Tag: Self Awareness

Allowing Mistakes

Posted on by jabittan
In James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Harmon shares a letter written by Arthur Nersesian in which Nersesian writes, “Advice is important, but no amount of it will keep you from occasionally making a bad move.”  He explains that what will happen as we grow is that we will have good and bad luck, and that our ability to deal with and adapt to our good or bad luck is what will matter the most.  Relying on other’s advice won’t always help you because the advice that others have to offer comes from the luck they have experienced, and how they handled it.  Nersesian continues, “…recover after making a bad move.  Forgive yourself quickly, learn something from it, and move on. “  His two quotes combine to show that it is ok if you make a mistake, as long as you can approach your mistake in the right way.

 

We have all heard about the importance of learning from our mistakes, but what I like about Nersesian’s quotes is that he does not approach the world from a perfect point of view.  He accepts that there will be mistakes, and encourages us not to constantly worry about making mistakes.  For him, avoiding mistakes is not the important part of life, which is an idea that I resonate with.  From my own experience I know that if I strive to do great things I will reach a point where I am in new situations, and I may not always handle things the best way. There may be points where I do not know what I need to do or what is expected of me, and I may stumble from a lack of preparation.  If I adopt Nersesian’s point of view, I can be more relaxed heading into these situations, because when I make a mistake I will have a chance to understand why, and move on from it with new advice to offer others.  If I dwell on my mistake and beat myself up for not being perfect, then I will be stuck in the past, and I will be more hesitant in the future when new opportunities arise.

Prescribed Happiness

Posted on by jabittan
In a letter of advice for James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Arthur Nersesian writes about the ideas our society has for happiness and success.  He argues that most people try to fit in to pre-defined ideas of success, and that we strive for an image of happiness set by things that influence us. Nersesian writes, “I think a lot of people feel unhappy because they don’t fit into prescribed notions of happiness.”
In Nersesian’s quote I see the importance of looking for our own path, and finding our true desires rather than following the ideas that society prescribes to us.  I am currently reading a book written by Colin Wright in which he explains that we have many things that influence us such as our parents, the media we consume, advertisements, and people around us.  What Wright argues, and I think Nersesian would agree with, is that these influences shape our desires and world views to fit what others want in our lives, as opposed to what we want in our lives.
Nersesian in his letter explains that we should not try to judge other people’s success by how well they fit into these prescribed notions of happiness or success. Advertisements and television shows would paint a picture of success that equals lots of money, good looks, and a sports car. At the same time, the images of happiness that bombard us through media and social media paints a picture of exciting trips, unique experiences, and a fully checked off bucket-list.  If we spend all our effort trying to reach these ideas of success and happiness then we are forgetting to ask ourselves what we actually want.  By turning inward and understanding what is important to us and why, we can begin to journey towards our own form of happiness without the pressure to be happy in the way that society envisions for us.

Connections

Posted on by jabittan
When I read James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s letter spoke to me on many levels as it addressed many of the thoughts, questions, and ideas that I have been churning over for a long time.  One section that I highlighted reads, “The meaning of life is inherent in the connections we make to others through honor and obligation.” I love this quote and Schlessinger’s idea because it puts other people, not ourselves or money, at the center of our universe.  When we live for our connections with others then we go out of our way to develop meaningful relationships with other people.

Dr. Schlessinger’s quote reminds me of an old track coach who was always focused on relationships.  He spoke about them in the same way as Dr. Schlessinger with a message that in the end, all we have are the relationships and the impacts we have made on other people’s lives.  For me the idea “through honor and obligation” means personal sacrifices for others, and performing acts that will not just benefit you, but those around you as well.  I think that this mindset can help build a sense of community and provide something that many are missing in this day.  Our culture is very individualistic, and what has happened is that our sense of others and connection to others has become more instant with technology, yet more fractured and distant.  If we were to adopt the ideas of Schlessinger, and put others at the center of our world, we would adopt a new identity that would shape us in a way where we are confident in ourselves, and understand that we depend our community for real support.  This idea could override the individualistic attitude of our culture, and help repair our fractured view of community.

