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    • What if what you observe is not pleasant?

    • Your Work: How to Practice Self Observation

      Co-authored by Klare Heston, LICSW

       

      You might have a range of goals in mind when setting out to observe yourself. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to go about it. Get in touch with your authentic self through meditation and self-reflection. Keep a journal to learn more about how you interact with the world and how those interactions shape who you are. Learn a new ability or improve your job performance by observing yourself on video. Whether you’re practicing meditation, keeping a journal, or watching video recordings, remember to focus on progress. If you observe something you want to change, think about how you can improve instead of just focusing on a flaw.

      Method 1 - Becoming Self Aware

      1. SELFOBSE.05 - Consider who you’ve become and what defines you. Over the course of our lives, we go acquire deeper levels of psychological awareness. During adolescence, we form our identities and our self-image becomes more robust. Spend time reflecting on what you’ve become, what values you hold most dear, and what your defining traits are.
        • Ask yourself, “What sets me apart from others? What characteristics make up my essence? What are some key life experiences that have made me who I am?”
        • Examples of traits and values could include humor, honesty, or loyalty. A skill like singing or an athletic ability could be an important part of who you are.
        • Remember to be open to more than just positive attributes. When you’re reflecting on who you are, be open to things about yourself that might not be the best qualities. For example, you might ask yourself, “How is my laziness or temper a part of me? How do these attributes fit into my overall being, and what do I desire to change about myself?”

      2.  

        SELFOBSE.06 - Reflect on the differences between your ideal self and actual self. Think about how you represent yourself to others, especially as you consider the attributes that make you proud and those you’d like to change.
        • Ask yourself, “What are the differences between how I represent myself to others and how I perceive myself? Do I let others define me too much? How can I integrate, or unify, the ideal self that I show others and the actual self I try to keep to myself?”
        • Look for the differences by questioning how you think about yourself versus how you act in person. For example, "Do I tend to present myself as flawed by constantly joking about my awkwardness or how I look?" or "Do I mislead people about what I do in my free time because I'm embarrassed about my real life?"

      3.  

        SELFOBSE.07 - Keep a journal to track your journey of self-awareness. Psychologists agree that self-awareness is a dynamic, changing process. We shift between degrees of self-awareness, self-deception, and everything in between. [1] Try keeping a daily journal and write a daily self-reflection to keep a record of your journey.
        • Write down a few details about your day, how you interacted with others, and recall your reactions and feelings about the day’s various happenings. You might write, for example, "Today I ran into James and we ended up having a disagreement. He said something that I thought was an underhanded way of insulting me, so I called him on it immediately. It escalated, and we ended the conversation on really bad terms."
        • Choose a regular time, whether every couple weeks or once a month, to read your past entries. You might read back an entry and think or write in response, "After a couple weeks' distance, I've realized that James probably wasn't trying to offend me. Reading my entry back, I realize I probably jumped to conclusions. Observing this conversation with a little distance has given me the motivation to try to smooth things over with James."
        • Try not to feel embarrassment or self-judgment when you read things you wrote, but try to be open to learning about yourself. Observe yourself taking shape with each experience. Open yourself up to being aware of how you react to various situations, how your feelings respond to interactions, and how those responses in turn shape you into the person you are.

      Method 2 - Observing Yourself Through Meditation

      1. SELFOBSE.08 - Prepare to meditate. Find a quiet place to meditate that’s free of noise and other distractions. Designate a time that you can dedicate to meditation without thinking of other tasks or necessities.
        • Sit comfortably on a cushion or chair. Play soothing music or white noise sounds if it helps you free your mind. Close your eyes or leave them open, depending on whichever better helps you focus.
        • Control your breathing by counting to four as you breath inward, holding for a count of two, then counting to four again as you exhale.

      2.  

