Stubbornly Focused

Self-awareness is looking at oneself with an objective perspective with the subjective in mind.  To properly identify one’s motives, desires, and feelings, an individual must take into account both the truth and his or her own thoughts about themselves.  It takes a certain mental effort to view oneself from a third-person perspective, and the individual must be ready to criticize him or herself.  People cannot know themselves if all they know is what they think of themselves.  To know oneself is to know more than just experiences but to reflect and analyze.

The knowledge of self applies to many different situations.  For one, it can increase the success of relationships one has with others as one will know how to conduct his or herself in a favorable manner.  Self-knowledge also allows for self-improvement.  Upon identifying one’s weaknesses and strengths, one can work on developing his or her character to weaken the weaknesses and strengthen the strengths.  Perhaps the most important side effect of obtaining self-knowledge is the relative easiness one can attain happiness compared to before becoming self-aware.  When an individual knows what motivates him or her, he or she can go directly after the motivation instead of going through a trial-and-error-like method to find happiness and achieve his or her goals.

To get to know oneself is not easy; it is a rather difficult task, and the self-knowledge does not come a moment of insight or even the course of a few days.  Years may go by before one can truly know oneself, if ever.  From what I have accrued over the past few years of self-reflection, I have many weaknesses and many strengths.  However, no one weakness is worse than the other, and no one strength is better than the other, and their relative importance varies depending on the situations I am currently, or recently was, in.  In the past few weeks I have noticed my obstinacy more than anything else.  I do recognize and understand the other side to certain situations I face, and I know that an alternate way or method may be better for accomplishing something, but I always think that I can only follow my path and that it will work.

My obstinacy adds to my unfavorable attitude towards change.  Rather than follow a different  path or way of doing something, I see no reason to stray from the system that I have established and that I view as working perfectly fine.  I do not express a desire to eat the foods that I have banned myself from eating as a child: fish, watermelon and other melons, strawberries, anything green and leafy that is not a salad, lamb, and beef.  Fresh fruit is only for consumption within the house and never at school.  I know I will have to alter my system and process of living next year and will not have the luxury to follow my current lifestyle of living, but I will adhere to them as closely as possible because I do not want to change or accept something that originally was not mine.  By refusing to change, I may miss out on some opportunities and pleasures in life, but I have not done anything to combat my weakness because, well, I am obstinate.

Conversely, my ability to focus, or concentrate on one task at a time, may be one of my best qualities.  While it sometimes may lead to “tunnel-vision” or put me in a tunnel-like state of mind in which I only notice one thing, I am very efficient while working or completing anything.  Once I start, I will get anything done, and nothing will distract me while doing it.  When I want to work, I will work, and when I want to be entertained, I will be entertained and nothing else.  While watching Parks and Recreation, I cannot read a book or completing homework assignments.  Some may call it an inability to multi-task (true multi-tasking does not exist anyway), but I think it is a strength, allowing me to fully experience everything going on around me.  When I read, I am so concentrated on the text that I often do not register the sounds that make up name as my mother says them from the other room.

Thinking about oneself requires a kind of out-of-body experience, and external judgements also affect what someone says is his or her weaknesses and strengths.  There is internal judgement, such as whether or not an individual can accept who he or she is, but the external judgement is equally as important in determining strengths and weaknesses because it is what people can see.  No one has to share his or her judgements of themselves, but the reputation and public opinion of a person is readily available and not hidden.  People will always wonder if others will judge them for what they say about themselves and how it adds to or detracts from their reputations.  To create a list of one’s weaknesses and strengths is much easier than admitting that they are one’s own to another individual, and it is especially hard on a public platform like the Internet.

I enjoy the self-reflection bit of this assignment, but I do not enjoy having to share them, as they no longer become private and no longer become just mine.  I am naturally a very private person, and by publishing this blog post, everyone will know something about me, and I am uncomfortable with it.  I also feel uneasy about identifying only one weakness and one strength.   I am a combination of intertwined weaknesses, strengths, and other characteristics, and I want people to know that I am not just stubborn and focused; I am many other things.