Self-Awareness Is The First Necessary Step To Creating Real Change

There’s no way around it — you need to be honest with yourself whether you’re really making different choices or just telling yourself you are.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Let’s be real. It is so hard to be completely honest with ourselves regarding the choices we’re making. I believe that something we all lack when we do decide to be honest is having grace. The truth is we’re all human. There’s a 100% chance that we are going to make mistakes now and in the future. Allowing ourselves to have grace allows us to forgive ourselves (and others), which then lets us move forward and most importantly, actually learn from the mistake and do better next time.

However, there’s no way to move forward if first we don’t decide to be completely real with where we are now, and how we got here. Just like many 12-step programs, first we must recognize that something isn’t going right. Being able to admit that to ourselves, humble ourselves to realize that we do indeed make mistakes, will let us then look inward to see the way we have been truly behaving.

I’d like to point out that self-awareness is a daily practice. It’s not something that happens overnight and then ‘bam’ you have it for the rest of your life. Much like anything…