The Healthy Relationship Secrets - The Difference Between Self-Ware and Self-Conscious

Healthy relationships begin with self-awareness, but self-consciousness can destroy your ability to interact confidently with others. Okay, Yoda...what the heck is the difference between the two? Actually, there's a HUGE difference, and once you have a clear understanding of this difference, you'll be able to snap right out of self-consciousness and build genuine confidence through self-awareness. Keep reading...

The Two Faces of Pride

Pride is a cancer to healthy relationships. It takes all of the focus off of building the relationship and puts it on one person. When this happens, the relationship becomes one sided and the other person starts putting their walls up to protect themselves from being taken for granted or being hurt. Pride and self-consciousness are directly related, in fact you could even consider them the same concept called by a different name. So what causes pride and how do you overcome it?

Pride is caused by being absorbed in oneself, and that doesn't always mean absorbed in how great you are. Self-absorbed people are more often absorbed in their own shortcomings than they are in their strengths. This is the person who is afraid to interact genuinely with others because of what those others might think. This is the person who is always putting themselves down, and who (to some) might be considered to be shy or timid.

However, shyness and timidity both come from being absorbed in one's own imperfections. Such people are always thinking of themselves and how horrible they are, and this can be just as bad (if not worse) than the puffed up "I'm better than everyone else" pride. As long as a person is proud and self-absorbed, they will never be able to build genuine confidence...at best, they can fake it, but they'll always have the inner fear of being "found out."

So, how can you escape this and build confidence based on self-awareness?

The Root of Genuine Confidence

Self-awareness is knowing who you are without being absorbed in who you are. People who are self-aware seek to understand themselves better, but not for the sake of validating themselves to others or invalidating themselves to others for fear that others will feel unimportant. In other words, people who are self-aware seek understanding for the sake of consistently growing and improving themselves, not for the reward of social validation.

This requires the acceptance of both your strengths AND your "weaknesses" and accepting them both as a part of who you are. This is how a person becomes integrated and mature, and this is the foundation of finding and keeping healthy relationships.