Self-Awareness: The Gateway to Your Higher Self

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “That’s just the way I am”? Perhaps it was after snapping at someone you love, or turning down something you secretly wanted, or lying awake, replaying a conversation for the hundredth time.

I was handing a file to a new colleague when she paused and said, “Oh, do you bite your nails?” I pulled my hands away. “I know, it’s a bad habit. I keep trying to stop. That’s just the way I am.”

My three older sisters left home long before I was old enough to care about nails, make-up, hairstyles, or any of the things my own daughters are so accomplished at. When I reached that stage, there was nobody to notice. No one remarked on my nails, my hair, or whether I took any care of myself at all.

It never occurred to me that I was something to be taken care of. I did not decide I wasn’t worth the trouble. The thought didn’t exist.

It was not until I had daughters and found myself wanting something different for them that I saw any of it.

The ego rarely announces itself. It disguises itself as our personality, our opinions and our emotional reactions, and it speaks in familiar phrases: This is just the way I am. People like me don’t… I’ve always been like this. Most of us have a favourite.

But what if the things we call “just the way I am” are not who we are at all?

The Belief I Mistook for Being Realistic

For years, I carried a nagging sense that I wasn’t quite good enough. I came from a working-class village in the North East of England. We were poor. We had the basics, but money was reserved for essentials. Nobody ever told me I would or would not succeed. I grew up believing certain opportunities were not for people like me. Staying on into the sixth form, going to university and building a career were things other people did. I did not spend time wishing I could do them. It never occurred to me that they were possibilities for me.

Looking back, that is what I find most sobering. I did not question the belief because I did not recognise it as such. I thought I was being realistic. At times, I even told myself I was being modest. It was not until my late thirties that I raised my expectations enough to want those things for myself.

I have understood these beliefs intellectually for years, but understanding them has not made them disappear. My nervous system can still react as though some of those old beliefs are true. At times, that familiar sense of not being quite good enough still surfaces. The difference now is that I can recognise it for what it is. I do not have to accept it as the truth about me, and I do not have to let it decide what I do.

Not every pattern is as difficult to change. Earlier in this series, I wrote about the anxiety I carried until my early thirties and the small library book that helped me see it differently. I didn’t change who I was. I understood what was happening. Something I had always assumed was part of me turned out to be something I had learned.

That experience helped me understand why Self-Awareness matters so much. We cannot question a belief we do not know we hold. But once we begin to recognise the beliefs shaping our lives, we can decide whether they still help us.

What Self-Awareness Is For

Self-Awareness usually means understanding your personality, recognising your strengths and weaknesses and becoming more emotionally intelligent. All of those are valuable. In this series, I use it more narrowly. The aim is to identify what has been getting in the way of who we already are.

As children, we absorb beliefs, emotional habits, coping strategies and ways of interpreting the world, almost none of it consciously. These become so familiar that we think they are who we are. The work is to recognise these patterns so we can choose whether to keep living by them.

In practice, Self-Awareness is the ability to observe our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, behaviours and identities without immediately taking them to be who we are. It is learning to step back and ask:

• Is this thought really true?
• Where did this belief come from?
• Is this reaction coming from fear or from wisdom?
• Am I responding from my Higher Self or from my ego?

When we observe ourselves, we create a pause between what happens and how we respond, and that pause gives us a choice. The fearful part of our thinking reacts immediately. The wiser part takes a moment and then responds. Self-Awareness lets us notice which of the two is speaking while there is still time to decide.

Using Psychology to See Our Conditioning Without Blame

The more unconscious these programmes remain, the more power they have over us. Once we can see them, we can choose whether to follow them.

This is where tools can help. Psychology, Transactional Analysis, attachment theory and other approaches can reveal what has been operating outside our awareness. Used badly, they label us and keep us stuck. Used well, each one shows us more of the conditioning that stands between the identity we have built and our true nature.

Seeing these patterns clearly doesn’t mean blaming ourselves for the choices we made when we couldn’t see them, or blaming the people and circumstances that helped shape them. We look so we can see what has been driving us and make better choices from now on.

Recently, I felt a deep sadness and wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from. I eventually realised I was grieving the person I might have been had I not developed some of those limiting beliefs. There was no blame or judgement, just sadness for the ways they had seemingly held me back. Then another thought came in: without those experiences, I would not have been able to write this series.

This is why Self-Awareness is the gateway. We don’t become our Higher Self. We remove what stops it from showing up. Beneath our patterns, we are more than our personality, our past or our reactions. We are the awareness that can observe them, and that is where we find the Higher Self.

“We don’t become our Higher Self. We remove what stops it from showing up.”

As you become more self-aware, you will discover why you react the way you do, and that’s where we are going next.

Continue Exploring

Living From Your Higher Self is a journey of understanding and practice. These ten articles are designed to be read in any order, but together they provide a complete framework for living with greater peace, purpose and self-awareness.

Articles in Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness: The Gateway to Your Higher Self

1. Why You React the Way You Do
2. How Beliefs Shape Your Experience
3. The Only Thing You Have to Do Is Be Willing
4. Turning From Experience To Observation
5. From Observing to Choosing

Enjoyed This? . This Essential Guide brings the whole framework together in one place, free to download.