Ep.18: Learning to be curious about ourselves

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to the Wisdom Practice Podcast. If you're someone trying to integrate self-awareness into your life, trying to understand how to be more self-aware, but finding it a bit overwhelming, especially with the bigger things that go wrong, or aren't the way you want them to be, it can be a lot. Many people think self-awareness is just about the big things, trying to understand why relationships go wrong, or why you're not as successful as you want to be.

But this episode will go into how you can integrate self-awareness into how you think, and become more curious about your life rather than trying to fix it, because self-awareness isn't about fixing things. By being more genuinely curious about your own life, you can make more conscious decisions about what you want to change, what you want to keep, what is you, and what is conditioning.

Have You Ever Locked Eyes With a Stranger and Looked Away?

You're on the train, or walking down the street, nothing new, and there's someone walking towards you, or someone sitting a few seats in front of you on the train. At some point you lock eyes, for a split second you're holding eye contact, and then nearly instantly, one of you looks away. Maybe it's you, maybe it's them. You may feel a deep need to look away, like you can't hold eye contact. It's a very common thing, especially on the train, whenever I'm on the train, no one looks at anyone.

It may seem like a really small thing, but have you asked yourself why? What causes that behavior? Why do I feel the need to look away? Why can't I look someone in the eye for a long amount of time? It's a weird thing to suggest, but it's these kinds of questions that expand your self-awareness. There are no stupid questions when it comes to self-awareness.

Why Did I Do That?

There may be a part of your mind that just says, obviously I can't look into someone's eyes, it's just weird, no one does it, it's just how things are done. So you may not give it any second thought. But take a second and, regardless of what the mind is saying, think about it critically, try to understand, why did I do that?

If you're asking yourself, how do I start becoming more self-aware, what are the steps, it's such a massive concept, no one really tells you how to start. This is how you start: you look at your behavior. Anything. I think a misconception in self-awareness is that you have to deal with the biggest stuff, why do I always attract the same kind of person, why do I never get treated the way I want to be treated. Those are big questions and they can be overwhelming.

Start With the Small Things

There's no reason you can't start with the small things. If anything, starting small will be easier, because you won't have as much emotion behind them, there'll be more curiosity, less attachment to why you do that thing. It's more, okay, I'm actually genuinely curious why I behave that way. Is that me, or is that just the way I've been conditioned because everyone else does that?

There are different stages to self-awareness. The first is having the space to question your own behaviors, because when you're so ingrained in them, you don't even know you're doing them. The second step is to start to question your behaviors, self-observation. I've created a step-by-step of the different stages of self-awareness, but just starting with those two, questioning your behaviors and trying to critically understand why you're behaving that way, is a start. It's more difficult with the bigger things, because there's more emotion there, you don't want to get into it because it's scary, you're scared of what you might find. But with the small things, there's no harm in it.

So I'm suggesting this as a thought experiment: start to question your own behaviors, anything, the stuff you've been doing for decades. Your mind may think it's a dumb question, but only because some part of you assumed the answer decades ago. The more you ask these questions, no matter how stupid you think they are, the more you start to become curious about your life.

Am I Left-Handed, or Just Conditioned to Eat With My Right Hand?

Start to become curious about, okay, why am I left-handed or right-handed? Really dumb question, right? Your mind just tells you it's a dumb question. But when you get into it, it's really interesting. For me, I'm left-handed, but I eat with my right hand. You may think, well, that's just the way you are. Fair, but when I dig into it, it's actually because I grew up in a Muslim household, and there's a rule that says you can't eat with your left hand. So whenever I naturally ate with my left hand, I got told off. That's why I eat with my right hand.

It's really funny when you get into it and start to understand, is this me, or is this something I've just taken on? And the line can get really blurry, because to some extent we are a product of our environment. So if we strip away all of that, who are we? Ask yourself: if I grew up in the 17th century in a completely different part of the world, who would I be? Would I still talk the same way, think the same way, eat the same things? Would I still be me? Then you start to understand what your essence is compared to what you've just picked up from the environment.

It's not a bad thing, I'm not suggesting this so you can say, well, this isn't me, this is what my parents told me, therefore it's wrong. No. To this day, I still eat with my right hand. It's not an issue, it's not causing me any suffering, so I don't feel the need to change it. But it's still nice for me to know that my decision is my decision, I've consciously chosen this is what I want to stick with, but I can also eat with my left if I want to, and I won't feel guilty or ashamed about it, which is what I grew up thinking. This is self-awareness, it's about taking control back over your life, gaining your personal power, your ability to change.

What Kind of Behavior Will the Child Adopt?

Going back to the eye contact on the train, why do we do that? Because we're social animals, we tend to take on the behaviors of the group. For some reason, society says we can't make eye contact on the train. I don't think it's a conscious thing, it's just the way society has developed, everyone's in their own bubble, that's just how it's turned out. And because everyone is doing it, you do it too, without even really knowing why.

