Obtain it yourself. Self-awareness is really just a synonym of execution.
The people who have the right set of information to work with have simply processed a ton of it. They’ve done, tried, tested and failed at so many things that they finally found a sub-set of what works – for them.
I see this all the time in popular articles about success, like this one, about famous historian Yuval Harari, who wrote Sapiens and Homo Deus.
What the above should really say is this:
Of all the habits Harari experimented with, he found meditation works for him. It has helped him be more productive and increase his output as a historian, which eventually led to him becoming really popular. If you haven’t tried meditation or feel it could help you be more productive too, give it a shot.
Harari’s expertise as a historian, his writing skills and his timing with his books have zero correlation with his meditation habit. Sure, it helped him be more aware, calm, notice his mistakes faster, see reality clearer, and so on, but only because he found it a practice worth sticking to.
It’s one of thousands of possible habits that made the cut – and hundreds of others he tried before didn’t.
That said, he knew meditating was a fairly safe experiment to run. So far, no known cases of spontaneous explosion from meditation or development of insanity exist.
Hence, I think the best thing you can learn from other people is what not to do. Most of us aspire to be better than most of us. That, by definition, means not everyone will be successful in their endeavor.
While it’s tough to point to failing strategies around the average level of results, some ideas have historically been proven to fail, like…
- Throwing money out the window without tracking it.
- Letting your ego get to your head.
- Stopping to change altogether.
It’s very easy to look at other people’s qualities and single out those that make you go “Ew, I wouldn’t want to be like that. That can’t be good.”
The path that works for you only you can carve. It’ll be a unique combination of habits, skills, timing, hard work and luck. That’s what lies ahead.
But at least the paths that have led others straight off the same cliff, over and over again, you can avoid.
Here’s the interesting bit of the article about Yuval Harari:
That’s not just 17 years of meditation. It’s 17 years of being a historian. 17 years of being a writer. And his results are two bestsellers.
What’s more, that’s 17 years after he knew who he was. Maybe you and I won’t be as lucky. It might take us 25 years. Or 36.
Looks like it’s time to execute.
