Living in the modern era it would seem that self-awareness is increasingly becoming a trendy topic of discussion with some saying self-awareness is a gift; I believe that most, if not all things in this reality fall into spectrums of intensity and differentiating traits which are then put into categories, only to fall into sub-categories later when variations come into focus, creating understanding for everyone by simplifying illustration; self-awareness can be a gift, but to what level are you self-aware, and are you aware of being self-aware in the first place? Is self-awareness really a gift, or a curse wrapped in fantasy?
It wasn’t that long ago that I was living on auto-pilot, I would do my daily routine, feed into my habitual antics almost on loop every day; my life became a black and white film with no dialogue, running in slow motion with no endgame in sight; I would lay in deep thought past midnight in the dark for hours in my teens and young adulthood, not being able to sleep, my brain wired in thought, thinking away and ruminating about the meaning of life and the nature of reality.
It wasn’t until I realised I was transgender in 2019 that my thinking started to shift and develop further; it had taken me twenty years of life to learn that people could be transgender, changing their gender expression from male to female; learning of the phrase ‘transgender’ for the first time, I instantly felt a feeling like no other, I instantly realised this is a part of me, my intuition lit up brighter than any smile, then, the slap happened, how the f*ck am I going to explain this to my friends and family; so with that, I had to challenge stereotypes, gender ideology and what it would mean to be transgender. I needed to understand myself inside and out before I could make any life-changing decisions and come out to my loved ones.
It’s taken years to get to where I am today and reach a level of understanding that was once foreign; I realised that actually, understanding yourself takes a lifetime, everyday it seems I am learning more and more about my individuality and it’s complexities. I slowly realised whilst transitioning that I was increasingly becoming more and more self-aware of my thoughts, where not too long before, I wasn’t aware of my thoughts and why I was thinking about the things I thought about; I would think about scenarios, fantasies and relive memories from my past, without even understanding why they were playing in my head; slowly realising my thoughts were flicking round my brain like it was swiping through reels on TikTok, they felt random, but actually, my thoughts were relevant to navigating the wave of life I was surfing at the time; overtime I began to notice my thought patterns, which was my entry-point of what it meant to be self-aware, I choose to lean into self-awareness because it simply intrigued me.
I stepped through the white pearly door of self-awareness and learnt that when you become self-aware you lose the ability to be ignorant, you can’t just brush past old habits without questioning why you do these things in the first place, l lost comfort in activities that I once enjoyed, I began to understand what was good for me and what wasn’t.
I’d catch myself mid-conversation, aware of the fact that I was having a conversation with a person who understood me, whilst aware that I felt as if I was sinking whilst simultaneously feeling sparks of joy and happiness; leading me to think, is it them making me feel this or is it me? I became aware of the fact that sadness was more comfortable to me than happiness; upon reflection, I realised that prior to my transition, I couldn’t realise the extent of my sadness because I’d never experienced happiness for long stretches of time, anytime I was happy, I’d feel uncomfortable; overtime however, that scale began to tilt towards comfortability in happiness over sadness which made me realise how powerful it is to truly believe in yourself and the importance of stepping into your most authentic self.
I’d begun to notice when I was excusing myself mid-excuse, realising it felt easier to excuse myself from a task in the moment whilst concurrently feeling the dread to just get on with it, a classic ADHD trait I may add. I started to feel like I was letting myself down, so I started disciplining myself to just get on with the task at hand first time, every time, not allowing myself to excuse laziness and to start building resilience within my thought processes, which has now lead to a more consistent Jamieee ✨.
Self-awareness sounds like a beneficial trait to inhibit from oversight, but how far does it go until it makes life feel claustrophobic? Struggling to make a decision because you’re meta-aware of your thoughts all of the time; seeing patterns in others, understanding behaviour, predicting all possible outcomes, all whilst deciding not to interfere because it isn’t my business; sounds exhausting, right? I learned the Law of Probability by simply becoming aware of the thoughts I were having; by observing my thoughts, I unknowingly downloaded the ability to predict outcomes; my prior observations throughout life meant I was better at predicting outcomes because I was always looking in from the outside whilst observing patterns in real time, noticing varying outcomes; the consistent repetition of this trait from a younger age gave me insight into predictability; predicting outcomes is like a muscle, the more you observe and predict, the stronger and speedier your mind and intuition becomes at identifying outcomes; self-awareness and predictability has become second nature, but to what cost?