If you're a parent and you take your young child on the train, at a point in their life where they haven't picked up that behavior yet, a baby doesn't really care who they look at, a young child will look at you for as long as they want, no shame, no guilt. You may have experienced that on the train, just sitting there, and there's a four-year-old just staring at you. It's brilliant, because they don't care, they have no reason to think it's bad, no reason to think it's an invasion of privacy, even though that's what society tells us to believe.

But imagine you do that every day, you bring your child to work with you or on the train, and all they see every day is people looking at their phones, not looking at anyone else, and if they do look up, they look away instantly. What kind of behavior do you think the child is going to adopt? Because we're social creatures, to fit in it only makes sense that we start doing what everyone else is doing. You may have heard the phrase, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, same thing. This is why it's important to spend time around people you want to be like, because you naturally gravitate towards their way of being without even trying.

So question yourself, why am I doing this, why am I avoiding eye contact? It may seem like an innocent thing, but go deeper. Your mind will give you a lot of BS to start with, because it's something you've never questioned. Your mind will say, that's just the way it is, no one else looks at people, it's weird. But those aren't actual answers, they're just emotional reactions, there's no logical, critical analysis of why you can't look someone in the eye, it's just rhetoric.

If your mind says, it's weird, ask, well why is it weird? It says, because they won't like it. Really? Is it true they won't like it? You can go deeper and deeper until you understand, is it really about them, or is it about me? Is it really about making them feel uncomfortable, because you think that's what will happen? Or is it more that I feel uncomfortable even doing that?

Your Emotions Feel Like the Truth, But They're Not

This is how you start to take control back over your life. Anytime you emotionally react, it is a choice. The reason it doesn't feel like a choice is because we've been doing it for so long that our body is conditioned to feel that way. The thing with human beings is we think our emotions are the truth, the absolute truth, if I feel bad about doing something, it's because the behavior is bad, not because my reaction is conditioned.

This is a huge breakthrough, to realize that actually my emotions are just, yes, my truth at that point in time, because that's the way my body's been conditioned, but they aren't the truth. The same way when you were younger, you may have hated mushrooms, I used to hate mushrooms and olives, I just didn't like them at all. Now I'm completely fine with them, I wouldn't choose them, but I'm fine with them. It wasn't that mushrooms were bad or the wrong thing, it was my emotional reaction to them. It doesn't mean I was wrong back then, it doesn't mean I'm wrong now, my truth has just changed.

We think our emotions are the truth. So when we feel bad, part of us wants to feel bad, part of us thinks I should feel bad because this is the truth. And that leads to beliefs about the way we are. So when we feel awkward or weird or guilty about looking someone in the eye, we think it's because that behavior is wrong, that the behavior is what causes the emotion. No, we've been conditioned to feel this emotion when we exhibit that behavior.

I've also been on a train in Norway, and oh my God, everyone is so nice, so friendly, so talkative, compared to the trains in London. Everyone's looking at each other, everyone's talking. So is it true that looking at someone on the train is bad? No, it's just the way you've been conditioned. In Norway, there's actually a silent part of the train, because everyone is talking to everyone, so they had to make a new part where you can't talk. It was hilarious, I walked in and thought, this is amazing, a completely different experience.

So that conditioning isn't there. Who knows why it exists in one country and not another, it doesn't matter why it came up, or why we were conditioned that way. What matters is understanding that it isn't us, or at least doesn't have to be us. We can still choose to say, I consciously don't want to look at anyone else on the train, that's fine, nothing wrong with that. But at least that way it's your decision, not just a part of you that's never been looked at and has led to an emotional reaction. This is what self-awareness is all about.

Base Your Questions on Behaviors, Not Beliefs

So try it, next time you have a behavior, take a step back and think, huh, why do I do that? It could be anything. Start to pick yourself apart in the areas that aren't so emotionally reactive, because with the bigger things it's very easy for your mind to get involved and you go into a rabbit hole. Asking yourself, why am I unlovable, is a bit of a loaded question, you're not going to get a critical answer from that, because it's based on a belief. You can't base your questions on beliefs, you have to base them on behaviors.

So rather than asking why am I unlovable, ask, okay, why did my last partner break up with me, or why did my date not go well. Base it on facts, base it on behaviors. When you find your mind going into beliefs, it's because I'm this, it's because I'm that, that's when you know it's based on a belief which isn't necessarily true. You may believe it's true, that's why it's a belief, but you have the power to change it.

I'm really curious to see how you get on with that, what behaviors you start to realize you do. And again, just to say, nothing is wrong or right, you can consciously choose to keep doing that behavior if you feel it's right for you, there's no harm done. But at least this way we have control over what we do, and therefore, if something we do causes us suffering, we have the power to stop it.