I can't stand people who say "but I'm very self-aware."
Usually it arrives to justify a failure or some human malfunction — in the style of: "True, I haven't been in a relationship for ten years, but I'm VERY self-aware."
Today I want to hand you an insight that is, for my money, psychology at its best:
Real understanding is always connected to action. Otherwise it is partial, deficient, or false understanding.
A quick example for the struggling: if you "understand" that you need to exercise and stop smoking in order to feel and function better, and you don't do it — then I'm sorry to report, you are not a self-aware person. You are a fool with good vocabulary.
Let's lower the flame and speak calmly: people's understanding of themselves is broken because they own insights about the WHAT, while remaining perfectly clueless about the HOW.
A real insight must express itself in deeds, decisions, behaviors. That is the only proof that you take it seriously.
If you're not taking initiative and booking the two of you a weekend away; if you don't tell her, apropos of nothing in the middle of the day, "you should know you're the best thing that ever happened to me" — then listen: the coin of "I must save this relationship" has not actually dropped for you.
I have always believed partial knowledge is worse than no knowledge, and the dollar-store psychological insights the public holds about the mind and about relationships are exactly that — partial knowledge. No more, no less.
And you know the curse of partial knowledge? It sedates you. It hands you the illusion of knowing — and then you believe that since you "know" what's happening, that's sufficient.
It is not sufficient.
A true psychological insight is supposed to spur you, not excuse you from acting.
Being aware of something earns you no credit points. It is not something to be proud of. In fact, if there were justice in the world, we would blush like ripe tomatoes at the inventory of things we were fully aware of — and remained apathetic about.
The world does not hand out medals for insights.
The world needs your actions. Understand that.
Or as someone wise once put it: there are billions of people in the world. Maybe three or four care how you feel. All the rest care how you behave.
Turn what you know into what you do.
finally, one for the road:
you can't really know yourself until you've watched yourself doing it. behaviour can give you insights no textbook can