03: The Truth About Self-Awareness Most People Miss “Self-Awaress 2.5”

🎧In this episode, we’re slowing down before moving into the topic of ego because self-awareness is too important to rush past.

Many people believe they’re self-aware because they can describe their personality, identify their flaws, or explain their behavior. But self-awareness is much deeper than labeling yourself. True self-awareness requires understanding both your internal world,your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and identity and your external impact on the people around you.

We’ll explore why the mind resists self-awareness, how your brain prioritizes protection over truth, and why feedback often feels threatening instead of helpful. You’ll learn the difference between knowing your patterns and actually taking responsibility for them.

We’ll also discuss blind spots, recurring life patterns, accountability, nervous system protection, and the powerful connection between awareness and transformation.

If you’ve ever wondered why the same problems, conflicts, or frustrations keep showing up in your life, this episode will help you identify what may be hiding in plain sight.

Because real personal growth doesn’t begin with motivation,it begins with honesty.🦋

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to a personal growth podcast. I'm your host, Vanessa Sanchez. Last episode, we talked about self-awareness. And we were supposed to move on and talk about the ego and how that gets in the way of self-awareness and personal growth. But I want to slow it down and reflect a little bit more about self-awareness and not move on to the ego right away. Because self-awareness is not optional if you truly want to go. And I really mean that. So we're calling this episode self-awareness 2.5. Because I would hate for you guys to become deeply introspective and yet socially unaware. Because you cannot change what you refuse to see about yourself. You just, it's not going to happen. And self-awareness without action is just information, not necessarily transformation. And I really want you guys to transform and personally grow in your life. I mean, that's the whole point of my personal growth journey is to give you guys a different take on personal growth and just speak from experience. I really did a lot of reflecting in my life and how I personally grew. So I'm speaking from experience, and I really think this is these are the steps that you take to actually make real change in your life and become a little bit more happier with yourself and the life that you live, regardless of outside circumstances. What I need you guys to understand is our mind is not this truth-seeking system that we might think it is, where we think we're always trying to figure out the truth, and we're not. It's primarily a survival and protection system. It's there to keep us safe, and that's why it's called a comfort zone. It, you know, we create these habits and patterns that we're not necessarily conscious of when we're a child that has worked and you know, shutting down or keeping quiet, or there's just different things that we do that we might not necessarily are aware of, and that has kept us safe and it's worked in the past for so many years, and now it doesn't work anymore when we're trying to be open with our spouses or we're trying to talk to our kids about certain things and we're shutting down like we used to do when we were a child, and that doesn't help anybody. So when we start healing things internally, like our childhood traumas, or just realizing things about ourselves and hearing things from our spouses or coworkers or even our own kids that don't necessarily match the image that we had in our mind of who we think we are, our brain treats that as a threat, not necessarily a reflection. We're not like receiving that data with open arms. We're kind of like defending that like identity of like, that's not what I do, you know, like that's not who I am. But this is a real like thing that happens, and this is why we get defensive or we justify our actions or we overly explain ourselves instead of just making the necessary changes that maybe people are needing from us or asking from us. So self-awareness isn't just a mindset issue, it's also like a nervous system protection issue that we have. So if you skip the step of becoming self-aware, nothing else that I talk about in this podcast is gonna create any real change in your life. And I'm just being honest with you. This is such a crucial step into personal growth. So if you're really listening to me and you truly want to create some change, you kind of have to do some self-reflection and just become a little bit more self-aware of you being in your life, be more reflective of your thoughts and emotions and how you're responding or reacting in in areas where you might be shutting down or pushing people away. And that's all about just being honest with yourself. And when I talk about self-awareness, I need you guys to understand that there are two layers to self-awareness. There's internal self-awareness, which is your thoughts and emotions, and external awareness, which are your behaviors and the impact that it has on others. Internal awareness is what you would consider your identity, and this is where most people stop. Many people think they're self-aware because they're able to label themselves. Like, I know I'm an asshole, I know I could be toxic, I know this or that, and that's not necessarily self-awareness at all. That just means you have identified that about yourself, and you're able to label yourself. And our brain does this thing that we call a self-narrative. It's a story that we built about who we think we are. So in their minds, they could just be like, Well, I'm just an honest person, you know, I'm just misunderstood. But these aren't always truths, they're just protective stories that our brain has to keep our identity safe and stable. Self-awareness starts when we stop treating ourself in our story about like, this is just who I am, like, take it or leave it, and start taking accountability to how it's affecting your life. External awareness is understanding how others are actually experiencing your behavior in real time. How is it affecting your spouse, your kids, your business relationships? And it's not about how you think you come off, it's not about the intentions behind your words, it's about how you're actually received by others. And we can have the best intentions in the world behind our words and our actions, but intent doesn't override the impact it's having on others. An impact is what shapes our entire relationship with people. So true self-awareness is more about understanding the impact you're having on others and less about defending your intent and your actions, taking accountability and responsibility of your actions. And this is why internal and external self-awareness are so necessary, because internal awareness helps us understand our thoughts and emotions and intentions, but external awareness reveals how those internal states actually translate into our relationships and how we're able to communicate in our everyday lives. When we are able to integrate these two together, internal and external self-awareness, this is where real transformation can happen and personal growth starts. Because it's not about only understanding yourself anymore, it's understanding like these patterns that we've created that we're not aware of and seeing what res what situations we keep repeating, what relationships keep breaking down in our lives, what outcomes keep showing up in different environments. Because at some point, if these patterns keep repeating and keep showing up, you're the only common denominator. And that doesn't mean everything is your fault. There are things in life that we cannot control and we shouldn't try to control. But there's also things that you keep participating in that you don't want to admit you're participating in. From a behavior psychology standpoint, this is where real change can happen. And let me be very clear: being honest with yourself is not about tearing yourself down or beating yourself up about mistakes that you've made in the past. It's about becoming someone that can say, This behavior is no longer working for me anymore, and I'm willing to change it. Accountability and responsibility for our own actions is hard. It's uncomfortable. We don't necessarily want to hear negative things about ourselves. We naturally want to defend ourselves. Like that's not what I meant by that. That's not, you know, what I'm trying to convey to you. But self-awareness isn't difficult because it's complex, it's difficult because it challenges our identity. And what I want you guys to really get from this episode, Self-Awareness 2.5, is awareness alone doesn't create change. And growth does not start with motivation, it starts with honesty. And this is honesty about both your internal world and your external world. This ego, like I said, is gonna come in. It's not just this arrogance, it's actually a protection system for a story that you hold about yourself, even when it's no longer fitting the situation. So when you do start questioning yourself, your ego is gonna pop in and something inside of you is gonna defend, justify, and deflect because your ego is gonna resist truth before it allows you to transform. And on this next episode about the ego, I don't want you guys to kill this ego because I hear people say that all the time. And I don't believe you can kill it. I believe that it's always gonna be with you. I think it's gonna pop up in different situations. And I want you guys to learn how to work with it and be aware of your ego so you can step in and check it and allow yourself to grow. So before I move on to this ego episode and how it gets in your way and how to check it and be aware of it, I want you to ask yourself, where in your life are you refusing to see yourself clearly? And I do believe this is kind of where you call stuck lives, like where you feel stuck in your life. Because sometimes we refuse to see things that are happening in our life because it keeps us safe. I hope this episode helped clarify some of the self-awareness. I'd love to hear some feedback and let me know what landed for you, what other questions you guys may have, and I can't wait to talk to you guys soon. Okay, bye.