I truly believe that a huge part of overcoming obstacles and becomming successful has to do with being self aware. And to me, self awareness is looking in the mirror and calling yourself out on your own bullshit; much in the same way you would call someone else out on theirs.

In therapy you are often asked how you feel about something and WHY you think you might feel that way. This is self awareness. I often feel a certain type of way about things and I will stop and ask myself why I feel that way. Then, I have to be honest with myself about that answer.

For example; there is a creator on TikTok that annoys the crap out of me. She seems nice enough – has a friendly face, isn’t negative or demeaning to anyone and I honestly have no reason not to like her. So why then do I get so annoyed everytime she pops up on my feed? We are even friends on there! I don’t know for sure, but I think it might be jealousy. But that isn’t the point here. The point is that I’m asking myself “why?” and honestly trying to figure it out.

Another example – again a real-life one for me – is being upset with someone because they don’t call you enough, or comment on your Facebook posts enough or text you enough, but you haven’t reached out to them either! This is literally something that I realized about myself and a particular person in my life. Thankfully I never said anything to this person – or anyone – about it, but I realized I haven’t attempted to make the effort either. Why is it all on them?

The bottom line is I encourage you to think about your own behaviours before you criticize or blame others. Call yourself out on your bullshit. Figure out why you want to criticize in the first place. Is there a genuine reason you feel that way or is it something within yourself that is really the problem? Sometimes it is them… but usually it is not. So having the ability to recognize these things in ourselves is the first step to changing that behavior.