Do You Know The Person In The Mirror?

  Do you know who you are?  No really.  Are you really aware of who you really are as far as your personality?  This includes you strengths, weaknesses, flaws, habits, quirks, and so on.  In order to really know who you are you have to have one important thing called "self-awareness".  That is the kind of thing where you step outside of your self, not literally, and evaluate the things you do on almost a daily basis.

  Most people do not have the ability to "self-evaluate" themselves because they are so busy just living their lives that they don't stop and watch what they are doing as a kind of sanity-check.  It's an important thing to take the time to do in order to know if things you are doing are good, bad, stupid, or brilliant.

  For instance the way you interact with people would be a good example.  Have you ever had a confrontation with someone?  After it was over did you ask you self things like "Could I have handled that better?" or "Should I have just punched them in the nose and gotten it over with?".   I'm just kidding about the punching some in the nose.  I by no means advocate violence in any situation other than self-defense.

  Many time when we have instance of interaction with other people there are many ways to handle things, but many people are on what I like to call "auto-pilot" where they do not stop and think about what they say or do, but instead they just act or react without pause.  If people would take the time to look back on how they handle situations they may find that sometime just the smallest change in what they did or said may have made a huge impact on the outcome.

 I am constantly reflecting on how I do things sometimes to the point that I shutter about when I think "That was really stupid." or "Why did I say that?".  Unfortunately we can't change the past, but we can certainly learn from it, hopefully.

 Learning from our past does not mean just the things we say or how we interact with other people.  This include our actions as well, like driving excessive speed on the freeway and getting a ticket.  Many people would probably be thinking about the ticket more than why they got it in the first place, but some people would be thinking why did I decide to speed at all.  Who do you think is most likely to learn from that mistake in this situation?  The person thinking about the ticket or the person reflecting back asking why they did it in the first place.

 These are just some small examples about how some people reflect back on their actions and some people only look forward.  It is a good idea to look back from time to time and do a little self-evaluation.  Many people have heard the phrase that if we do not learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it.  I think that is a good mantra for moving forward in life.