Avoiding the self-conciousness trap

Submitted by RagsToRich on Fri, 2009-11-27 10:37

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This article discusses one of the greatest epiphanies which I have had during self-development. It has helped me avoid from the fate of some other self-developers who have tripped up and had to delay their development.

I have occasionally met people who became so frustrated and agitated by themselves that they could no longer continue their path of self-development. This is a trap which you can avoid.

Before most people first discover the scope and potential reward to be obtained from self-development it's likely they had a relatively low level of self-awareness and self-control. In other words they would enter a room, do whatever their social programming had already been trained to do, and then on to the next automatic task.

Most people go through life that way.

Initially after the decide to develop themselves, self-developers begin to develop an awareness and control of their appearance, actions, mind-state, etc. At first this results in desirable progress - old unproductive behaviors are corrected, body-language is recognized, communication becomes more stream-line and so on.

Self-consciousness reaches a wholly unproductive level very quickly. When someone is trying to micro-manage their actions they become easily stressed about a lot of things. If they aren't coming off exactly as they desire they begin to battle themselves. They become stifled and they come off to other people as strange.

One such example would be a person being conscious of their body-language and facial expressions at every moment during a conversation. This kind of mentality leads to them feeling highly-strung and stressed, and coming across as weird, stiff, and self-conscious.

The level of self-consciousness which is most efficient for self-development is actually a very low level. We need some because a little allows you to make corrections where required. It allows you to identify and accept poor decisions you may have made and to see areas where your efficiency can be increased.

But any more than this amount quickly becomes unproductive. Stressing about your voice tone not being ideal today, or getting annoyed when you catch yourself displaying closed body language, things like this are wholly unproductive. Sometimes this is called being overly Outcome Dependent; the preference being that we lean towards Outcome Independence - which is a form of acceptance.

I used to work with someone who constantly forced themselves to speak in this booming voice. First of all, it was fairly ridiculous in its own right. But on top of that I could tell that they were constantly thinking about it and forcing that kind of projection. It's not good, it doesn't come off well at all.

Although I would encourage anyone to work on improving themselves, including their voice, as previously mentioned the level of self-correction to apply should be as minimal as possible. For the most part you will relax, accept the moment, and allow yourself to act naturally. It is conductive to optimal self-development to let the natural flow of habits do their thing while maintaining a small amount of awareness and self-control to steer the rudder in generally the right direction.

You can locate this sweet spot because it's the place when you're both happy with your progress and comfortable with yourself at the same time. If you're uncomfortable with yourself, you need to accept yourself more and relax. If you're comfortable with yourself but not making any progress, then you need to put more awareness into changing your habits.

The crucial point to be made is that if you find yourself becoming easily agitated by your actions or the people around you, or your progress; the very best thing you can do is relax and accept everything is fine as it currently is. Emotional health and relaxation is just far too important and the cost of sacrificing it is great. As a general rule any restraint of your own actions which you have to micro-manage on a regular basis should be avoided.

If you were in this situation what you will tend to find is that after relaxing and accepting yourself and the situation you're currently in, things tend to move in the direction you desired all along.

It seems paradoxical to say that in order to most effectively improve something one must accept the way it currently is, but that is simply the truth of it. It is a paradox which is necessary for the emotional health which is required for good self-developement.

There's an exercise which can be used if you are particularly struggling in this area. This exercise may sound more than a little bit wet - but if you do it right it works and that's all I'm interested it.

First of all just relax completely for a couple of minutes. If you are yet able to meditate into a deep state, then do that. Once you feel that your mind is relatively relaxed and clear then take a pen and paper and write the affirmation "I love myself" over and over again. Write it slowly and carefully, and repeat the phrase to yourself in your head while doing so.

Each time you write it, think about yourself in an affectionate manner, all the things you love about yourself, how much you care about yourself.

Experiment a little bit to find various different ways of thinking about yourself which make you happy. The feeling you should end up with is one of internal warmth, you should feel as complete sense of self-acceptance.

When you have a strong feeling of self-affection you will notice that you are completely liberated from any of the stresses of unproductive self-consciousness. This feeling allows you to accept yourself absolutely as you are which in turn provides you with the freedom of action and emotional health required to go and become something better.

A trained sense of bodily awareness and mindfulness meditation can enable you to summon and hold this feeling at will.

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