About the video

This episode explains biblical self-awareness—a God-centered understanding of ourselves. With Mark 12:30 as the foundation, we learn how to develop spiritual, social, emotional, and intellectual awareness. Understanding ourselves on these four levels empowers us to grow to our full potential. This episode also teaches us how to avoid the pitfalls of unhealthy self-awareness, such as self-consciousness and self-sabotage, which hinder growth.

If you’ve ever struggled with a negative view of yourself, this episode is for you!

Reflection questions

  • Where am I at spiritually? What is happening to me spiritually?
  • What does the culture around you tell you to do with your life?
  • Do you reveal how you are thinking about things? Or do you tend to live in reaction to things?
  • What emotions consume you most often?
  • What thoughts have been on your mind the most recently? Why?
  • Who do you admire? And why?
  • Are there ways you sabotage yourself from growing?
  • Are you aware of the healthy and unhealthy “selfs” in your life?

Scripture references

and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

Mark 12:30 NASB

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Romans 1:20 NLT

For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12 NLT 

Transcript

Russ Ewell

What are the really the four areas of what I want to call biblical self-awareness? And I’m just going to run through these and maybe we’ll come back to them in another time. Because I think there’s a difference between self-awareness and biblical self-awareness. Biblical self-awareness leads to a lot of healthy things, but sometimes just self-awareness can put a lot of emphasis on the self part. So let me start with the steps. You know, the Bible talks about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I think that’s a really good framework for understanding self-awareness. Number one. When God advises and watches over us, He doesn’t want us to be senseless. He wants us to be aware. He wants us to have sensitivity. The number one thing is spiritual awareness. That’s seeing life through God’s eyes. It’s discerning His presence, His purpose, His power.

It’s what Romans 1 talks about, when you look at nature, you see God. Spiritual awareness is being able to see spiritual things. It’s recognizing that there are invisible, mysterious, beyond human power things going on in the world today. Ephesians 6 talks about that there’s a spiritual battle between light and darkness going on. And so part of self-awareness is where am I spiritually? Where is the culture I live in spiritually? What’s happening spiritually, that’s my soul. That’s my soul. That’s where I’m at on that. I’ve got a soul awareness. That’s what spiritual awareness is. I think a lot of times in society, it’s the soul that’s being ignored.

It’s the soul that’s not being looked at at a really constant basis. And that many times people aren’t even aware of. They’re not even aware of the fact that, I’ve got a soul. What’s going on there? Then social awareness, understanding people, culture, and the world around us. That’s what social awareness is. Being able to what am I consuming on social media? How is that influencing me? What is the culture telling me to do? And is that really the best thing for my life? If I’m in a social setting, also social awareness is, what is the other person feeling? Not just what am I feeling? Social awareness. Then number three is emotional awareness, recognizing and responding to emotions. Recognizing your own emotions, one of the keys to that, there’s a number of books I’ve read on this, we’ll talk about them at another time, but it’s being able to label your emotions. And the reason that is labeling your emotions is recognizing your emotions. And many times we get consumed by one or two emotions but we’re not really recognizing. You talked about motives earlier. We have to go back and go, what’s the trigger that got me going? So maybe we’re angry, but we don’t recognize that the emotion that started that anger was we were sad and the sadness led to the anger. And oftentimes we try to deal with the anger because we haven’t properly labeled the emotions we’ve experienced that produce the anger. And that’s another way to get to emotional awareness. What’s under the hood or as I alluded to earlier, what’s behind that smile or that grimace or whatever may be the case. 

The fourth aspect I think of developing self-awareness is intellectual awareness the ability to be aware of what you’re thinking. It’s the ability to think critically. It’s the ability to think biblically about the world. It’s knowing what’s on your mind. A lot of times we don’t process how we’re thinking. We just react. We just go. Or we retreat and we isolate. But we don’t evaluate our thinking or we become consumed by our thoughts. I think when we start breaking it down and saying, am I spiritually aware? Am I socially aware? Am I emotionally aware, am I intellectually aware, that’s biblical self-awareness. And so how does it kind of break down again? Number one, when we have our soul on straight, when we’re paying attention to our soul life, and we’ve got an article on the web of Deep Spirituality about Blueprint for Spirituality that really spells out how to be aware of your soul life. But when we’re aware of our soul life, we become aware of God. When we’re aware of our emotions, we become aware of our own heart, how it’s feeling, what we’re going through, but we also become better at being aware of what others are going through. Sometimes we think we’re aware emotionally, but we’re really being consumed by our emotions. We’re not being aware of our emotions. Just to know we have an emotion doesn’t mean we need to dive into it. You know what saying? If you see a swamp with water and a hot day, you don’t just dive in because there can be some alligators in there. You go, okay, I’m aware that I’m hot and I’m aware that that water is cool, but I’m also aware there’s some alligators in there. Maybe I shouldn’t jump in there. We shouldn’t just dive all the way in our emotions. We should be aware of them, but not always consumed by them. And when we’re aware of our emotions, not consumed by them, we’re better at being aware of other people’s emotions, which puts us in a really good place. 

