How to get to know yourself

The Relationship Maze

How self aware are you? Do you know what makes you tick? Self awareness is key to building successful relationships: it helps you to distinguish between yourself and others, to understand why you might have certain perspectives and beliefs and most importantly it is the springboard to making changes in your life if necessary.In today's episodes we explore why knowing yourself is so important and how you might go about getting yourself a little better. We offer some suggestions that can get you started on your journey to self awareness and self knowledge.
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates famously stated that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates was referring to the idea of living a life where you are ruled by others, have no questions about your life and its purpose and where you don't know who you are. Not knowing yourself means that you are more likely to repeat the same old behaviours again and again - even if they don't necessarily serve you well. In a life examined you search for reasons, know who you are and what you want. And you work at improving yourself and your choices in life.
In this podcast we are referring to the kind of self knowledge that allows you to gain more insight into your internal life, for example into your beliefs, your values or your needs and wants. You are likely to chose a partner based on your particular ideas of the other person. You follow (often unhelpful) relationship templates that were acquired over a long period of time. Some of your ways of thinking and behaving in relationships you may be aware of, others may take much longer to uncover. Knowing yourself is, of course, a complex and ongoing process and there is always an element of unchartered territory when it comes to your unconscious motivations.
Not knowing yourself very well may at times lead to the puzzling question of why you encounter a problem again and again. For example, you may avoid conflict at all costs. Enquiring into the underlying causes of this avoidance may not resolve the issue immediately but will make a good starting point for gaining more understanding and trying out new ways of dealing with people that will make you feel less frustrated in the long run.
You can only really get to know the other person in front of you if you have an understanding of yourself first. Once you can gain an understanding of how you map the world, and how your partner maps the world you can work on creating a joint map of the world with some overlapping territory.
Getting to know yourself allows you to identify your ways of thinking, feeling and behaving and to assess whether some of these ways may need to be modified.
The good news is that our brains are rather flexible. We can always learn something new and establish new neural pathways. The snowy mountain metaphor by Harvard Neurology Professor Alvaro Pascual-Leone demonstrates why our habits are so hard to change but that they can change after all.
Getting to know yourself is an ongoing process and may require some help, either from a trusted friend or a professional like a therapist. We make some suggestions for your looking and listening inside yourself. Some are activities you can do on your own; others involve the help of a friend.
In our online Relationship Maze course we explore all of the topics that we touch on in this podcast in much more detail. You will have an opportunity to truly get to know yourself and to practice behavioural changes if necessary.
https://therelationshipmaze.com.
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