Simplicity

Posted on by jabittan
In his letter to James Harmon for Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Scott Russell Sanders comments on the things we desire. Sanders writes, “Love simply. By that I mean, think about what you actually need for a good life, not what friends or ads have taught you to want.” This is a very meaningful quote to me because it speaks of the importance of self awareness, and of getting away from the pressures to buy and have things.

 

As a recent college graduate I love reading quotes like this one or hearing people talk about the importance of realizing what goals and desires you actually have.  Television shows portray a certain lifestyle, and advertisements fill your mind with ideas of how you should live and what things you should buy to be happy.  If one can spend time to understand that having lots of things will not translate to happiness, then they can begin to live more free.  I am not suggesting that anyone should abandon all desires for material items, but rather that having a BMW does not need to be ones goal or benchmark for success (especially at a young age out of college).  As I read back through this post, I am currently reading a book called Insight Out by Tina Seelig. In her book Seelig talks about entrepreneurs and motivation.  In a similar sense to what was discussed by Sanders, Seelig encourages asking yourself and anyone who wants to create something, “What motivates you?” and “Who are you?”  These two questions force someone to understand what forces driving them, and what they expect and need for happiness.

 

What Sanders quote also hints at is our competition with and comparisons against our friends, co-workers, and those we went to school with.  Striving for a lofty job title, a big house, and fancy cars just to be able to impress other people is damaging to yourself, your relationships, and ultimately your future.  I think Seelig would agree with my interpretation of Sanders’ writing, and could reach the same conclusion.  Having motivations that are external and based on rewards and social praise will drive you towards goals that don’t align with what you actual desire or what will really make you happy.

 

The drive to achieve greatness should not be based on what you want your external projection to be.  Learning to step away from television to avoid projections of what success and happiness look like will allow a person to be more flexible in their decision making and to become more happy with the lifestyle they already live. In addition, Sanders would agree, learning to be confident in the person you are and letting go of comparisons against the people around you will help you develop real relationships with them rather than having a relationship based on impressing someone with material wealth.

An Important Task

Posted on by jabittan
Scott Russel Sanders continues in his letter of advice for James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, writing about self awareness, spirituality, and philosophical ideas.  Towards the end of his letter he writes, “To understand as well as we can who we truly are and in what sort of world we have been set down may be our most important task.”  What I like about this quote is that it takes away the importance of obtaining material things and addresses the questions or doubts that we all constantly sift through.  For Sanders, what he is showing in this quote is the value of objectively understanding ourselves, the world, and our place in it.
The first part of Sanders quote speaks to me about the purpose of self reflection.  Being able to think about what we are good at, what we enjoy and why, and what we truly want in life will help us find a path that is comfortable and appropriate for us.  This is a truly important task for each of us, because an increased self awareness will allow us to begin to live our lives intentionally rather than living in a reactionary way.  We do not have to chase the goals that our friends, the media, religion, and family tell us we need to chase. Self awareness and knowing who we are and what we truly desire will allow us to find a meaningful path to follow to a destination that we will be happy with.
The second half of Sanders quote seems to be a little more difficult in my opinion.  I have come across many people who write and speak about self awareness, and while the road to self awareness is bumpy and full of obstacles (especially when you first set out) the road to a true understanding of the world we are in is more challenging and subjective.  Self reflection (examining your goals, desires, motivations, and skills) takes practice and it can be hard to learn that life should not be judged by the sports car you drive, but there seems to be something more challenging about finding true sources for understanding the world.  We will each approach the world with different perspectives and experiences, and we will each appropriate separate values to ideas and topics.  I do not think we can honestly understand the world if we have not first mastered honestly knowing ourselves, and then it is a constant practice to source out the good and bad information.  I am not saying, and I don’t think that Saunders would either, that we should just look for positive information about the world, but that we should search for objective information about things that will actually matter and have meaningful impacts in the world.  With the avalanche of information on the internet, it is easy to get lost among fake news stories that do not represent the true world we live in.  At the same time we can all have so many unique niche interests that we investigate and learn about, and each of these interests build new experiences and perspectives through which we can understand the world.
I think that Sanders in reaction to my writing would say that the first step to fulfilling our important task on this planet is to understand ourselves, including our perspective and how our experiences have shaped our perspectives.  Next, Sanders would argue that we absorb as many other perspectives as possible, to help us begin to view the world in a new and meaningful way. This would involve vigorous research on our part to sift through the nonsense and gossip.

