Self Awareness
One of the most important skills for someone to have is self-awareness. Of course, I’m not referring to artificial intelligences developing sentience, but rather people acknowledging their feelings and how others view them. This, in addition to being 拎得清, are the most important aspects of personality that I value in someone. A person who lacks self awareness is not only unpleasant to associate with, but also makes decisions inconsistent with their inner needs and wants, instead succumbing to their emotions and whims in the moment.
The first time I was aware of the term self-awareness was also the first time I became self-aware. It was during my first year of college, and as I’ve previously written about, realized that I was no longer in the majority as a Chinese Canadian. I realized that people viewed different races differently and I was a minority that had certain inalienable traits attributed to me. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason. The undergraduate business program was overly concerned with prestige and reputation, so the importance of carrying oneself accordingly was stressed. There was a fine line to be tread between not being too keen (hard-working) and not being too dust (incompetent). Similarly, there were well-established customs on how to study, how to dress, and how to speak.
As someone who’s pretty 拎得清, I caught onto these new mores quickly: humblebragging was only preferable to outright boasts, and letting people find things out through the grapevine was preferable to telling them at all. Sexual promiscuity was cool as a male, but not aggressive pursuit of it above spending time with the boys. It was important to be competent, especially at group projects, but to eschew social plans in favour of studying was frowned upon. In short, the necessary comportment in college could be best summed up as effortless excellence, understated but not underachieving.
The social pressures to cultivate and maintain an image if one wanted to be a part of the social life at Queen’s was immense. Of course, there were bubbles and opportunities to make authentic friends outside of the mainstream, but even then, the mainstream affected how everyone carried themselves. Living in perpetual fear of being outed as either dust or keen caused me to become intensely concerned with how others perceived me. This was the first step; prior to this, I was blessed with the youthful unawareness of the gaze of others. It took a while for me to become good at it, to understand when my joke was inappropriate, when my voice was too loud, or when my actions were too forced. Of course, this isn’t to say that I don’t make mistakes to this day, that I don’t rock the boat unintentionally, but it does mean that I am more acutely aware of how I present.
This is a trait I look for in anyone I associate with because breakage in social decorum is annoying and awkward. It’s unpleasant to spend time with people who don’t realize they are causing offense or monopolizing all the space in a conversation. However, the weight that I put on self-awareness coupled with this definition can make me out to be a vapid person, someone who’s more concerned with appearances rather than authenticity. I agree with this assessment and believe that my understanding of self-awareness in college was incomplete. I have since decided that accurate recognition of external perception is only one half of self-awareness, and likely the second half. First, as some butchered Sun-Tzu quote would read, you have to know yourself.
Self-awareness is equally being fully in tune with ones own feelings and desires. Is this situation really causing me this much distress, or am I just tired? Do I really want this material possession or do I simply seek to assuage a feeling of dissatisfaction from something else? Do I really like this person, or have I arbitrarily decided that they’re worth impressing? In all these situations, a high level of self-awareness can prevent one from making decisions they’ll regret, or at the very least avoid significant expenditure of energy on something one doesn’t truly value. Self-awareness also extends to health: Am I sick, or am I dehydrated? Can my body realistically make it through this hike, or should I avoid it to avoid injury?
I find that understanding the root cause of a feeling neuters its ability to nonsensically affect decision making. Recognizing that I’m actually hangry instead of mad means that I can take a deep breath and a step back, pushing away those feelings even without the help of food. At all levels, self-awareness is about rationally assessing any sort of feeling or desire, physical or emotional, and replacing the Neanderthal in the driver’s seat with the best version of oneself.
If we now combine the two aspects of self-awareness, we have one whole person. This person knows how they feel and what they want, but is also aware of how to present their true sentiments and desires. They make a judgement not based on exclusively on their feelings or social pressures, but a combination of the two, similar to Freud’s classification of an id, ego, and superego. My model is further differentiated in that the id is broken down into raw feelings and desires, and the underlying ones, and the ego is broken down into ones understanding of social convention and awareness of external perception. In each case, it’s latter of the two that I call self-awareness.
Let’s say I meet someone new at a party, and take an immediate disliking to this person. If I wasn’t self-aware at all, I might get into a physical or verbal altercation with this person by the end of the night, or at the very least cause some awkwardness or offense. External self-awareness reminds me that any sort of overt conflict would be detrimental to all parties involved. Perhaps I would do something more under-the-table, or make him feel unwelcome while maintaining as much plausible deniability as possible. Internal self-awareness would stop me even before that, and make me realize that I felt threatened because the stranger was fitter, funnier, and perhaps slightly famous. I didn’t actually hate the guy, in fact I held him in such high esteem that I didn’t want him at this singles’ mingle. To work myself back into the conversation however, I’d need external self-awareness.
Again, I stress that external self-awareness is useful, but potentially harmful without internal self-awareness. It can lend to a bending of ones will and a manipulation of ones actions by others, or even aggravate social anxiety. Internal self-awareness without external self-awareness is much more useful, but a strong adherence to ones needs and wants without consideration of external perception can result in social exclusion. Though having more of one without the other still brings benefits, a balance of the two is ideal for personal and social harmony. No one’s perfect, even though I stress its importance, I find myself constantly being too loud, or creating awkward silences in the conversation. But paying attention to myself and how I present has undoubtedly improved my comfort with myself and with others. It’s on this note that I leave you: not to fill you with self-doubt, but to add a bit of awareness of how you conduct yourself.
