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Theme of Zoom Meeting: Self-Insight
© 2021 by Richard E. Gordon       Last updated: August 22, 2021
Duplication prohibited without author’s permission.

For several questions, I have provided underlined links that will take you to related online information. Try coming up with your own thoughts first – then investigate the links or ignore them – whatever you wish.

If the links don’t work with just clicking your mouse arrow, hold down your Ctrl key as you click. Any problems with a link please let me know: rgordon118@tampabay.rr.com

For the purposes of our discussion, I hope you will be guided by this description of self-insight: “Consider your mind the surface of the ocean. Rough waves and whirl pools may be caused by forces beneath the water’s surface just as your actions, reactions, feelings and thoughts may be triggered by factors beneath the surface of your mind.

“The challenge is to learn to gain understanding of the hidden factors that are stirring beneath your conscious thoughts. What, for example, could be the hidden factors causing someone never to be satisfied with her accomplishments? Or making a person unable to find a trusted friend? Or blowing up in anger whenever he thinks he is being treated unfairly?”  REG (Looking at this quote on June 8, 2022 – almost a year after I first included it in this guide -- I am not sure it is originally mine. Seems too good to have popped out of my head. But a google advanced search brings up nothing. However, if you can identify it from another source, let me know so that I can give the proper credit.)

If you would like to view other insight definitions or descriptions, you will find them here. Or perhaps this will do: “Understanding oneself in some depth. It is a mediate goal or the desired outcome of many types of psychotherapy.”

Questions:

1. If you have tried one of these ways for gaining self-insight, are you willing to share how helpful it was?

a. Meditation

b. Asking a trusted friends

c. Journaling

d. Recording your dreams

e. Self-Hypnosis

f. Looking for the patterns of your life

g. Practicing mindfulness

h. Seeking the help of a therapist

i. Seeking insight from a good friend

j. Reading books

k. Talking aloud to yourself while staring into a mirror

l. Other sources?

2. Is gaining self-insight important to you? Another source.

3. How can self-insight or self-awareness be taught?

4. Have you even done something thinking it was for one reason only to discover later that it was for another reason?

5. Have you gained more self-insight as you have grown older? How would you account for this growing self-insight?

6. For you, what is the best way you have found to gain more insight into yourself?

7. Can self-insight be taught in school? Should it be?

8. Why is knowing yourself as important as knowing about the external world?

9. What kind of person may help you gain insight into yourself? Are you such a person who can help others gain self-insight? If you are, what characteristics make you so?

10. If a friend made a video of you reacting with others – say at a birthday party, for example – how might this video be helpful to you regarding self-insight?

11. Besides a video, are there other ways that friends can help you gain self-insight?

12. How can you help poor listeners gain self-insight without hurting their feelings? What characteristics make for unpleasant conversationalists? What can you imagine could be the undercurrents motivating someone to constantly try to grab the reins of a conversation? Please – be sure not to identify whom you are discussing.

Quotations

1. “To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do.” — Vironika Tugaleva

2. “The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.” — David Goggins

3. “Your mind is like a gold mine, if you dig deep you will find something golden.” — Gift Gugu Mona

4. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

5. “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison

6. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― C. G, Jung

7. “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

8. “You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
― Ernest Hemingway

9. “Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.” -- Debbie Ford

10. “If you're not perfectly conscious of yourself, that self can be tyrannical; in relationship to others, anyone can become a tyrant. That's why no one can be a Superman. You have to go beyond yourself with a 'third eye' - self-awareness - because the one thing you cannot flee is yourself.” Gao Xingjian

11. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

12. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” --Aristotle

The End