Welcome everyone-めなさんこんにちわー
Let’s continue what we started before. Let me make clear what I’m writing about here, I’m going to introduce Dr.Stephen covey’s habit 1-and i may introduce habit number 2-.this habit defines a framework to work with in life. The stuff I’m going to write here is so natural, that anyone who reads will be very comfortable with it. Shall we start?
“I know of no more encouraging a fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor”
Henry David Thoreau
Self-awareness
One of the most precious of human’s abilities. What does it mean to be self aware?
Let us explore self awareness.
Can you think about your self? Can you forma picture of your self, look at your self as thou you were a different person?
Moreover you can think about your mental state. Can you think about your mood? What are you feeling? You can describe yourself.
You can remember any scenario that happened to you and think about every aspect, how you felt, how your mood changed, and how it affected you.
Self awareness is the ability of thinking about every thought that goes in your head. It’s unique to humans. It’s the reason that humans advance by time and how civilization increases, it’s why humans improve in any skill they spend time in.
We aren’t just feelings or mood, there is more than that. A feeling is a separate process that runs inside of us-we’ve just thought about our mood-, the way we think isn’t us, we’ve just thought about all that, these are all separate things.
With self awareness, we have overview and vision on how we think, we can look on every process that runs in our heads, this is a great paradigm. You can view yourself and view each way you think about anything. You can see that if you’re a function of moods or feelings of others, or what you seek-be that money, fame, position, ethics or principles-.
The experiences that affect us
It’s widely accepted that there are three major categories that model us:
Family; the way you were raised, you are the way you are because that’s the way your parents raised you to be. When you were small and highly dependent on your parents, the experiences at that age changed you and made you the way you are
DNA; you are the way you are because your grandparents were like that, you inherited it. It’s your genes. You’re of a particular group. It’s our way. we have the following character
Environment; you lived in your environment that made you the way you are. Your school colleagues, the state of your country, the people at work, or your sons, or your spouse, something in the environment you work in
Each of these relays on idea conditioning; your conditioned in some way to respond to a particular stimulus in a particular way.
NOW. Let us think are these ideas right?
Let me quote the good Dr’s words
Challenging these ideas
In answer to those questions, let me share with you the catalytic story of Viktor Frankl.
Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your
whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.
Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany,
where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even
repeat them.
His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for
his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities,
never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be
among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.
One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the
last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control
his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Viktor Frankl himself was a
self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact.
He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to
him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.
In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as
lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the
classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.
Through a series of such disciplines -- mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and
imagination -- he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had
more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their
environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an
inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their
suffering and dignity in their prison existence.
In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of
self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and
response, man has the freedom to choose.
Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to
self-awareness, we have imagination -- the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality.
We have conscience -- a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our
behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And
we have independent will -- the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.
Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer metaphor,
they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be responsible, but they can't
take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can't direct it. They can't change the
programming. They're not even aware of it.
But because of our unique human endowments, we can write new programs for ourselves totally
apart from our instincts and training. This is why an animal's capacity is relatively limited and man's
is unlimited. But if we live like animals, out of our own instincts and conditioning and conditions, out
of our collective memory, we too will be limited.
The deterministic paradigm comes primarily from the study of animals -- rats, monkeys, pigeons,
dogs -- and neurotic and psychotic people. While this may meet certain criteria of some researchers
because it seems measurable and predictable, the history of mankind and our own self-awareness tell us
that this map doesn't describe the territory at all!
Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal world. The extent to which we exercise
and develop these endowments empowers us to fulfill our uniquely human potential. Between
stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.”
Wish you all the best:D
