Self Awareness — Who is the Self?
For my first post, I want to focus on the IDG course skill of self-awareness, part of the “Being” Dimension of the IDGs. Even prior to taking the IDG growth path, there is a general cultural understanding that it's important for us to remain humble, and not become too arrogant of our own skills. Like in the case of the well-documented Dunning–Kruger effect, which points out that many people with comparatively low levels of ability at a given skill were likely to rate themselves highly precisely because they lacked the skill necessary to accurately judge their own talent, which is often used as a warning to remind us how we are often poor at viewing ourselves objectively.
However, the growth path emphasizes having a realistic self-image not only in our weaknesses but also in our strengths, which made me realize that it's equally unhealthy for us to ignore or downplay the skills we're good at. Often that's considered a virtue, and within reason remaining humble is good, but I know in my own life it sometimes gets to the degree that I genuinely forget my own strengths, and keeping the realistic self-image part of self-awareness in mind helps me remember all of my strengths, too, because that's also a critical part of maintaining a healthy self-awareness.
So, for everyone in the community, I have two questions/prompts that I'd love to hear your opinions on:
1. Have you ever had any kind of "aha" moment where you realized something new about yourself/something that changed your opinion about yourself? What was that like?
2. What kinds of questions do you ask yourself to try and maintain a more realistic, more objective awareness of self?
@Ashen4
1) I think a while ago, I was reading some philosophy and I had a realization that language is made up by people, which means that thinking is optional, which means that if thinking isn't helpful then it can be dropped. Kind of led to a bit of a disentangling from thoughts where I see it as a really helpful/important tool rather than a source of identity or Truth with a capital "T".
2) I feel like I tend to go all-in on subjectivity and sometimes wind up with objectivity as an accidental byproduct. I do what I want to do. If it works, then I keep doing it and get a confidence boost. If it doesn't work, then I get scared/frustrated and spontaneously try to self-correct. After lots of iterations, things tend to gradually get closer to reality because otherwise they don't work. The questions I ask tend to be specific to whatever current thing I'm trying to troubleshoot/resolve.
@QuietMagic
1. I realized something similar while watching a video on the Treachery of Images—super nuanced expression of that sentiment, though. It also gave me a kind of freedom, understanding that language was a tool rather than the endgame, and I think allows us better access to viewing that which we cannot touch otherwise (reality, in a way).
2. That sounds like you've got a system that works for you, and I'm glad that you tailor your questions to your situation—I would imagine it also makes you more adaptable to a wide variety of situations and able to see a clearer picture.