        SELFOBSE.09 - Ponder your blind spots. As you put yourself in a meditative state, try to open your mind to objectively consider your blind spots. Visualize your actions and thoughts as if you were a detached observer. Open yourself to self truths you might be keeping yourself from discovering.[2]
        • Ask yourself, “Do I have any unrealistic expectations of myself, or of my thoughts and actions?” As you breath, visualize your self-expectations melted away with each breath.
        • As each layer of expectations melt away, imagine the self truths left behind with each passing layer of your self-representations. Ask, “What thoughts, values, and experiences are left behind as I peel away the various ways that I show myself to the world?”

      3.  

        SELFOBSE.10 - Become your own inner witness. Focus on an individual thought, emotion, or action. Try letting your mind wander, and as your mind generates random thoughts, follow them rather than react to them. Observe your own stream of consciousness as if you were an outsider looking within your mind, then guide yourself back to your silent meditation.[3]
        • Ask, “What is this thought or series of thoughts, and why does my mind conjure it? What does it mean that my mind drifts into this stream of consciousness?"

      4.  

        SELFOBSE.11 - Consider using a guided meditation app. You might think you need to switch off your mobile device in order to meditate. However, there are several excellent mobile meditation apps available for both Android and iOS that can help guide you to a peaceful, reflective state.[4]
        • The Mindfulness App, Headspace, and Calm are easy to use and have free services with additional options for per track purchases or monthly subscriptions.
        • The app Smiling Mind is completely free and offers tracks divided by age group, making it a great option for children, teens, and adults.
        • If you want to avoid using your mobile device or don't have one, you can also search Youtube for guided meditations that encourage mindfulness and self-reflection.

      Method 3 - Observing Yourself in Action

      1. SELFOBSE.12 - Use self observation to learn new skills. There's evidence that observing yourself on video as you learn a new motor skill provides motivation, better execution of the skill, and helps you remember how to do the skill. Further, self observation using video benefits both children and adults. [5]
        • Consider using a cell phone or other video recorder to observe yourself. It can help you have an easier time learning a new routine in dance class, footwork for a sport, or other physical act of coordination.

      2.  

        SELFOBSE.13 - Record yourself doing your job. In addition to learning new activities, you can use self observation to improve your job performance. For example, it's been shown that observing video of themselves at work had positive effects on teachers' professional development.[6]
        • Similarly, evidence suggests that video recording helps nurses and student nurses master clinical skills and improve patient interactions.[7]
        • Filming yourself works by taking you out of the situation and letting you observe. You'll be able to notice more as an observer, which can help you overcome the tendency to self-criticize.
        • Since cell phones and computers with built-in webcams have made video recording so universal, you can easily apply these findings to your own life. Record yourself doing your job to promote your own professional development. If you have to make a speech or presentation, record yourself and look for parts of your public speaking performance that need a little work.

      3.  

        SELFOBSE.14 - Focus on progress when practicing self observation. Successes and failures are central to self observation, whether you’re practicing meditation, keeping a journal, or recording yourself giving a presentation. Cognitive behaviorists and psychologists agree that focusing on accomplishments when observing or monitoring yourself generates more accomplishments.
        • In other words, recognizing your progress motivates you to keep succeeding. Emphasizing failures decreases motivation and lowers the chances of future progress.
        • Stay positive when practicing self observation and focus on how you can improve yourself instead of things you don’t like! When observing your own flaws and failures, look for potential causes and changes you can make instead of just getting discouraged.
        • For example, you might read a past journal entry and think, “Gosh, I really overreacted and lost my temper for no reason,” or you might have noticed in a video recording that you kept missing a step in a dance routine. Try not to focus on what you did wrong, but think of ways you can improve your temper or nail that dance step.

    • Self Will and Self Observation

      What do you notice that has been going on in there for all these years?

      What have you sorted out and taken radical responsibility for thus far?

      Self-will is the thing that actually decides what you think, feel, do, and say, or decides not to do or say.

       

      What is funny about this is that self-will can relocate itself from one Point Of Origin to a completely different Point Of Origin in your psychological interface construct, your Box.

       

      Your Point Of Origin dictates what you are, for this moment, taking to be true, real, solid, important, and actual. Each Point Of Origin is the context for your orientation towards yourself and the circumstances around you.