Avoiding Explosive Reactions

Posted on by jabittan
Towards the end of George Saunders’ letter for James Harmon’s book, Take My Advice, Saunders writes, “enter a new moral space in which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity, rather than judging.” He writes this as an explanation of his actions when someone is deliberately infringing upon his rights, intentionally damaging his property, or simply doing something that upsets him.  What he is explaining is that we can choose how we want to see a situation, and by adopting new perspectives we can make better decisions with how we react to other people’s actions.

 

Saunders in this quote reminds me of Paul Jun whose blog Motivated Mastery has been a huge inspiration for me.  Jun often writes about self awareness and self control, and being able to pause and think in situations where it is easy to become highly reactionary.  While Jun’s focus is internal, Saunders’ focus is more external. Both advocate for self awareness and self control, but Jun follows a more stoic mindset and encourages you to forget the other and not let their actions affect you, while Saunders encourages you to take action to protect yourself, but only if your actions are constructive as opposed to punishing or explosive.

 

What Saunders pushes for is a society that does not want people to instantly deem others as evil monsters.  His letter begins with a thought experiment that focuses on two babies born at the same time, but born to two very diffenet families. One child is born to a strong and supportive family, while the other is born into a broken home of drug addicted parents.  The child who grows up with an unsupportive family, in Saunders’ view, is not a monster,  but simply does not have the advantages and support needed to grow up in a way that society typically deems respectful and appropriate. Rather than creating more obstacles for that individual and finding excuses to judge their negative behavior, Saunders would advocate that we understand their past, and take constructive steps to prevent ourselves from being harmed by their bad decisions, but still accept who they are.  For him this involves a clear understanding of other people and their situation, and a willingness to be open minded so that we can invite these individuals into a conversation about how we can all create a better place.  Immediately judging others shutting them out of conversations to improve society by labeling them as evil monsters harms everyone in society, not just the individual who is excluded.

Selflessness

Posted on by jabittan
At the end of his letter for James Harmon’s published collection of letters, Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two, Joe Dallesandro leaves the reader with one final piece of advice, “If you have to be beautiful, then do beautiful things for someone other than yourself.” This quote shows an idea of personal sacrifice, a way of looking deep within ourselves, and thoughtfulness for others.

 

In this quote I really enjoy the idea of being beautiful in the ways in which you help other people.  It becomes very easy in life to constantly think about yourself, and how each action you take is going to be beneficial for yourself.  It is not too often that we think of how we can do something meaningful for others, and even rarer still that we think of how we can do something for another person without thinking of how it will come back to benefit us in the future.  I know that one of my struggles involves the desire to do positive things like volunteer or donate to worthy causes without my motivation for those things being my own personal gain.  When I donate to charity I know that I will have a personal feeling of satisfaction from being a good person and helping out. Times when I have sacrificed time to volunteer and assist with things have also had an underlying motivating factor of knowing that my volunteering could be a resume booster, or possibly help me network.

 

By trying to think of making personal sacrifices for the good of others in the frame that Dallesandro provides us, I think we can avoid having so many of the hangups I described earlier.  When we focus on our own outward beauty and appearance we become more self absorbed, but if we try to be beautiful on the inside, and try to be beautiful through actions that are geared towards other people, then we create an attitude that is as much about serving others as ourselves.

Knowing Where You Are

Posted on by jabittan
Joe Dallesandro wrote a letter for James Harmon to publish in his book, Take My Advice, which is a collection of letters from creative writers and poets, independent creatives, and passionate artists.  In Dallesandro’s letter he writes about many topics, and touches on our life’s work, “Nobody’s going to fault a guy for moving on if a good opportunity comes up, but people switch jobs these days for the perks, for bragging rights, and their life’s work suffers.”

