This is an essay about something we hear daily, in every motivational video, every honest podcast, even in conversations with friends, partners, or children.
It’s self-awareness.
Everyone talks about it, but few truly engage with it. It’s often mistaken for a punishment , considered a burden, a summit to conquer, a painful confrontation with the self.
People assume self-awareness is anti-ego, a punch to one’s pride.
How can I have issues? Aren’t I a decent human being? Why should I worry about how my behavior affects others? Am I not troubled by them too?
We tell ourselves, “We can just move past it. Forget it. Shove it. Drink on it. Sleep on it. Everything but deal with it? Why bother?”
We’ve built a culture of zero accountability. A myth that our personalities are fixed at birth, that children act out because it’s in their genes, that adults are how they are because God made them that way. So why change? Why even try?
I believed these things once. But then I learned.
There’s extensive research on this, human behavior isn’t just a random trait; it’s largely acquired. Yes, acquired, not “owned,” not “innate.”
Our behaviors are deeply influenced by:
- Where and when we were born – the country, the city, the traditions, the safety or danger level of our environment.
- Our family structure – how we were raised, whether the home was loving or dysfunctional, healthy or chaotic.
- Financial conditions and parental health — how much stress existed in the house, how much care children received.
- Education and peer groups — the kind of schooling and societal pressures we were exposed to.
- Safety and trauma — including exposure to crime, abuse, or neglect.
Even in good homes, other subtle forces shape us:
- The food we eat, the boundaries set, the moral values passed on.
- Whether we were taught to handle emotions or suppress them.
- If we had access to safe adults or relied on friends and media for guidance.
- If we were encouraged to ask questions or silenced for being difficult.
And then there are the negatives:
- Did we grow up in chaos and develop coping mechanisms just to survive?
- Were we expected to raise ourselves – or worse, our parents and siblings?
- Were our choices constantly shamed, our emotions dismissed, our voices unheard?
- Did we watch our caregivers ignore their health, never take breaks, or suppress their own feelings with addictions?
Hence, even the tiniest patterns in daily life come from this early conditioning. A child who was never nurtured may grow up not knowing how to care for themselves.
Whether you take a bath every day or not , yes, even that, might trace back to your upbringing.
Children who weren’t taught how to deal with emotions may end up looking fine on the outside, but are numbing on the inside. They might throw themselves into books, sports, or art, not out of passion, but as a survival technique.
Others may go down darker paths like addiction, crime, or dangerous behavior. Some are calling for attention. Others are trying to silence their own minds.
But all of them need guidance – until at least the age of 25 – to make sense of life.
As adults, our personalities ,be it good and bad, are shaped by these early scripts.
They influence our career choices, relationships, addictions, emotional patterns, even how we handle food, rest, or routine.
So does this mean we’re off the hook? Not at all.
It means: if someone asks you to look into your behavior, take a pause. Don’t defend or attack. Reflect.
If you grew up in a home with an unstable food situation, you might now overeat, undereat, cling to certain foods, or feel disconnected from food altogether. That’s not shameful. It’s a story. A root.
And self-awareness means noticing it, not blaming yourself for it.
You can still have personal preferences, but if a behavior is hurting you or your relationships, wouldn’t it help to understand why?
Self-awareness is not an apology letter. It’s not a TED Talk you deliver to everyone around you.
It’s a personal manual you quietly update. It means you choose knowledge over ignorance, introspection over projection.
It doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else. It just makes you a work-in-progress, like all of us.
It creates space for kindness, because once you see a trait in someone, you begin to ask: “What story does this belong to?” Instead of judging, maybe we offer a little grace.
And even if we decide to step back, we don’t carry resentment.
This isn’t abstract talk. Self-awareness is one of the most powerful tools we have to live an intentional life. In tough times or big decisions, a little backtracking into our behavioral roots can change the game.
And if we can’t decode it ourselves , that’s why professionals exist.
But we must understand: self-awareness is an investment. Its effects are subtle, but lifelong.
It won’t transform you overnight, but it will transform your life.
And if, as families or communities, we begin to live this way, the ripple effect would be magical. A near-utopia.
Imagine if we truly understand ourselves. We’d know our emotional switches. We’d know what version of us needs to show up, and when.
We’d respond, not react.
We wouldn’t be living on autopilot. We’d be manually cruising.
And how cool is that?