How To Practice Self-Awareness In A Small World

People say that it’s a small world, and this is true. Knowing this is critical for practicing good self-awareness.

Some people define self-awareness as recognizing yourself in the mirror. But everybody recognizes themselves in the mirror. Self-awareness is, in fact, actually defined more closely with considerateness.

Self-aware people will take everybody in the world into account before every action. Sure, it’s tempting at times to do whatever you want, whenever you want. For some people, this is somewhat of a dream. But the world couldn’t work this way.

It’s a tough argument to make for selfish people. I could write about how saying whatever you want might hurt people’s feelings, and selfish people might respond by saying that it’s on these people to not let their feelings get hurt. They might say that people should accept them for whomever they are.

Likely, these people have never worked. They’ll say, I don’t plan to work. Well I’m going to continue here anyway. Instead of discussing workplace responsibility, delegation of tasks, and accountability, let’s take an unexpected turn. Workplace gossip.

Within your first week of working at a new job, you’ll likely hear at least one story about a former employee. It might be positive, it might be negative, it might be both. But you heard the story. At your first job, this is usually when self-awareness really starts to kick in, if it hasn’t already.

Sure, all people, even selfish people, are aware that people talk about them. Maybe growing up you heard your mom call the relatives to tell them that you were going to be in the school play. Or that you got suspended from school. Either way, you got talked about. But that’s not workplace gossip. In family talk, there is a feeling that persists, among both selfish and unselfish people, that we are family. We accept everybody. 

In the workplace, we accept people too in a way, because we are all human. But maybe less so. There are expectations. And, once you get used to workplace expectations, you start to realize that everybody in the world, even people who love you unconditionally, do actually have expectations of you as well, whether they voice them or not. Maybe they’re being too polite to tell you their expectations. Maybe they don’t know how to articulate their expectations. Maybe they even seem to have no expectations of you at all. But they do have expectations.

After you’ve gotten your first paycheck, you might feel free to spend it on whatever you want. After you’ve gotten back to work on Monday, however, your coworkers and boss seem to wonder why you didn’t spend your first paycheck at least partially on some new work clothes.

Once you get into the hang of working, what you spend those paychecks on really feels a lot better if it’s workplace approved. More work clothes, yes. What about some stuff to unwind after work, like essential oils to put in the bath? Check. 

Soon, when you’re buying an outfit for Thanksgiving, it’s not only something you could also wear at least half of to work, but also, you’re thinking about nanna. What would nanna love to see me in, you might wonder. Also, I don’t want to dress as revealingly as my teenage cousins might. I want to show my mom how mature I am and wear something she might have worn when she was my age.

It’s good to keep everybody in mind, because for everything we do, it’s possible somebody could find out. That’s not paranoid. It’s just true. Emails certainly get hacked. A volunteer at work had worked at my grandfather’s workplace, information I volunteered, and had no idea, and have no idea, if I should have mentioned. But people used to say that it’s written all over your face. Maybe it is.

The hardest part of self-awareness might be romantic relationships. You might feel like work didn’t prepare you for this part. But if you mess anything up, they will definitely be talking about you. 

For instance, let’s say you’ve been in a relationship for two years, where you live together, you’ve both said the “I love you”, but neither has said the “I’m in love with you” part. Next, another guy comes along and says that he’s in love with you and he thinks that you’re in love with him as well. If you’ve ever been in love with anybody, you know that these feelings can be 10,000 times stronger than an I love you relationship. How do you cope?

You might be able to switch guys in a self-aware way, especially if you don’t cheat, of course. But in comes classiness. Once you do something hopelessly unclassy, nobody will respect you for the rest of your life. You’ll live in guilt and shame. Will the in love with you part end up still coming out ahead?

It’s good to understand love well, because in this situation, the most self-aware thing you could potentially do might be to write off the new guy, tell your current boyfriend about the slimeball, and move forward with this original guy together, stronger. If this new guy really were in love with you, he would respect your happiness in the first relationship. The I love you relationship grows over time to approach or surpass being in love with somebody. It’s a small world, so instead of being the slimeball’s girlfriend, be the slimeball’s victor.