Can you be too self aware?
Someone told me at a conference recently that she was impressed by how self aware I was. And then, letting go of the point of the exercise (which was to give a compliment) she added, "almost too self-aware." I know what she meant. Being self aware can lead to too-much-information syndrome. The self is a complex entity: getting to know it is a task that consumes a lot of mental energy. Using what you know requires even more. It can seem that it would be easier to just take a shot in the dark and hope you were making the right choice. It often seems easier not to notice that the self of which we are not aware is already having an impact on the people around us. Being too self-aware is like being too alive: it means you can't hide from your interdependence with the world and it means you're going to get hurt. Sometimes you will be hurt because you will be aware of things in your life that you love and that other people threaten. Sometimes you will be hurt because yo...