Ways of Being

I'm finding out interesting things about myself at the moment.
OK. I think they're interesting; bear with me and I will show you that it's not all about me.

Self awareness, in the sense of recognising oneself and ones behaviours, can be a difficult thing. It requires an acceptance that we behave in ways that are not always as we would like, and it requires a degree of honesty that can result in revelations that are at best difficult to accept, at worst devastating to contemplate.

I've been consciously raising my self-awareness, and I've found things I don't like. I'm not saying I hate myself - not at all, no melodrama here - it's about accepting myself and also accepting that, through recognition of these traits I am at least admitting that there are things I would like to change. Moreover, I am accepting that there may be ways to change them.

I look back at my behaviour over years and years, decades, back to school days, and I find that I am still using the same behaviours I did way back, and for the same aims and goals.

So here's the interesting bit I said I'd show you.

When we talk about people, when we describe them, we say what they're like. Not just physically, but their behaviours. We'll say of people that they are friendly, or prickly, or hard work but worth the effort.
If we are pushed, we may really analyse them and come up with more subtle things - they are collaborative, or coercive, or jocund. They are introverted, contemplative, enigmatic (or are they?)
These lists of terms we can apply to people's behaviours are of course our perceptions, but if we can agree (I hope we can) that the descriptions of these behaviours would be broadly accepted by the subject of the labels, then we find that the labels themselves are likely to describe the subject over a great many years of their lives.
My point is that people don't change so much; they behave now, more or less, as they did way back in their formative years. So my observation of the longevity of my own behaviour sets above applies to most people. I am not unusual!

I believe that behaviours I learned before I was ten are unlikely to be a perfect fit for a man in his forties. Sure, some of them will still be relevant, possibly the majority on some level, but the subtleties of those behaviours will be mismatched to what I experience now. They will be things that, when folks describe me, if they are honest, I would be troubled to hear.

I am analysing my behaviours, and trying to work out which ones are ancient responses to regularly occurring situations. If I'm still responding to these situations as I did when I was prepubescent then I'm trying to work out what I really feel about the situations now, and comparing that with the responses and behaviours I exhibit in those situations.
Put more simply, I'm checking that my habitual behaviours actually match what I really feel now.
I'm identifying the bits of my responses and behaviours I find wanting, finding their triggers and drivers, and working to replace those responses and behaviours with ways of being that I am more comfortable with - more comfortable because they reflect how I feel now, not how I felt nearly 40 years ago.
If I can do this, if I can change how I behave by examining and recognising fundamental parts of what drives and triggers and influences my behaviours, then anybody can do it.
Interesting then that people don't seem to consider themselves capable of such change. they say 'I'm just like this' or 'it's just me'.
Worse, they say things like 'I'm crap at X' or - as I heard today - 'I'm rubbish'
Somebody who I know to be shockingly clever, hard-working, almost recklessly generous and loving says he's rubbish and he actually believes it! That's a tragedy.

This recognition of ones behaviours as a thing to be questioned and possibly modified needs to be triggered by some event in life, some moment when a person says 'actually, am I rubbish?' and starts to question their assumptions about themselves, question those ancient and practised behaviours, and question their immutability.

Folks need to start their journey on their own terms, not by suggestions of others, so the trigger will be different for everybody - but while it will be different, it must be possible to plant a seed that says 'we can be aware of the potential for change of our self'.
I know what it was for me. It was somebody who heard me say something about myself and just said it back to me with a single raised questioning eyebrow.

I am thankful to them. It's started a difficult journey for me, but it's a journey I need to take now that I have seen the path, and I am glad to be taking those first steps.
I just wish I could remember who the hell it was!
You see, my memory is crap.
... Oh. Hang on...