One of my biggest pet peeves is absolute statements.
No human being that has ever lived has been absolute in anything. There is always an exception, a slip-up, a blunder, a good intention that fell short of achieving its goal.
Absolute statements lead to frustration, discouragement, or guilt.
So, beware of most self-help books. Even Christian ones. Because they will inevitably have absolute statements for you as an individual, a spouse, a parent, or whatever other topic it includes.
That doesn’t mean that you have to stop reading them. It just means that you have to learn how to take an expert’s opinion (even mine) and humanize it, personalize it, or generalize it.
Take parenting for example.
I don’t think it’s possible to fathom the number of books that talk about the importance of consistency.
We have all heard about being a consistent parent, right? So, let’s humanize this principle.
How are you at being consistent?
In anything?
No one can be 100 percent consistent. All we can do is hope to increase our consistency; to follow-through a lot more often than not. We can hope for damage-control when we mess up or fall short. We can hope to be described, at the end of the day, as a parent that did well by their children through their words and actions.
So, if we can’t be constantly consistent, then what can we be? The answer is – you can be more self-aware. In my opinion, self-awareness is a lot more important than consistency, as well as the key to it. Are you aware of what you are doing? And, why you are doing it? Can you pause before you act in order to choose your response?
Increasing your self-awareness will lead to the ability to be consistent, responsible, in-control, calm, and all of those other ideal parenting traits.
That means that it’s a good thing that developing self-awareness has no absolutes associated with it. It is a lifelong journey that ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. Increasing your awareness all depends upon how much energy you allot to it – what level of priority you attribute to it.
In order to move it up the priority meter and find the motivation to allot more energy to the process, to trudge through when you hit plateaus or forget why you even care about becoming more self-aware, it must have a pay-off.
Pay-off means, ‘what’s in it for you?’
I know this sounds selfish and no one wants to admit that the only things they are willing to exert any sort of prolonged energy toward are things that have something in it for them, but it’s the truth. A tough truth, but a human-nature truth. You will not do anything for an extended period of time or that takes a lot of energy or any other resource unless there’s a pay-off.
So, what is the pay-off for raising your self-awareness?
Only you can answer that.
And, seriously – answer it.
Write down the strongest reasons that will compel you to keep working at it. Then, whenever you hit an ebbing moment, whenever the energy or priority you allotted to it has begun to wane, pull out that list and renew your commitment.
Once you have this list, pick an area or two of your life where you will intentionally slow down and turn on your inner-documentarian.
Back to our parenting example – start noting what happens when you interact with your kids. What is triggered inside of you, both feelings and pulls to act, when your kids do various things? Start digging into what you discover. Figure out what you are doing and why you are doing it.
It is a lot harder to change if you don’t know what you do and why you do it. Self-awareness will put you in greater control of yourself; will give you a choice.
And choice is what we all truly want. Perhaps that is why absolutes don’t work on us – they take away choice. So, forget about always being consistent and strive to become more consistent. Increasing your self-awareness and finding the pay-off will help you do that.