https://markmanson.net/meta-awesomeness

This made me aware of something that was already in my life.

Realism: calling out myself and my faults is funny, and calling out others, is the reality of it. Not aggrandizing myself and aggrandizing others. Nah. Admit I am uncool. And admit others are too. I lessen myself, and I lessen others. Knowing I’m not awesome, as he says, weirdly made me more awesome. I did this not through some intention to actively share myself, to be willingly vulnerable, as he says in Models. Nah. I just took therapy, what women construe as “honesty” or “wisdom” was just taking reality from therapy.

I think it is counterintuitive, and I’m too sensitive and want to concede to the conventional.

Mark Manson says self awareness means “the ability to reflect on your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a third person perspective.” I sure as hell suck as that. And I think knowing I’m an idiot will eradicate my self esteem, so I call myself smart instead; but counterintuitively, that strange word rearing it’s inconvenient head again, being aware that I am really a nincompoop feels a lot more liberating, simply a lot better.

I can reflect on my behaviors as shitty and not reprehensible, yet also human and deserving of forgiveness and tolerable. But it was achieve not solely through me, but through my hard work, through therapy, and interdependently, because of Sheryl and because of myself.

Next, Mark Manson says that vulnerability means “Vulnerability is being candid about who you are, not hiding yourself or trying to impress others, not covering up your flaws or weaknesses, admitting your mistakes, sharing yourself unabashedly. Vulnerability without self-awareness is little more than a verbal stream of emotional vomit.” He’s not wrong there.

My emotional vomit is vulnerable, yet fucking sordid. It needs to be, as it is, just slowly and awkwardly, being mediated and balanced out by my real, and candid, efforts in therapy to come to terms with my Asian American identity, my entitlement, and my disdain and relationship with my parents. These things cannot be disguised through spurious campus reflections.

He then says of this, “You need self-awareness to take responsibility for your flaws and problems, to incorporate them into your identity in a positive manner. Vulnerability with self-awareness gives others a crystal-clear access to who you are and what makes you unique and interesting.” I see. Me trying to be “me”, alone, without therapy, is stupid; independence is truer than dependence, but in truth, I am interdependent, both myself and who I am from the work of others, a coming to terms from a dialogue that mostly involves me frowning a lot and my therapist calling me intrusive.

Would I call myself confident? Not really. Not at all, in fact, I don’t think I have ever once called myself confident, although others have, as I remember it, called me wise, insightful, and honest; I never felt like any of those things, although I tried to.

I’d probably call myself nothing, in fact; in that, maybe my Buddhism teacher would like me a little bit. Anytime I call myself anything positive, it’s spurious, and tends to lead to me deluding myself; calling myself negative things, such as a fool, does not work, it’s just pretty true. The only thing I call myself is me. For me to be called out as myself, is really, what brings me the greatest joy.

He then goes on to say, which adds verbiage to a truth I experience of myself, “If you’re able to achieve these two qualities simultaneously, you will introduce your psyche to multi-layered emotions.”

I too, noticed that when I got back from therapy, the lack of understanding I knew of myself, that indescript incohesiveness, laced with a simple hint of vulnerability from being candid for a moment about myself with my Lyft driver, truly allowed me to, as I like to phrase this, go “meta,” or multi-level. I notice my normal, or perhaps not normal, but intuitive, truly me modus operandi was saying things like, “Yeah, I’m not so great. I tend to get really arrogant and say a lot of big words,” and laugh, truly, at my own bullshit for being true and for being such a klutz. But I’ll also say the same things of others, and only smile, because it is not as honest or as true as what I can say in reference to myself objectively, as said, “reflecting on your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from a third person perspective.” That objectivity of space in awareness of myself was wrought from being a totally lame, incomprehensible, value-less, bad, and shame-wracked version of myself in therapy. It took work. It is taking work. Part of it is ADHD, and part of it is myself, but it is simply the way I am, as myself.

“But a person with self-awareness would recognize this pattern, notice the being in love feeling, notice the fear of being in love, and notice the sabotaging behaviors caused by the fear of being in love. This is necessary if you’re ever going to turn your emotional baggage and neuroticism into a bonus instead of a penalty.”

Yup, I noticed this of myself. I recently got into a relationship, and I immediately realized, sardonically, feeling humorous about my sadness or sad about the humor, “I wonder how soon I’m going to sabotage this one myself.” And it was true. But what I found helpful from this was that the point was to “turn the emotional baggage and neuroticism into a bonus instead of a penalty.” That correlates and aligns with a truth I noticed: that the bad is often the exact same strength in the good.

Then, he says “This self-awareness is nice, but if you’re unable or too afraid to express these realizations to your partner, then your partner will continue to perceive you as a neurotic, relationship-sabotaging (son of a) bitch. But if you work up the cojones/ovaries to tell your partner, “Look, I’m a bit of a headcase when it comes to commitment, and I only get like this because I like you so much. I’m sorry if I push you away. I’m going to try not to, but just know that I have some issues and this is what usually happens.”

Ho–Lee Shit. This is exactly it, at least in my life. My failure was nonexistent; I simply did not be vulnerable, and took something true, my self-awareness about my sabotage, about the boundaries making me insecure, and I tried to be invulnerable, put my guard up. I knew and lacked the cajones, or whatever the hell, to make this vulnerable: to be candid about who I am. I failed to relate it, and that made me deal with everything on my own, in terms of my growing self-awareness but failure-of-vulnerability, instead of letting her know who I am.

It wasn’t flaws I had to cover up, I’m coming to see; it was my inability to be vulnerable and candid about who I am that did not allow her insight into what was going on, that was unattractive and lame of me. What was lame was me being unable of myself to share my mistakes and admit them, and as such sharing myself unabashedly. Admittedly, it is a hard step to take, and I am only human, only a deeply flawed, emotionally chastised man. I’m taking little steps.

The best that I can do is move on, and realize, for myself and for others, that faults and flaws as I perceive them in myself are not worth covering up, not when vulnerability, as I’ve seen it myself, to my own, stupefied bafflement and chagrin, generally leads to responses of openness, of respect, and of direct elicited attraction from others. Once again, it is a consequence of me and my inability to come to terms with certain faults of mine in myself, namely, my sexual truths, and my issues with time management and boundaries for schedules, ironically both aspects of having ADHD. That’s fine, everyone goes through that.

All I can do, as just myself, is be sensitive to my own feelings, to respect the feelings she had instead of lacerating her for my own emotional protection, and hence, leave it be. The best wounds aren’t wounds at all, just parts of oneself.