True self-awareness comes at cost that you rarely hear or read about. I began to notice when I wanted to pull-away from situations that didn’t align with my views and beliefs; I kept choosing peace over speaking up because I could understand why others wouldn’t share the same opinions and beliefs as me; respecting the art of choice. I began to understand other people’s behaviours, even if and when they hurt my feelings. I had come to the conclusion that other people’s opinions, views and beliefs are valid even when I couldn’t agree, right and wrong simply boils down to mythology. I accepted that everything any individual believes is down to upbringing, religion, experience and genetics. I stay silent in social situations where drama and conflict is present, it’s typically unnecessary and it disrupts the equilibrium which makes me feel uncomfortable being a super empath; being self-aware is knowing I won’t feel relief from being reactive, aware of what I’d feel after. I know I gain zero satisfaction from letting my emotions explode, so, I practice reframing from reacting when I feel a reaction brewing, even if I want to react, I restrain myself, for my integrity and for my peace of mind.
I don’t get to choose if I want to take accountability for my life, true self-awareness is accountability in thought and action; being aware of your actions that lead to outcomes, past and present; accepting that even in my darkest hours, I am where I am today, because of the accumulation of all my thoughts that lead to action. I can acknowledge all the times in my life where I was in a state of ill mind, and accept that my lifestyles majorly influenced mental and physical declines where knowledge and wisdom I needed to recover, were outside of my perceived awareness.
The ability to look at my life as a whole and see where I’ve contributed has given me insight into what matters for me as an individual. I’ve realised the importance of leading a life from the heart, not the mind, I’m aware of my choices and now I get to consciously choose where to contribute going forward; choosing to take action on what feels right whilst tapping into my intuition. I choose to be creative for my social economic contribution; I write blogs because I love writing and thoroughly enjoy deep critical thinking, knowing my words help and inspire others. I choose to write as a form of mental decompression, flexing my mind with writing; which has helped me massively in developing my understanding of my neurological pathways; helping me form a deeper and more meaningful approach through the ocean of life, aiding my navigation through the world, safely.
I’m aware that my contributions in life may seem like nothing to others and everything to somebody else; tilting between writing, photography and online content is a fine balance but I’m telling myself that it should never be about how much I feel the need to contribute to the world, a country, city or town, it needs to be about how contributing something, big or small, may help shift the trajectory of one singular life in a direction that is deemed positive by the majority, in hopes to start a domino effect. I can sit outside the sphere of social engagement and understand why people do what they do, where their pain stems from, the fear that lives underneath their behaviour, where all I want to do is help and encourage, but I can’t, at least not directly, not unless provoked, because again, it isn’t my business; I’m just an observer, a heart that cracks a little further every time a prediction comes to fruition.
I don’t get to play the victim in any situation; self-awareness eradicates all blame towards others, to self, even if at first I thought something wasn’t my fault; being truly self-aware is sitting within your own consequences, realising all the actions taken in my life has got me to where I am today; playing the victim time and time again doesn’t help move you along, it stops you from growing and progressing onto the next chapter; self-awareness is loneliness, disguised as a flamboyant reward; it’s knowing your favourite glass to drink out of will one day be shards of glass, so you choose not to use it out of fear of it breaking, to only realise on your deathbed, you never got to enjoy the life-cycle of the glass; that glass represents life, enjoy the process because regret is stronger than delight.