       

      What this means is that from one second to the next, a human being can say, feel, think, or do completely contradictory things depending on the Point Of Origin you stand in.

       

      Perhaps you have observed sudden crazy perspective jumps or shifts in others?

       

      Guess who else does makes these jumps and does not even know you are doing it?

       

      Persistent Self Observation gradually builds a data-bank in you of neutral clues that help you to experientially distinguish and classify your various contradictory behavior patterns.

       

      The practice at first is to build your data-bank of Self Observations. It does not matter that your Self Observations might completely exclude or contradict each other. You are not one. You are many. You are a Zoo.

       

      After a while start looking into each databank file. This is the equivalent of peering into one of the compounds or cages in your Zoo. Eventually, as your neutral multi-dimensional descriptions accrue, you will be able to peer into a cage and give that character, or creature, a name ('creature' is the term Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly applied to the monster Dr. Frankenstein brought to life in his laboratory, as you have brought each of your Zoo characters to life...). Soon each of the inhabitants of your inner Zoo will have a distinct and appropriate name that matches its dietary preferences, it reaction patterns, or its unconscious motivations.

       

      Then apply Self Inquiry. This is when the show gets more interesting. This is when your decision about which Point Of Origin you will stand in shifts from being unconscious to being conscious.

       

      Independent Self Inquiry - or accompanied Self Inquiry (such as an emotional healing chairwork process during a Possibility Coaching session or a Possibility Lab) - allows you to follow each Self Will impulse from each of your creatures back to its source to find out what is really going on.

       

      In order to track impulses to their source, the time between the impulse and your actions needs to be slowed down very much so that you can observe the connection. It does not take much to learn how to slow reactions down enough to track them. This is an especially valuable skill that goes along with Phase 1 of Feelings Work: learning how to feel.

       

      The source of each of your various Points Of Origin is an important discovery and can completely change your relationship to yourself, to the world of others, and to what is possible for you.

       

      For example, an entire set of behaviors - an entire personality character of one of the creatures in your Zoo, your Box - can originate in:

      • an old decision
      • a splintered off piece of your energetic body body
      • a strategic move to disempower yourself
      • an energetic block
      • a false assumption
      • a vow made to yourself or to others
      • an interpretation of what you think something means
      • a resentment, etc,

      Each source point that you discover gives you the key (the weapon, the alchemical catalyst, the expanded perspective...) to heal the wound... to kill off (through bringing the structure into a transformational Phoenix Process) the neurotic Point Of Origin Place (...POOP).

       

      In the Gurdjieff practices, the intention is to eventually experience a 'single I' as in a single identity.

       

      In a small NOW, small HERE, and a small YOU, in the Adult Ego State, where you have your Center, Grounding Cord, and Bubble,

       

      The word 'Ego' includes your entire Box structure with its collection of zoo of creatures, each with their unique purpose, food requirements, and survival strategies.

       

      An 'Ego State' (such as Parent, Child, Gremlin, Adult, Archetypal, or Demon Ego State) would indicate one category of possible creature identities.

    • Experiments

      If I am observing myself, who is observing? And what is the 'self' being observed?

      Who knows who is observing?

      In other words, who or what observes the observer?

      And what then? How is this going to help me?

      SELFOBSE.01 - Do Not Change Anything.

      Through asking yourself questions and through requesting feedback from your friends, you may get views of yourself that don’t match your long-held or most preferred self-image. The discrepancy between the way you imagine yourself to be and the way you are perceived by others could be vast. The shock of realizing this may be equally disconcerting, and may propel you toward wanting to take immediate actions to rectify the situation.

