Awareness Has Consequences

Sometimes the hardest part of getting to know yourself is not discovering something you didn’t know before. It is the moment when you can no longer explain your own decisions to yourself as convincingly as you once did.

When you begin to understand yourself better, you may expect your life to become simpler as a result. You will make better decisions, avoid old mistakes and stop getting entangled in situations that cause you pain. After all, it is hard not to see the benefits of knowledge that helps you recognise why you behave in a particular way.

And yet sometimes you find that the more you know about yourself, the harder it becomes to live as you did before.

Not because your life has suddenly changed. Perhaps you still do the same work, remain in the same relationships and make similar decisions. Something has changed, however, in the way you understand your own behaviour.

Once, you could say you agreed to something because you had no choice. Today, you see that perhaps there was a choice, but its consequences seemed too difficult. You could have said no, but you were afraid of disappointing someone. You could have said what you thought, but you didn’t want to risk conflict. You could have tried something new, but you preferred to stay with what was familiar.

This discovery will not necessarily make you act differently next time. But it will be harder to tell yourself the same story about having no choice.

And this is the aspect of awareness I find particularly interesting. It does not only help us see possibilities we couldn’t see before. Sometimes it also takes away the explanations that allowed us not to think about our own part in what happens in our lives.

Of course, this does not mean that you always have a choice or that every circumstance depends on you. Our options can be limited by finances, health, commitments, dependence on other people or simply a lack of available solutions. It is easy to talk about freedom of choice when you don’t have to bear the costs of other people’s decisions.

But there are also situations in which you have more options than you are ready to admit. And you don’t always want to see that.

Consider how often the phrase “I have to” comes up in everyday conversations.

I have to answer the phone, even though I’m tired. I have to go to the family gathering, even though I would rather stay at home. I have to finish something for a colleague, because otherwise the task won’t be done properly.

Sometimes we really do have to. Life also consists of responsibilities we don’t choose afresh every morning. But sometimes something more complex lies behind our “I have to”.

We don’t want someone to think we are rude. We don’t feel like listening to complaints. We don’t want things to turn out differently from how we planned.

And then it turns out that it is not so much that we have no choice as that we don’t want to bear the cost of one of the available options.

It is a rather uncomfortable distinction. Because if you truly have no choice, what remains is mainly to cope with the situation. But if a choice exists, the question arises: why are you choosing this particular solution?

And the answer is not always especially flattering.

You may discover that someone’s approval matters to you more than you would like to admit. Or that you would rather complain about having too much to do than allow for the possibility that someone else might do it differently. Perhaps you have been putting off a decision for years because making it would mean giving up a comfortable idea of yourself.

These are not discoveries that necessarily lift your spirits. What’s more, you may even miss the days when everything seemed simpler. When circumstances, other people or plain bad luck were to blame.

You didn’t have to ask yourself so many questions then.

Imagine that you have worked for several years in a place you increasingly want to leave.

You don’t like the way it is managed, you feel undervalued and your tasks no longer bring you satisfaction. More and more often, you come home tired and tell those close to you how fed up you are.

When someone asks why you don’t look for another job, you reply that it isn’t that simple. You have commitments, you need stability and the job market offers no guarantees.

And all of that may be true.

But one day you begin to notice something else.

Perhaps your current job, for all its faults, also gives you a sense of security. You know the people, the rules and the expectations. You know what you are good at. Even if you don’t feel appreciated, you have already established your position.

Change would mean entering a situation in which, for a while, you might not know whether you could manage. Perhaps you would have to learn new things, accept lower pay or face the possibility of rejection during recruitment.

Or perhaps there is something even harder.

For a long time, you have been thinking about doing something completely different. You tell yourself that if circumstances were more favourable, you could finally try.

But as long as you don’t try, you can keep believing you would be wonderful at it.

Taking action would mean testing that belief against reality, which, as we know, is not always as enthusiastic as our imagination.

And perhaps that is also what your current situation protects you from.

This does not mean you should hand in your notice immediately. Perhaps staying in this job is the most sensible decision today. Financial stability is hardly a trivial reason, and not every longing for change has to lead straight to a professional revolution.

But if you begin to notice your own attachment to what is familiar as well, the story about being unable to change anything becomes less clear-cut.

You can still stay. Only now you know a little more about the reasons for your decision.

I wonder whether one reason we are so eager to find new ways of understanding ourselves is the hope that knowledge will allow us to avoid difficult decisions.

If you understand why you are afraid of conflict, perhaps you will stop fearing it. If you discover where your guilt comes from, perhaps it will disappear. If you recognise the mechanism that makes you put important things off, you will finally start taking action.

Sometimes that really does happen. Understanding alone can bring relief and open up possibilities that once seemed out of reach.

But you can also understand perfectly well why saying no is difficult for you and still feel anxious when you have to do it. You can know that a particular decision matters to you and still avoid it for a long time.

Knowledge does not automatically remove the price that must be paid for change. Sometimes it only lets you see it more clearly.

And here a certain temptation arises.

Since you already understand why you behave in a particular way, you may decide that you have more or less done everything there was to do. After all, you know the source of your fear. You can explain your reactions, identify the experiences that shaped them and describe the mechanisms that are triggered in difficult situations.