It’s harder to walk away in situations that you care about when you’re self-aware, choosing to stay could underpin your mental health, whilst leaving now keeps your soul clean, but later you may realise that situation left a stain on your conscious; you may avoid being dramatic because the alternative could leave the opinions from others about you to shift; being careless becomes trickier to ignore because you’re aware that actually you’re not caring about the task as much as you should, so, you go back and redo the task with the care it requires, despite knowing how tedious it may feel; you’ll find yourself wanting to do the task with care every time, to save time and to stop the same thought patterns from reoccurring. You’ll find yourself carrying responsibility even when no one has asked you to, being aware of the fact that by not taking responsibility in situations that need stable leadership can result in a perceived negative outcome; being self-aware can feel like an ache at times, an ache that just won’t leave you, no matter how hard you try to outrun self-awareness it stalks your consciousness, sitting rent free across the atlas of the brain, dormant but forever active.
The silent grief that comes with self-awareness feels like a loud bang of nothingness, realising how past conversations could’ve gone differently, the many situations handled poorly by explosively reacting, before knowing better. I think about past versions of myself often, there’s versions of myself that feel like fragments of a nightmare; self-awareness doesn’t eradicate the past but instead makes you consciously aware of it, which can be a hard pill to swallow; my level of awareness actively exploded and forced me to pull an emergency handbrake stop in life; there was no slowing down, just an immediate pause. I realised every action I’d taken had it’s consequence, where the words I continually choose had impact; this level of awareness had lead to continuous restraint that felt exhausting and debilitating. I realised life before self-awareness was easier, the ignorance was bliss, reacting was effortless, blaming felt lighter, not knowing was comfortable. I became aware of my perceptive nature, I recognised my behavioural patterns, thoughts, and triggers. I could no longer be ignorant and pretend my actions didn’t carry any weight, then I grew, but become quiet; moving deliberately with timed approaches for best chances of desired outcome. The cost of self-awareness is a sense of ease, losing the ability to walk through life unconsciously, where wanting an excuse feels disingenuous; it’s analysing every thought even when you just want peace and solitude.
Living in a black and white reality was tough and challenging, not seeing an endgame to suffering was excruciating; however, in the end I proved to myself that just because I lived a quarter-life career of depression and anxiety doesn’t mean I couldn’t escape it and find the door to my sunshine. I now weave through the spectrum of colour, a reality manifested by action, where thoughts, views and beliefs are forever bending and moulding to new ideas and concepts where anything is possible; realities that lack colour and anomalistic behaviour become one dimensional, stripping away possibility, becoming just black and white; individuality should be multidimensional, exceeding binaries, wiring the potential for breathing in fresh experience and new ideas, all it takes is believing in colour; if we all believed in colour we’d be united, defining the very essence of what it would mean to live in the spectrum of all things colours.
However, living within colour doesn’t mean life is all sunshine and rainbows, it’ll still rain, it’ll thunder, every now and then you’ll get struck down by lightning; but, it’s important to always get back up, each and every time; fighting that little stronger, punching a little harder, slowly defeating the struggle; you’ll lose more than you’ll win, but that’s where real growth hides. It’s about putting in the invisible reps everyday that nobody is aware about, you might not even be aware of the reps yourself and maybe that’s for the better; living in colour doesn’t mean you’ll only experience the vibrant colours, you’ll still have to walk through cloudier hues.
I walked into self-awareness willingly, I slowly learnt what it meant to be self-aware and despite the costs and whether it pays off or not is personally unknown,
but I can say the journey has been thrilling yet challenging. The deeper you ponder into self-awareness the more you’ll realise and discover what makes you tick, good, bad and indifferent; entering into a void with no exit, ignorance and unawareness becomes a distant memory.
I can run from self-awareness but I’ll never outrun it; being self-aware becomes a muscle that can only get stronger the more it’s tapped into, never weaker. The level of intensity I reached was determined by my level of curiosity and because of that, I now see all life as three fundamental factors, energy, frequency and vibration; self-awareness taught me to read into algorithmic neurological pathways. I can no longer erase my perception of reality, it can only be shaped by learning new ideas and concepts; it can feel like a curse and a gift all at once.
The white pearly door I willingly walked into showed me true self-awareness; that same door has ingrown itself into the forrest of my mind and now presents itself as crimson red, wrapped with unbreakable chains and padlocked with no keyhole to be seen; a note hangs off its chains and reads ‘enjoy the forrest’.
All Things Jamieee ✨ 