Aware of our spirituality, again, that’s also the soul. It’s that soul awareness. Aware of our thinking, the culture, what’s going on in our head thoughts are not just we thinking, but what thoughts are we being caused to think? I mean, how many of us absolutely feel the need to eat a box of Krispy Kreme donuts? Really? Is that really good for us? No. But after I watch a couple of Krispy Kreme commercials, I feel the need to consume Krispy Kreme donuts on a mass level. When I go buy Dunkin’ Donuts, I feel the need to support Dunkin’ Donuts with every fiber of my being and eat as many donuts as possible. So we have to be aware of what’s making me think it. That advertising making. Why do I suddenly want that? Why do I suddenly need that? Or why do I hate myself? Because I just got done watching some ad that told me what a guy needs to look like or what a woman needs to look like that really I don’t need to look. We have to be aware of our mind and our thinking. 

Aware of our purpose, our strengths, our gifts, our talents, and why God gave them to us.

That’s part of self-awareness to be able to go, you’re a good musician, I’m not. Okay, well does that mean? How do we work as partners together? Maybe my role in your life is just to admire what you’re good at. Sometimes people forget that being an admirer of people is an important thing. And oftentimes we’re so consumed by ourselves we don’t see, I’ll never forget I was talking to my good friend we know, Sam Manuel, was a Division I college player at NFL football.

And he and I were talking, I was talking about how I played basketball and I schooled and didn’t go as far as I wanted to. And I remember he goes, well, know Russ, height’s a talent too. Until that moment, I never considered that height was a talent. Why? Because I’m not super tall, right? But he opened my eyes to the fact, height’s a talent. So I didn’t get that one, which meant, well, I’m not supposed to be in the NBA. That’s not a bad thing. That’s me being aware. But all of a sudden then I started admiring people more, going, they’ve been given physical gifts I don’t have. So when I watch great athletes like my favorite college player right now, Cooper Flagg, I can admire him as opposed to wish I could be him. And so being aware of our purpose, why am I given my talents? Why is this person given their talents? All of that produces a biblical self-awareness. And so if you want to walk away and you want to go, how do I work on my

life? How do I start to get awareness? I’m going to give a few more things and then you can sort of say what you think about them. We have to be aware that when we handle the awareness in our life, the self-awareness in our life in an unhealthy way, we become self-conscious instead of self-aware. We become self-hating instead of self-aware. We become self-destructive instead of self-aware. We can even self-sabotage instead of being self-aware. We can be self-indulgent instead of self-aware. We can self-medicate instead of self-aware. Self-awareness does not mean that we turn in on ourselves. So it means with self-consciousness, it means instead of choosing insecurity, we choose humility and emotional honesty and transparency. With self-hate, instead of listening to the untrue, the unhelpful, and the unhealthy and unproductive thoughts, we embrace and pursue gracious, generous, and growth-oriented thoughts. Instead of being self-destructive, where we let dysfunctional reactions to unfortunate or unjust events in our life, instead of letting those control us and maybe make us be self-destructive. We choose biblical reactions and we spiritually process the things that have happened with some life and let them point us toward growth and being able to become something out of our pain, finding purpose in our pain, instead of being crushed by our pain.

Self-sabotage instead of becoming a professional quitter we become a focused finisher. Instead of always going, my solution to pain and difficulty is I’ll just quit. I’ll find a reason to quit. Maybe people out there can relate to that. Where you see yourself having a great opportunity, but you sabotage yourself. Wake up late. You don’t prepare because you don’t think you’re getting selected. It’s self-sabotage. 

Self-indulgence, where we become pleasure-driven instead of purpose-driven. And self-medicating. There’s a band, I forgot which band sang this song called Comfortably Numb. But when we become self-medicating, look to be comfortably numb instead of emotionally attached. All these are ways to take each day and go, am I aware on that level?

Am I operating in that space? When I open my Bible, am I looking at that? If I feel self-hating thoughts, am I willing to identify those thoughts as untrue, unhelpful, unhealthy, unproductive? Because if you’re hating yourself, then whatever you’re thinking is wrong. That’s the bottom line, it’s wrong. Because God did not design us to hate ourselves. And so instead you work on having gracious, generous, and growth-oriented thoughts that, maybe I’m not good at this, that’s an opportunity for me to grow. If I’m not good at this, if I’m not good at playing guitar, that’s an opportunity for me to become friends with Mike and enjoy listening to him play and give him my selections, you know? But anyway, those are some of the breakdowns that I have, wish we could do more, some of the breakdowns I have about how to attack self-awareness and develop it deeper in our life in a practical way.