S2 | E2: Stop Using “Self-Awareness” to Judge Yourself.
Hey, what's up, it's me again,
We need to talk about something really important. So, there's a tricky thing that sometimes happens when you start growing your inner garden. I know we talked about having a vision for what you want to grow, and intentions and all that. But before you start imagining, planning, and planting, you need to know and accept your climate. Climate is the environment in which your garden will grow. A climate has its unique weather patterns, there's an atmosphere that allows certain things to grow, and other things just do not thrive within this climate.
You are that atmosphere for your garden.
As you get to know your climate, in other words, yourself, your self-awareness will increase, and you will start to get revelations about what does not thrive in your garden, and what springs up effortlessly like weeds because of your environment. And this is where it gets tricky, this is where I've made many mistakes.
There might be a struggle to accept your climate, you want other environments that grow other things, and you're unhappy with yours. And so you waste all this time and energy wanting something else, instead of accepting and working with what you have.
I know you've heard this before, don't compare yourself and just accept yourself. So, I'm going to point out something else that’s kinda sneaky. Something that I realized I was doing under the guise of growth, and it wasn't actually helping me.
When you begin to grow yourself from the inside out, you will start becoming more self-aware. Now, you say a word like self-awareness, you usually think it's a good thing, but it depends how you use it. Let me tell you a huge mistake I've made, one that I'm still trying to unlearn: I've used self-awareness to judge myself even more.
Self-awareness brings things to light, reveals blind spots, reoccurring patterns, and I've used this as evidence for more self-judgment, to increase the list of ways I fall short, more reasons to hate myself... this kind of self-awareness is not growth. It does not give life to anything, it kills instead. There's no point to knowing yourself if it doesn't result in self-acceptance.
So if you're going to journal, and be introspective so you can be more aware of all the ways you are more unworthy and deserve to be punished, don't do it. This is not growth, this does not help your climate. When I've learned new information about myself, when I've had insights or feedback, this intense critical judgement of myself has paralyzed me instead of being empowering.
Self-awareness should be empowering because now you know what you have to work with. The mystery of the inner garden keeps unraveling. Do not judge your garden and hate your climate for the weeds that easily pop up, or the kinds of trees that will never grow there. Stop wasting time on this hatred, and instead, start getting to know what weeds you will be seeing often, and patiently figure out what will grow and thrive, and ignore everything else. You'll start growing your inner garden much faster if you accept the climate you have and start working with it.
It takes both moments of humility and pride to accept and work with your climate.
To accept limitations is humbling, and a little bit of pride goes a long way when embracing and using your strengths as your climate. A climate dictates what kind of plants are able to grow within that specific region. There is foliage that grows best in forests, and while others thrive in the tropics. To grow what you can, you must know yourself, and when you know yourself, do not judge but accept. The world has a vast variety of plants. It would be impossible for one single garden to grow all of them. While it might be nice to think of the potentials that your garden holds as limitless and without boundary, you will have to get to know yourself and make choices that bring your garden to the fullest life possible.
One of my most humbling moments was a jungle hike to Mojos, Bolivia, the most remote place I’ve ever been. I was given the gift of learning some of my limitations through this challenge, and while learning the truth about yourself is not easy, in the end it is liberating. Prior to my experience in Bolivia, I had firmly believed that I could probably force myself to live anywhere in the world, in any condition... if it was for a good cause.
It’s all about mindset, you get yourself through things. But on the hike to that village, and the two weeks we stayed there, I realized: NO WAY. There’s no way I could do this long term. It was a come-down-to-earth, grounding type of a moment.
That fact was, that I wasn’t cut out for many things, that I did have limitations, ones that were very humbling, especially when others made it look so easy. I wanted to be that hardcore person who could hike into the jungle for days, cross rivers, carry heavy backpacks, live outside the grid, with no toilets and electricity, on the side of the mountain, and become friends with indigenous people.
It was embarrassing for me to be the last in the group, dragging my feet, trying to find some positivity, and utterly failing.