I love this quote because as a recent college graduate with a great job, I have definitely felt the pressures of wanting to have an important position, a clear work plan, and something I can brag about to my friends and family.  What is difficult for me is to envision where I want to go in a career, and still remain happy and content with the job that I have now.  I think that part of what Dallesandro is saying is that we need patience and to be self aware so we recognize when we were in a good place.  I read this quote several months ago, and even wrote this blog post itself a few weeks back. At this point I am now reading, Two Feet Back, Grant Korgan’s novel about his recovery after he broke his back and was paralyzed from the waist down.  In Korgan’s book he constantly mentions his though process during his recovery, particularly one idea, “We are exactly where we need to be.” For Korgan who was recovering from back surgery, he could not judge his progress relative to others or allow his progress to be determined by other people.  He had to focus on constant improvement moment to moment, and his refrain helped him stay focused on the present without fear that he should be doing anything other than what he was actively doing. This quote merges perfectly with what Dallesandro writes.

For me, this means that I do not have to shun the thoughts of wanting a job that pays more or sounds more impressive than my current job. I do not have to feel bad for wanting those things, but I do have to be honest with myself about where I am in my current job.  Right now I am in a job that I enjoy, but that I do want to grow within to reach new opportunities. At the same time, I have been able to recognize the ways in which my job has pushed me, and what areas and skills my job has helped me build.

Dallesandro’s quote speaks to the importance of growth and being in a position where you can maximize your potential and grow.  Finding that place and being aware of when you are in that position is important, and according to Dallesandro, when we leave that position to try and impress others, we risk ending up in a place where our skills do not fit.  Korgan would add to this idea saying that we need to be fully present in the life we currently live. For him, if we cannot be confident in the person we currently are or the position we are currently in, we will not grow and strengthen ourselves to find the change we want in life.

Helping Others

Posted on by jabittan
After talking about the importance of self awareness and ceasing to judge others, Joe Dallesandro in his letter to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice, writes about the importance of trying to help other people every day.  Dallesandro writes, “Ask yourself, Did I just think about myself today or did I think about others, or how I could be helpful to another person?”
Dallesandro is talking about self awareness and the daily focus and attention we have on ourselves.  Our society is so individualistic that we all believe that we are special and deserve something special every day. Unfortunately with this focus on ourselves we begin to forget about the importance of community and cooperation, leaving those around us on a secondary level relative to our own happiness.
In his letter, Dallesandro continues on to talk about how much we strive to be perfect, to be happy, and to be entertained, but we don’t often try to bring these things to other people.  By focusing in on other people we can create new opportunities for ourselves by building stronger relationships with those around us.  The stronger our sense of community the more peace we can find as we begin to find new people who we can rely on, and who can rely on us.

Fitting In

Posted on by jabittan
Joe Dallesandro wrote a letter to James Harmon for his book, Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People who Know a Think or Two, and in his letter he reflected on the way that many people act and how we worry about what other people think of us. He writes, “In a way, it’s how most of us live our lives.  We wonder if other people find us worthy, find us smart, find us attractive, find us valuable.”
In this quote Dallesandro is speaking of the way that we judge other people, and how we constantly are judging ourselves.  We look at other people and make determinations about them based on their appearance. I am not sure where I heard this but on a podcast I remember listening to someone talk about our biases, and their main point was that we form biases and opinions within the first 15 seconds of looking at someone.  What Dallesandro is saying is that these biases change our behavior, even if we are not consciously aware of them, and that we try to mold our behavior according to these biases. In this way, our perspective of the world shapes us to act in a certain way.
Dallesandro is critical of our fears of what other people will think. He argues that we need to loose our judgment of other people, drop our fear of what others think, and focus on what makes us stronger and better people.  By becoming more self aware, we can begin to stop making judgements about other people and allow them to be happy with the person they are.  At the same time, increasing self awareness and not worrying about what others think of us will allow us to act in a more free manner, and to build deeper connections with a more diverse group of people.