Are You Self-aware?

Are You Self-Aware?

There is more hope for fools than for people who think they are wise.

Proverbs 26:12

As with every other marriage relationship on the planet, the well-being of yours depends on the well-being of each of you. In other words, your relationship can be only as emotionally and spiritually healthy as the two of you are. We make this foundational point just about every time we give a seminar for couples. And so much of our health has to do with maintaining balance—unless we are talking about self-awareness.

Think about it. Most attributes of mental health are found in the middle of a continuum that signifies a “balanced life.” Self-worth, for example, is the midpoint between too much humility and too much pride. Delayed gratification is between compulsive restraint and freewheeling indulgence. The attribute of self-awareness, on the other hand, is unique. At one end of an imagined continuum of this trait we would find the people in denial, seeing themselves without any flaws, exaggerating their own abilities, and dodging feedback at all cost. These people are riddled with blind spots and reflect the common view of the narcissist. On the other end of this imagined continuum, however, well, we are at a loss. Is it possible to have too much self-awareness? Is it possible to be too open to feedback?

Remember that self-awareness is not the same thing as pride; in fact, you have to have the one to combat the other. Perhaps this healthy trait could be taken to an extreme, but we’ve never seen it. No matter how self-aware we are, we can always benefit from continued critique. We can always improve by being more conscious, more alert to our emotions, our motives, our thinking, and our behavior. Too much of a good thing? We don’t think so.

Awareness does not guarantee psychological health, but psychological health is impossible without it. We’ll say it again, self-awareness is one of the most significant keystones to emotional health—and thus to your relationship. So we ask: what are you doing today that will help you become aware of who you are in the context of your relationship?

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.

—Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius