If you want to understand why it’s so difficult to improve your life, this post is for you.
You’ll learn about Me Maps in light detail.
A Me Map is basically the internal map you have of yourself. They make up half the picture of how accurate maps are key to connecting with people.
So let’s dive right in.
Self Awareness Doesn’t Come Easy
Notice how everyone wants change but nobody wants to change?
That’s because change is challenging.
The human brain is literally hardwired to avoid it. Just look at how tough it is to change someone’s beliefs, or your own beliefs!
Why Is Developing Self Awareness So Challenging?
You can’t see your own face, nor smell your own breath.
The same thing happens psychologically regarding your emotions.
Because the emotional input happens below conscious awareness, it’s tough to target and therefore challenging to navigate.
We’re talking about implicit memories. They are the reason we get triggered and can’t explain our feelings in a meaningful way.
For example notice the difference between ‘why do you always do this?’ (triggered) and ‘when xyz happens, I feel abc’ (meaningful understanding of emotions).
Literal Self Awareness To Illustrate Psychological Self Awareness
How do you see your own face, or become aware of the smell of your breath?
With tools or assistance.
Same thing with hearing your thoughts and listening to your feelings.
We use external things to see our image, like a mirror or camera.
Or we ask others to help reveal us to ourselves. They can paint a picture of us, with a brush or with words.
With Reflection And Training You Can Develop Your Me Map
Unlike with your face or your breath, you can increase your own perception of your thoughts and feelings by growing your Mindsight.
Asking for feedback, engaging in supervision or group supervision, asking for honesty from your coach, mentor, friend or family member (the trick is in asking the right person). All forms of external reflection which will reveal you to yourself.
Journaling, writing, tracking, recording. All forms of internal reflection which will reveal you to yourself.
The Biggest Challenge To Personal Growth Is Your Own Beliefs
Your beliefs act like big rubber bands anchoring you to your past.
If you get too far beyond them, they will fling you back to where they think you belong by throwing up loads of resistance.
This is at the heart of why it’s so hard to grow.
This is what makes personal development, mentorship or coaching so challenging!
You have these slippery invisible belief systems acting like bungee cords ready to yank you back to old ways of thinking, perceiving or behaving.
They’re like the defence system of your old Me Map, they act as your brains way of asking ‘are you sure you want to run this update?’
If you want to get started on challenging your beliefs today, try focus on remembering the power of yet, holding your goals gracefully and throwing ‘should’ in the trash.
Lastly, The Truth Hurts
Just like it can be super embarassing to discover your smelly breath people have been putting up with all day.. filling in the parts of your Me Map can be extremely painful.
You might find stuff you don’t like!
Maybe you cut people off in conversation, use your phone too much, over-share or judge others for faults you possess. Or any of a million other traits people might not like about you.
Because self awareness can be so painful, it’s super important to get your feelings validated (notice that it said feelings, not judgements!).
Here’s a simple standard you can hold yourself to in order to check if you’re falling away from self awareness; if I’m blaming, complaining or defending, there’s treasure hiding behind an uncomfortable truth somewhere close by.
Summary
Increasing self awareness comes with multiple challenges. It’s invisible to us, like our own breath or face we need assistance to build an image. Me Maps also come with their own defence systems called beliefs. You can get help or help yourself by externalising your internal thoughts and feelings.
The pathway to personal growth isn’t an easy one, it’s fraught with challenges but rewarding too.
Just like Joseph Cambell’s cave, only by going in and confronting whatever we bring into the darkness with us, do we reveal our true character.