       

      The invitation is to try not to change anything. Don’t even try to change your knee-jerk reactions about making the pain go away. Just observe the whole thing.
      Trying not to move is like playing the game of Freeze! If you don’t previously agree to freeze when the captain of the game shouts “Freeze!”, then your first reaction to hearing them yell “Freeze!” is to move!
      In this game of self-observation, hold the intention that no matter what you observe during this observation period, you won’t do anything about it.
      Not doing anything can be an extremely difficult thing to do. Don’t even carry the question around about what you could do. It is far too early for trying to make changes.
      The strategy right now is to not make changes.
      If you don’t know what you are doing to stay numb, how can you be sure if you are doing something different from that? You can’t.

       
      SELFOBSE.02 - Split Your Attention

      Observing yourself requires consciously splitting your attention into two parts. Use half of your attention to do your normal life, and use the other half of your attention to neutrally observe what you are doing. At first you could get a bit dizzy from the simultaneous differing perspectives, but splitting your attention is normal. Remember a time when you were listening to an MP3 player while riding your bicycle, thinking about what to buy at the store, chewing gum, and watching the interesting people on the sidewalk all at the same time. You can already split your attention. The only difference now is you will be splitting your attention consciously.

       

      It helps to imagine that you are living within a box of mechanical behaviors, completely identified with the box’s behaviors as if they were your own true actions because you have no other perspective on your situation. When the box moves, you are moved by the movement. You can’t help it. You are stuck in these mechanical reactions, and may be stuck there for the rest of your life. Perhaps you know someone like this?

       

      Self-observation is like taking a fresh set of eyes in your hand, reaching your hand out beyond the edges of your box, and twisting your hand around so that your new eyes can look back at the box from the outside. By seeing from this perspective, you easily discover that the box is no more than an assembly of mechanical reactions triggered automatically by external stimuli. Keep your arm out there and just watch what happens for a long time.

       

      When you first hold out your hand with the eyes it gets tired within a few moments and you bring it back inside the box again, often without even knowing it. Moments, hours, or even days go by before you wake up with a start and remember what you were trying to do. You see that you are no longer splitting your attention, but you have no memory of stopping. Even at those times do not judge yourself. Or if you do judge yourself, observe the mechanicality of your self-judgment and do not judge that. When you notice your lack of self-observation, simply extend your neutral eyes out beyond the perimeter of your box again and continue observing yourself.

       
      SELFOBSE.03 - Special Attention

      Here are three conditions under which to pay particular attention to observing yourself:

      • When you are laughing.
      • When you are praying, meditating, or sitting
      • When you think nothing is going on. Especially observe yourself when you assume there is nothing special to observe.

      Are you familiar with the term second sight, having insights after the fact? During self-observation try to use first sight so you can observe what is actually happening while it happens. Fist sight is seeing what is as it is rather than seeing what you expect or hope to see.
      Observe with a crystal clear eye. No name-calling, no swear words, no inner vows, no self-flagellations, no justifications, no comments from the peanut gallery. Keep your opinions about your opinions to yourself. Simply notice.
      As soon as you notice that you are not simply noticing, simply go back to noticing. It’s that simple.

       

       
      SELFOBSE.04 - Build Your Attention Muscles

      When you first begin self-observation you may have an attention span of only a few seconds before you get knocked unconscious and fall asleep. Work to build your muscles of attention.
      As your modus numbness becomes more and more apparent it will simultaneously become more predictable. When your own behavior becomes predictable to you it can be seen to be dead. Only then do you gain a new freedom of movement. Your mechanical commitment to staying numb can be avoided without sentimentality, because you will not be killing something that is still regarded as being alive. It will take months of dedicated observation before you get to this point. That is not too long. The months will go by no matter what you are doing. You may as well be building your attention muscles.

       

      Observe yourself for an extended period of time so you can identify repeated patterns and the circumstances that trigger them. An extended period of time means months and months, years actually.

       

      Observe . . .

      • what you say.
      • what you do.
      • what you think.
      • what you feel.
      • your tensions.
      • your intentions.
      • your postures.
      • your impostures.
      • your accomplishments compared to what you promise.
      • your sense of things.
      • your incense about things.
      • what offends you.
      • what offends others about you.
      • what in you gets fed by offending others.
      • ...

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