What You Didn’t Know About Yourself

It is said that we look at ourselves through rose tinted glasses and look at others with a magnifying glass. Similarly we judge ourselves by our intentions and judge others by their actions.

This is obvious when you are berating someone for something, then realise you have actually done the same thing yourself (selective memory!). Ouch if they point that out!

There are four areas of self knowledge:
1) What we know about ourselves and others do too
2) What we know about ourselves but others don’t
3) What we don’t know about ourselves and others don’t know either
4) What others know about us but we don’t

What we don’t know about ourselves but others do is the reason friends and family can provide insight when we are having a problem. They can tactfully say “…well you do have a tendency to….” It may come as a shock or we may deny it at first – but they see our behaviour, and what it says to others about us.

Something that can hugely impact our lives but we may not realise it are “stories we tell ourselves about ourselves”. Does this sound familiar:
“I am a really cautious person because when I was seven…”
“I am a loner because I was bullied when I was…”
“I am scared of spiders because this boy once…”
“I am super disciplined because I used to…”

These stories about ourselves can help us (i.e. we believe we are disciplined) or hinder us (i.e. still believing a story that came about at a very young age that doest serve us). If you really tune into your thoughts you will hear gazillions of stories a day – you’ll realise what “stories we tell ourselves about ourselves” really are. Hopefully you’ll laugh, then ask yourself if that is actually still true and does it serve you.

The other types of stories are “stories we tell ourselves about others” such as… n“She overcompensates for ___ by doing ___”
“Because ___ happened to him he behaves like___”
“She has problems with ___ which is why I never learnt...”

These stories can also help or hinder. Tune into your thoughts and you will hear tonnes of these stories about others too (you’ll wonder how you never noticed that before!). Again ask yourself if this story is true and if it serves you and your relationship with this person. If not stop repeating it.

Ponder the 4 areas of self knowledge. It may give you an insight about yourself you’ve been seeking or help you solve a problem that’s been bothering you.