Leave everything and go to the bathroom.
Stop what you are doing right now. Put down the coffee. Finish the phone call. Leave the shop. Go to the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror.
In silence. For a minute and a half.
Even if you always thought you were self-aware, you are probably talking nonsense. I want to offer you three pieces of introspection that matter.
I offer them simply because I think a person who does not fully acknowledge them is not entitled to the title of self-aware. In fact they are not fit to sit at the grown-ups' table.
The leap from child to adult is a painful one, but unavoidable. In my view it has to pass through the following three statements.
One. I am only who I am, and my experience is private to me and in no way represents the whole human species.
People in my world have other ways of being and of loving, rules of conduct different from mine, opinions and preferences and desires that I do not know. In short: I promise always to remember that I am not the measure of the correct world.
Two. Some of the bad things that happen to me are my fault, and some are not.
If I start dealing with the first category, it is very likely my life will be better. Note what this does not say. It does not say everything is your fault, which is cruel and untrue. It says that the portion which is yours is the only portion you can operate on, and that sorting the two is the whole work.
Three. As long as I am not reasonably comprehensible to myself, I have no business expecting other people to understand me or to accommodate me.
The responsibility for saying clearly and aloud what I want and do not want is mine alone.
That third one is where most adult unhappiness lives. We wait to be correctly guessed, and then we treat the failure to guess as evidence that we are not loved.
Now it is time to leave the bathroom.