The Art of Being Happily Married Series

Part 1: The Art of Self Awareness

I’ve often written before that a happy marriage starts with you. I’ve also written about the importance of knowing yourself and of loving yourself and of forgiving yourself and of working on yourself.

But I’ve come up short in terms of teaching you how to do it.

During the next few posts, I’ll attempt to do just that. Most of what you will read in the next few posts are concepts, ideas and techniques that I did not learn from marital improvement books or psychology classes.

No, most of what you are about to read came from my nearly 20 years spent studying (and teaching) yoga. I also absorbed a lot of it during various meditation courses I’ve taken over the years. And some of it, no doubt, stems from what the brilliant life coach Tim Brownson taught me earlier this year as well as from life experience.

In other words: it’s a mishmash, but it’s important. I’m convinced that this series will help you to not only improve your marriage, but also become a stronger, happier person.

Today I’m writing about the Art of Self Awareness—and how developing it can improve not only your marriage, but all of your relationships. In coming posts you’ll learn about a few additional arts:

• The art of self control
• The art of self acceptance
• The art of self leadership

What is Self Awareness?

Self-awareness is one of those yawn-inducing phrases. Seriously, didn’t your eyes glaze over when you saw it? Maybe you even had the thought, “Geez oh man, why can’t she write about something funny today? I’m not in the mood to wade through a post about THIS! Doesn’t she know it’s a Monday?”

Or maybe you had a different thought.

Do you know what you thought was when you saw the phrase “self awareness”? Knowing your reaction to that phrase (and any other phrase) is self awareness.

When you are self aware, you are aware of your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations and you understand them. When you are self aware, you sense how you react to the world around you—and you understand that reaction.

That’s it. It sounds easy enough, but most people are anything but self-aware. This is is probably because we live in a society that teaches us to self soothe by distracting ourselves from our inner world. The constant distraction of email, television, Facebook, Twitter, work, voice mail, idle chatter, and loud music causes many of us to be completely out of touch with our bodies, minds and emotions.

Talk About Being Out of Touch

A few years ago after I went to my internist and told him that I thought I was having a heart attack. I had tingling down one arm, a tight feeling in my chest, and exhaustion.

He did 60 ba-zillion tests. He did an EKG. He did blood work. Oh, I got tested up and down the wazoo.

End result: I was not having a heart attack. I did not have angina, either.

There was nothing wrong with my heart or with the arteries that lead to it.

In fact, my heart was one of the strongest and healthiest hearts my internist had ever listened to through a stethoscope. (I did have a harmless murmur, but this was not causing my symptoms and it was not bad for my health).

Those 60 ba-zillion tests not only ruled out a heart problem, they also ruled out every other health problem I could possibly have. I did not have:

• A nutrient deficiency
• Heavy metal toxicity
• A pinched nerve in my neck
• An autoimmune disorder
• Cancer in my chest cavity (I always worry about these things. I am a health writer after all. Whenever something hurts, my first thought is always, “It must be cancer.” My doctor has learned to say, “No, it’s not cancer” with a straight face. He’s a saint).

I’m sure it was debatable about whether I suffered from hypochondria, but my doctor didn’t go there.

Instead he said, “I think you have a stress disorder.”

Talk about being completely out of touch with my body.

Are You Out of Touch, Too?

You might be out of touch if you:

1.     Frequently get angry and don’t know why

2.     Dislike various people and don’t know why

3.     Are often sore (headaches, stomach aches, backaches, neck aches) and don’t know why

4.     Feel as if your actions are out of your control. You find yourself doing things on autopilot—lashing out in anger, gulping down second helpings, checking email when you are supposed to be doing something else.

These are all signs that you are not aware of how your thoughts and beliefs affect your emotions and bodily sensations and vice versa.

Why Self Awareness Matters

There are many reasons, but here are just a five.

1.     When you understand yourself, you can more easily understand others.

2.     When you understand yourself, you can more easily and effectively communicate your needs and desires to others.

3.     When you understand yourself, you can more easily understand your negative and at times scary emotions like anger, rage, hopelessness, irritability, and shame—and you will more easily find ways to do something about them.

4.     When you understand yourself, you’ll be better able to solve problems in your marriage because you will better understand the role you play in those problems.

5.     When you understand yourself, you find it easier to practice the arts of self-acceptance, self-control and self-leadership (parts 2, 3 and 4 of this series).

How to Know Your Self

After my good doctor told me I had a stress disorder, he told me about this hospital sponsored stress reduction course—taught by a psychologist—that my insurance would cover.

I signed up. That’s where I learned about mindfulness meditation.

A few weeks later, I no longer had tingling down my arm. My chest did not feel tight. And I had energy. Oh, did I have energy.

Most important, I was more aware of me.

It was after taking this course that I became ever so aware of the need to work on my marriage.

If you are not a lotus-sitting, Om-chanting type, mindfulness meditation is a lot easier than it sounds. You can do it while you are walking, while you are dish washing, and even while you are eating. You can do it anywhere at any time.

To do it, you want bring your attention inside of yourself and to three aspects of your inner world:

1.     Your thoughts (“I can’t believe how long this post is. I can’t believe she thinks I’m really going to do this. Alisa just isn’t on today as she usually is. What’s wrong with her?”)

2.     Your feelings (sad, stressed, frustrated, pissed off, blessed out, and so on)

3.     Your sensations (tightness, heaviness, lightness, pain, soreness, and so on)

Go ahead and try it now. Pay attention to your thoughts. What thoughts are running through your mind? Then pay attention to your feelings. How do you feel? Then mentally scan your body. How do your head, neck, shoulders, chest, arms, torso and legs feel?

It doesn’t matter what you learn about yourself. For instance, let’s say you learn that you are a pissed off, aching mess with a lot of disjointed thoughts in your head. Great! You tuned in and you know what’s going on. That’s a start!

The Art of Self Awareness takes practice. Practice being mindful at least once a day. To help yourself to remember to practice, try to link your mindfulness practice to something you do every day. For instance, if you make coffee in the morning, let the sound of the coffee brewing become your cue to be mindful for 5 to 10 minutes.

The more you practice, the more in touch you will become. As you gain a deeper understanding of yourself, you will be able to drop into a mindful state as needed. For instance, when I’m out socially and I feel myself tensing up, I’ll drop into a state of mindfulness for a couple seconds. Usually, I’ll realize that someone just said something that made me scared or uncomfortable. Or I might realize that the person I’m talking to is trying to talk me into doing something that I don’t want to do. Or I might realize that I’m over stimulated or that I’m tired and that I’m annoyed that my husband can’t magically sense this fact through ESP powers that he does not possess.

The more often you check in with yourself, you might uncover—as I have—some very hidden sources of your marital angst. And once you do, you’ll be able to do something about it all.

And that’s a good thing.

Tagged as: meditation