I find it interesting that the more work we do on ourselves the more work is required. For example, take the concept of self awareness and what implications it has once achieved. Once you begin to see how you behave, reasons for behaving a certain way, and how you might behave in the future it can become challenging to dismiss that perspective in our daily lives.
This alludes to the popular adage “ignorance is bliss” precisely because it is more difficult to work with and process new sets of information especially as they relate to ourselves. It’s much easier to not indulge in psychoanalytical analysis (independently or with help of a mental health professional) and stay pleasantly distracted with sports, social media, gossip, drinking, etc. I’m guilty of entertaining all of those distractions to some degree throughout my life, but the relatively new awareness component makes them much harder to stomach these days.
This is because once the proverbial awareness light switch is turned on it cannot be turned off. It’s like having your own private detective whose working pro bono. He/she patiently follows you around and takes copious notes on your behavior and posits theories and speculations surrounding your motives. This is all on their schedule of course, so big discoveries are revealed at their discretion and convenience.
As absurd as that sounds, I have faith that this is a better path to take than avoiding such introspection. I can only imagine the fleeting moments of angst when distractions either no longer work or are not available for people who rely on them. I still experience moments of angst, but I believe that they are temporary learning cues on my path to self discovery. I rather have a concentrated high voltage experience for a couple of years than mild jolting at sporadic moments for a lifetime, since the latter is what you get if you ignore self-work and survive on distractions.
Just my thoughts on self-work…
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