating from college these questions have felt extra stressful. Choosing a major felt like picking a note out of a hat that said “You go this way!” because frankly a 30–40 year career in that same field seemed intense and unnatural to me. I just know that I am not going to have the same interests that I do now as when I am 55 years old, so why should I suffocate my fate into one narrow road?
Well thankfully I’ve learned that many people don’t stick in the same career fields their whole adult life and some don’t even get a job that’s related to their major. So this made me R-E-L-A-X, as the great Aaron Rodgers once said. A few years ago I started listening to this guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, which, if you are a fellow millennial, you’ve probably heard of. In short, he’s an entrepreneur that runs his own marketing and media consulting firm called Vayner Media, but he is probably the most self-aware person I have seen and he’s not afraid to share it.
One of the big reasons why I started paying attention to him was because he was putting out content that reflected these exact questions, and he typically addressed fresh college graduates. He has travelled the country and spoken to a lot of people my age, and found many of us have just jumped into college without thinking if that was the right decision for ourselves. Or we settled with a job we hardly like because we want money for an unnecessarily nice apartment or car, instead of saving up and finding or creating a career we actually care about. After listening and listening to his content, it’s made me want to write my own narrative ‘on paper’ to try and develop a little more of that self-awareness he preaches. My goal is to hopefully help a few other people along the way and inspire them to do the same.
Before I do this, I just wanted to say, and I am not complaining, just stating an observation, but it seems like self-awareness is tougher to have today than it has ever been before. There are so many influencers, social media and blog posts, news articles, books, audio books, podcasts, etc. that can pull you in a thousand different directions leaving no room for your intuition to lead you in the right direction. And that’s ok! It’s just the time we grew up in, but that doesn’t mean we can use that as an excuse. So we just have to work at it a little more. Because without this foundation it’s impossible to find something you truly care about for a career and it can make life a little more difficult than it needs to be. So here we go!
What Are Your Interests?
To start becoming more self-aware, you should start by asking this question. What kinds of things are you interested in? Do you absolutely love drama television shows or stand up comedy? Do you enjoy reading about the latest fashion trends? Or maybe new cooking recipes? In short, what gets you going. Here are a few things that I’ve come up with as an example:
Sports. My whole childhood was all about sports. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, football, soccer and ran track. I still have to get my daily ESPN fix and I’ve needed it ever since I was 10. It’s even my default Chrome page, so I can follow my favorite teams and live through the athletes that I care about and am a little envious of.
Tech and it’s impact. I wouldn’t consider myself your average computer nerd, but I do like to learn about the different types of technology that are out there and more importantly how they can be used to improve things. A big reason why I like what I do right now, is mainly because when I solve a problem that a customer is having, they are always so genuinely appreciative and happy. They can get back to their job without an annoying pop-up, email problem, or internet outage slowing them down. I think my ‘dream job’ would be to help design techie things that can make people’s lives easier so they can have more feelings like this. It could be as little as a door lock that opens when you get close by or as big as laying out Hyperloop tracks across the nation to help speed up travel times. If you haven’t heard about the Hyperloop, you need to check it out now, and stop living under a rock :)
Philosophy and debate. I love to day dream and ponder over bigger life questions. Ever since I took some philosophy courses in college, it’s made me stop and be more aware of questions like, What really is beauty? Or how much of life is pre-determined or is it all free will? I also like to have conversations on this and often debate with friends to try and get closer to the answers.
What Are You Good At?
Not only are your interests important to think about, but you have to know what things come natural to you and what doesn’t. A career will never work out if you are just interested in what you are doing and not actually good at it. You just won’t last. Sometimes this can be a tough pill to swallow, because there can some things that you want to be good at but are actually quite bad at. I would say I’m interested in meeting new people, but it just flat out doesn’t come as natural to me as some of my other friends. If you’re having issues answering this question try some things out! Go take a pottery class at your neighborhood clay corner, or try flipping stuff on eBay to see if you are a natural entrepreneur. Otherwise ask your closest friends, they know you well enough and have an unbiased opinion on what you are actually good at.
For me, recently I have become pretty good at user interface design and creating websites. I have been doing this for the past few years through side projects and a little bit at work. I think in general I have a pretty good grasp on how business works and what makes a successful business, mostly because I’ve been interested in start-ups for a while now and read about the subject probably more than I should.
Other things I think I’m good at is helping people and listening. I’ve had a lot of experience helping people through my jobs of being a bus boy, a lifeguard, a server, an IT ‘walk-in’ consultant, and now a professional consultant. I think I’ve also always been a pretty good listener throughout my life. Part of it because it’s a huge pet-peeve of mine for people to interrupt other people, but mostly because I think everyone has something useful and interesting to say and I genuinely want to hear it.
Qualities That Make You Unique
To do great work you have to stand out from the crowd and be original. People don’t often like hearing the same narrative every time, which is great! The world is too diverse to have similar ideas on things. So know what qualities come natural to you and make you different than the next person. This can help you narrow down careers that you will be interested in too. If you can’t use your unique qualities, you most likely won’t be as happy in the job you are in. Here are some that I came up for myself:
Open mindedness. I am alway open to other people’s opinions no matter how ‘crazy’ other people may think it sounds. Personally different ideas have usually worked out better than traditionally ideas for me, and I feel like that translates to other people as well. I think this is another reason why I love to debate because you have to be open-minded and change your opinions, otherwise your points will always lose.
Genuine. I’ve never been the guy to post something on Instagram to try and get more likes. I’ve never been the guy to say something without actually meaning it, even if it might hurt someone’s feelings at first. I think it’s something that can be hard to come by on the internet sometimes but I would argue most of that is because of the way social media platforms are designed. Which in my opinion should be changed :)
Summary
I didn’t want to write a book for my first blog post and this is kind of pushing it in my opinion but if you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening. I hope this has helped those in similar situations or anyone just interested in learning more about self-awareness and how to think about it. Self-awareness is a skill and it may be life’s most important skill, because the more you strengthen it — the easier life gets. Finding a career that you are genuinely good at and care about gets easier, finding a partner that meshes well with you gets easier, and you learn to love yourself and become more confident. Like I said, it can be hard to find this today, especially for millennials who have been constantly connected online since we were teenagers. But that doesn’t mean we can complain and give up, it just means we have to try harder.
I encourage you to reflect and post about your process and if you do please point me to it! I love to read what other people have to say. Please feel free to comment below or message me on social media here, here, or here. Thanks for listening!
