Do you ever wish you could be oblivious to your own flaws?
Being self-aware and reflective is great. It allows you to create deeper connections, increase your sense of purpose and understand your emotions better.
However, the more self awareness you have, the more you notice the things about yourself that you see as imperfect.
If you’re a perfectionist – or have perfectionistic tendencies – this can often feel overwhelming and, sometimes, even hopeless.
“Life would be so much easier if I was oblivious to all the ways I could improve”
And maybe you’re right. Maybe life would be “easier”. But it would be so much less.
You have developed this deep level of self-awareness because you need it to feel whole. You thrive from personal development and without it your life would feel incomplete and meaningless.
So, the question is not “How can I stop being so self-aware?” but instead, “How can I manage my self-awareness better?”.
You must learn to put a CAP on your self-awareness.
Change
Accept
Postpone
When you are faced with something you’d, ideally, like to change in your life, you only have three options. You can change it, accept it or postpone it.
Change
If you choose to change it, you must create a plan, and action it. Is there anything you need to take out of your life? Are there new habits you must build? How else are you going to cause change?
Taking immediate action is good for things that bother you frequently or are consistently impacting those around you negatively.
Accept
If you decide to accept it, you are acknowledging that the outcome of changing is not worth the effort. You may feel uncomfortable acknowledging this but there is no shame in the process of accepting.
If it’s something very rarely bothers you, or you know the pros significantly outweigh the cons, it may be a good thing to accept and move on.
Postpone
Finally, if you decide to postpone you are deciding that you will revisit this but it’s not yet pressing enough to address immediately. Postponing is not ignoring. When you ignore you are burying your head in the sand and hoping the problem will resolve itself. When you postpone, you create a time-frame of when you will address the issue at hand. You know you will move to the change phase when you’re ready.
The postpone option is great for when life is feeling very overwhelming with more pressing matters. It’s also great for things that aren’t bothering you much now but you know your situation will change soon and you need to address things before the change.
Next time you wonder whether it would be easier to be oblivious, just remind yourself to put a CAP on your self-awareness.