Honing Our Craft: Defining Self-Awareness & the Danger of Lacking Self-Awareness

Welcome back to the “Honing Our Craft” series here on Clergy Craftsman. Last post I introduced self-awareness as an essential skill for ministry craftsmanship. In this post, we’ll dive deeper by defining self-awareness and seeing the damage caused by its absence.

Let’s begin with a quote by psychologist Tchiki Davis:

“Quite frankly, most of us are running on “autopilot,” hardly aware of why we succeed or fail, or why we behave as we do. Our minds are so busy with daily chatter that we usually only self-reflect when something goes awfully wrong.”

Consider the insight of Davis’s words. Many people (too often, me included) spend little time exploring the recesses of their inner world. They run on “autopilot.” They respond to situations, behave in certain ways, and interact with friends, family and coworkers, giving hardly any thought as to why they respond, behave or interact the way they do.

This is all well and good until, as Davis says, “something goes awfully wrong.”         

What might go wrong? Could be any number of things. Maybe you have a nasty dispute with your boss and are now perilously close to being fired. Maybe your spouse makes a comment that for some reason triggers you, and your overreaction inflicts long-term damage on the marriage. If you’re a pastor, maybe your patience evaporates during a board meeting and you say ugly words, destroying both trust and relationships. Or, also for pastors, maybe someone in your church says ugly words to you, and no matter how hard you try to forget, those words keep tormenting you. And I don’t even need to mention parenting. Anyone who has kids knows how easy it is to, in the heat of the moment, react harshly or impatiently to one’s children. Often times, after the moment has passed, you don’t even know why you reacted the way you did. But you regret it.

 The dictionary defines self-awareness as “conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, and desires.”  Elsewhere it’s described as “the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection.” For the purposes of this post, I’m going to simplify the definition: Self-awareness means understanding why you act and react the way you do.

In my experience, understanding the why behind my actions and reactions is no simple task. I’ll give a real-life example. Most of the time people’s criticism doesn’t really bother me. Like anyone, my feelings can be hurt but on average criticism slides off my back. So, it caught me off guard when several months ago my wife gave me some constructive criticism about how I interact with our 3 daughters, and her words triggered me. For the record, her critique was fair. I needed to hear it. But it bugged the daylights out of me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said, and every time my mind mentally replayed her words, I felt angry all over again.

What’s caused my reaction? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Did my wife’s words drudge up an unpleasant memory from childhood? Did she prick some insecurity laying dormant in my subconscious? Maybe I’m just more sensitive about my parenting than other areas of life? I’m still trying to figure it out. There is a discrepancy between my reaction and my self-knowledge. That leaves me with a choice: Do I work towards diminishing the discrepancy? Or do I ignore it until something triggers me again?

In all honesty, its much easier to ignore it. Growing in self-awareness takes a ton of effort. It can also be unpleasant. As Christian counselor Chuck DeGroat says in his book Wholeheartedness: “It takes great humility to become self-aware, for what we see we might not like.”

I think DeGroat’s words strike at the heart of why so many people will do just about anything to avoid examining what’s going on inside them. For as we peer into the dark corners of our inner world, we may disturb old insecurities, reopen emotional wounds, and find that we’re not nearly as strong, capable, and resilient as we thought we were. We might find that the person we display to the external world has little to no connection to the person we are on the inside. And that is a scary place to be.

But what is the alternative? I’ve had the privilege of leading men’s ministries for over a decade. During these years, I’ve seen over and over again that many men barely understand themselves. They have little to no idea what causes them to act or react the way they do. Relational damage always follows. Why? Because, as DeGroat says:

“When you and I lack self-awareness, we inflict our enraged self on a co-worker or our avoidant self on our spouse. Or we unwittingly project our unresolved anxieties onto our children…Unaware, we simply react to life’s situations rather than reflecting on what we’re feeling and where we are what we need.“

Wholeheartedness

What makes things even worse is that this same man often makes his ignorance of his inner world a point of masculine pride. He thinks if he’s never gone to counseling (even though he definitely should) or read a book about emotional health, that if he’s spent his entire adult life trying to ignore or minimize his emotions so that he doesn’t know what he’s feeling much less why he’s feeling it, that somehow makes him more of a man. He’s not into that “psychobabble crap.” Meanwhile his wife, kids, friends and co-workers suffer because this emotional- child-in-man’s-body constantly reacts to emotions that he neither identifies nor acknowledges.

I recognize this man because for too many years of my life, I was him. Perhaps to some extent, I still am. But God has better plans for me just like he does for you.

Let’s bring this around to ministry. For all the reasons listed above, a pastor who either lacks self-awareness or who—in his own mind—minimizes the importance of self-awareness, causes damage. I don’t need to tell horror stories to illustrate this point. We’ve all heard those stories. Maybe you’ve even lived through one. Suffice to say, that the self-unaware pastor goes bashing about, hurting relationships and ruining trust. When he’s confronted about it, he seems oblivious to the damage he’s caused. He has no empathy for the people he’s hurt. After all, how could he empathize with someone else’s emotions if he doesn’t even understand his own? Don’t be that guy. I’ll try not to be either.

One last comment, then I’ll wrap it up. Self-awareness is not black and white. It exists on a spectrum. All of us are somewhere on that spectrum. The goal is not to be perfect, because no one is. Rather, the goal is to always to be moving forward towards greater self-awareness. As pastors, we don’t have the luxury of slipping backwards or even staying in the same spot. Too much is at stake.

Next post we’ll continue onward in the “Honing Our Craft” series. We’ll look at practical steps towards growing in self-awareness.

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