All of that may be true and an important part of getting to know yourself. But does explaining the causes of a behaviour mean that its consequences no longer matter?

Imagine that, in moments of tension, you withdraw from contact. You stop answering questions, avoid conversation and sometimes keep your distance for several days. Over time, you begin to understand that this is how you protect yourself from emotions you find difficult to cope with.

This discovery may help you look at your reactions with greater understanding, perhaps with less shame as well.

But the other person is still left without an answer. They may still feel rejected or not know what actually happened.

Understanding your own fear does not make the effects of your behaviour cease to exist.

Causes matter. Without understanding them, it can sometimes be hard to change anything. But an explanation is not the same as an excuse.

I think this distinction can be particularly difficult when you have judged yourself harshly for a long time. Discovering that your behaviour had reasons behind it can bring enormous relief. At last, you don’t have to consider yourself bad, weak or not good enough.

And that is a very good thing.

But you don’t have to choose between blaming yourself and absolving yourself of responsibility. You can understand why you do something and, at the same time, look at the impact it has on your life and on other people.

There is another aspect of awareness that I think is worth considering.

For years, you may have thought of yourself as honest, independent, brave or someone who particularly values closeness. Such beliefs become part of your self-image. You know what matters to you and can talk about it.

It is only in concrete situations that you discover what happens to those values when they begin to ask something of you.

Honesty seems a relatively simple value until telling the truth risks losing someone’s affection. The same is true of independence, until it requires giving up the approval of people whose opinion matters to us. We can also long deeply for closeness while avoiding conversations in which we would have to reveal something less comfortable than our usual image of ourselves.

Does this mean our values are false?

Not necessarily. Perhaps we are only beginning to discover what they really cost us.

After all, it is relatively easy to agree with our own convictions when nothing threatens them. It is harder when we discover that we cannot keep everything at once.

You want to be liked and speak openly about what you think. You want more freedom and not to disappoint anyone’s expectations. You want to change your life but not lose your sense of security.

Sometimes you spend a long time trying to find a solution that will let you avoid these tensions. You will work on yourself a little more. Understand your emotions even better. Read one more book, have one more conversation, find the right moment.

And perhaps you really do need more time to reflect. But sometimes you are waiting for the moment when a decision no longer costs anything.

And that moment may never come.

I wouldn’t want these reflections to suggest, however, that the more you know about yourself, the more reason you have to hold yourself to account for every action.

It would be easy to turn awareness into yet another list of demands. Since you already recognise your mechanisms, you should always act differently. Since you know what you need, you should know how to take care of it. Since you understand where your fear comes from, you should not let it continue to influence your decisions.

That sounds like a rather exhausting way to live.

Especially since what you know about yourself today may lead you to judge past choices harshly.

“I should have known.”

But how, exactly?

Perhaps you didn’t have the experience then that would have helped you recognise the situation. Perhaps you trusted someone who seemed trustworthy. Or perhaps you simply made a decision that looked sensible at the time, even though it later brought disappointment.

Your awareness today does not give you the right to demand knowledge from an earlier version of yourself that she did not yet have.

It may, however, help you look differently at what remains possible now.

It won’t always be a major change. Sometimes it is enough to admit that you didn’t keep your word. To apologise without adding a lengthy explanation. To tell someone you need time instead of disappearing without contact. Or to stop promising something you have had no intention of doing for a long time.

These are quite ordinary situations. And yet it is precisely in them that self-knowledge can begin to take on practical meaning.

Not because you must always behave properly from now on. Rather because you have the opportunity to notice the difference between what you say and what you actually do. And you can decide whether you want to do something about that difference.

There is something moving in the thought that self-knowledge does not have to lead to change immediately, and yet it may already be changing the way you experience your own life.

Once you notice a particular mechanism, you cannot always completely stop seeing it. You may continue making similar decisions, but it will become harder and harder not to notice your own motives. You may return to old behaviours, but not necessarily with the same conviction that there is no other way.

Sometimes this brings relief. Sometimes sadness, anger or regret for possibilities you didn’t see before. There may also be fear of what this new knowledge could ask of you.

And I don’t think you have to get rid of those feelings too quickly.

You can give yourself time to understand what you have discovered without turning every insight into another task to complete.

But perhaps it is also worth looking at what happens when understanding itself begins to take the place of choosing.

After all, you may know very well why you remain in a particular situation. Understand your fears, know the available options and foresee the consequences of different decisions.

And still decide not to change anything.

This does not have to mean failure or a lack of courage. Perhaps stability matters more to you than change right now. Perhaps you don’t want to risk what you already have. Or perhaps you simply aren’t ready.

What interests me, though, is the difference between staying in a situation because you see no other way out and staying with the awareness that other ways out exist, but you are not choosing them for now.

From the outside, your life may look exactly the same.

You still work in the same place. You still attend the same family gatherings. You still put off a particular conversation.

But the story you tell yourself about your own life is no longer identical.

Perhaps, then, the most uncomfortable consequence of awareness is not the need for immediate change.

Perhaps it is the willingness to admit that sometimes - already knowing your reasons, fears and possibilities - you still choose what is familiar. And that this choice, too, is part of the truth about you.