Beyond Biases: How Self-Knowledge Shapes Your Life
To understand the world, you must first understand yourself
A lack of self-knowledge is the curse most people suffer from.
If you don’t understand yourself before entering the world, you won’t understand it either.
Your upbringing, cultural background, religion, and every memory you have affect how you view the world, what you laugh at, enjoy, love, and how you make decisions.
Being self-aware of this is not enough.
Your number one priority needs to be self-knowledge. Without it, you have no basis for thought. And if you have no basis for thought, what you think is not true.
Self-awareness vs self-knowledge
Self-awareness is often talked about, especially when the topic of meditation is brought up. Think of self-knowledge as the next level - it digs a little deeper.
While self-awareness is acknowledging that you are feeling a certain way, self-knowledge is knowing and understanding why.
Those who meditate are very self-aware. For example, they know very quickly when something is bothering them.
Self-knowledge, on the other hand, would be knowing that going to a bar will bother you and understanding that it is because your dad was an alcoholic and now being in a drinking environment upsets you,
This requires more than meditation to build - it also requires inner work.
To build self-knowledge, you need to take into consideration how you grew up, your genetic predispositions, beliefs and anything else that would make you biased for any reason.
Freeing your mind from yourself
Not being self-knowledgeable can have many downsides.
To start, if you are not aware of how and why you react to certain situations, you will have a biased outlook.
Building your self-knowledge allows you to free your mind from yourself and your past.
Think about it… If you don’t understand that you don’t appreciate a certain kind of humour simply because of your chosen ideology, you will be upset at others who do.
That doesn’t make the individual who is laughing a bad person, but you might see it like that if you are not self-knowledgeable.
Your biases are preventing you from seeing the truth.
This example can be carried over into a countless number of scenarios.
Your ability to be creative
When you approach the world with a mind that is not free from your biases, you lose the ability to be creative.
Creativity flourishes with a free mind.
Imagine a painter strokes their paintbrush with a clouded mind, with little understanding of the world around them or themselves. Their art tends to lack beauty.
The same is true for the musician playing his heart out.
Creativity is expressed through art and art requires a free mind.
A free mind requires self-knowledge.
That is why those who lack self-knowledge often seem lost or feel closed off.
Relationships flourish when you are self-knowledgable
Being unaware of your own biases can be a curse in relationships. You continue to react negatively with little understanding of why and this will often hurt those around you and in turn, yourself.
If you don’t understand yourself, it is unlikely someone else will and it is unreasonable to expect them to.
On the flip side, if you are self-knowledgeable, you are much easier to approach and talk to openly without judgment. You will know your boundaries and can express yourself clearly.
People can rely on your opinion and advice knowing that it comes from a true place.
Those who are self-knowledgeable are also much more accountable. They take responsibility for their mistakes because they can easily admit when they make a mistake in the first place.
Ultimately, the more you know about yourself, and the better you understand yourself, the more you will contribute to a relationship.
Being able to see the truth
Throughout your life, if everything you experience is with filters that you have unknowingly created and have little understanding of, you will not see things truthfully.
Self-knowledge frees your mind and a free mind sees the truth.
To understand the world, you must first understand yourself. Without understanding yourself, you will not see the biases you place on the world.
Think of how many times you saw or heard something that upset you - only to later realize that it should not have.
Your present experience is determined by your interpretations of your past experiences. To lack an understanding of how that affects you today will result in you living in an illusion.
This illusion is a lie that you need to break free of.
Conclusion
Regardless of what area of life you are focusing on, building your self-knowledge will greatly benefit it.
You are the only person you have to live with from the beginning until the end. Building your self-knowledge will make this experience much more enjoyable.
As your self-knowledge grows, you will notice that you’re able to move through life with ease.
Thanks for reading.