It was one of those moments I knew I could get through if I pushed myself, but I looked around and some people were actually having the time of their lives. And I did have some fun moments, but as much as I tried to get my mind to accept and find something good in the circumstances, my entire being was in pure survival mode. There were a few of us in the group switched on survival mode, I wasn't the only one, but there were also those who were fully and brightly alive. Like, pure joy was oozing out of their pores. This is something you can never force from yourself.
Now, you say, well, this sounds challenging by any definition, and yes, this is true. But the point I’m making is that I really thought I could thrive anywhere if I set my mind to it. That everything depended on my outlook. But no. This is not completely true.
We hear a lot about mindset, and our minds are powerful. But it’s an incomplete picture to just live in our heads. We are attached to our bodies, and our bodies have instincts… Just like nature has its own diverse instincts.
And you can focus on mindset all you want, but the body has information that’s important.Something that truly brings you alive will feel completely aligned, from your mind, to your body, to your spirit, your heart.
Mindset is very important, but there is a mystery to what makes us bloom. You flower and open in the way that you're supposed to bloom.
Don’t feel bad about that. It doesn’t mean you aren’t able to take on challenges. The way that you grow best, will have its own set of challenges. No one grows their garden without dealing with the weather, the weeds, and the vermin. I know we like to drink from the waters of the “You are limitless” gospel, but the way to embracing your strengths is by finding your limitations. I know this isn’t a popular idea. We like to think that we could do absolutely anything. And to some extent, probably, yes, you could do a lot. But the question is: does it make you come alive? Does this climate make your inner garden thrive?
Sure, moments of humility will come as you learn about yourself, but equally important, you're going to need moments of pride. Pride in what you CAN grow, pride in the beauty your own climate provides. I know pride is seen as only a bad thing, but it can be very useful when accepting your climate. Now, there will be those who will tell you that your climate is not good enough, and what you grow is threatening or useless. Every climate and ecosystem is needed and has its place here on this earth.
And so if you grow prickly cactus in your climate, you'll have those who say that's not what they want. If you grow tall like a Sequoia, you'll be told it's too much and you need to save a piece of sky for other trees around you. If you grow delicate flowers, some will complain that a big tree with shade is more in demand. No one can demand something from your climate and garden that you cannot give. But in order to know this, you have to get to know yourself. And in order to stand up in defense of your own personal pilgrimage for growth, you have to accept your potential and limitations without judgement.
I realized that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to grow a tiny grove of palm trees when this whole time I could have grown an entire forest on the side of the mountain, if I had just accepted my climate. Learn from my mistakes of going against myself. Of trying to change myself. Not all change is good change. There’s a place in us that has essence, it has a flavor that we are born with. It’s a mystery to why we are this way, but it is a truth. And to shun it, to try to do the opposite because you think that there’s something inherently wrong with you has devastating effects. Plants need a core place to thrive, and so do we.
The sequoia trees are found in a particular spot around the world.
The Joshua Tree isn’t trying to be somewhere else.
The willow doesn’t try its fate in the desert.
They know their climate.
Sometimes we confuse growth and stepping outside our comfort zone with getting as far away from ourselves as possible.
I’m starting to learn that this is a mistake. In trying to grow and leave my comfort zone, I've made the mistake of leaving myself completely. Maybe the biggest and bravest stepping outside your comfort zone you will ever do is coming back home to yourself, to accept that your strengths are also your weaknesses, and the offering you have to contribute to other people will come of a place that is both beautiful and flawed.
That stepping outside your comfort zone is not an external search of something out there in a wider circle, but a stepping into who you’ve always been, a world so rich and full, one worth fighting for… because there’s nothing comfortable about being yourself in a world that is trying to make you all things to all people. It’s a struggle to be at peace with yourself and find joy in your gifts, to accept and not judge your climate. You want to step outside your comfort zone? You want real growth?
Become yourself, and own it.
Thrive and grow in your environment.
Take over, grow a whole forest…
instead of trying to grow yourself as one little flower trying to break through the concrete only to prove that it can.
Alright, with that, I’m going to leave you with the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Listening, reading or watching is great, but I encourage reflection and a time to be introspective, because this is what helps us understand ourselves, we grow in self-awareness.
Knowledge is knowing information, wisdom is knowing how your mind uses it and how it affects you. It's time your inner garden had an assessment. Below are journaling prompts from the episode to help you get started.
