Overview

All change begins with self-observation. People confuse self-observation with self-judgment. Judgment includes a critical element that is absent from self-observation.

Many people feel as if they are quite good at self-observation because they have an internal voice that is continually jabbering at them: Oh that was stupid, You can do better than that, I don t like this, and so on. To self-observe means to not become attached to or to identify with any content of our experience, but to watch alertly, openly, passively. Many Americans hate the word passively especially authors and advocates of self-help. Not acting allows self-observation to occur. We are already taking enough actions, be they physical or mental. The point in being passive is to have some power in intervening in the mechanicalness of thought, action, and speech.

The general instruction for self-observation is to divide yourself into two people, one who acts in life and one who watches. Maybe this sounds simple to you, but you ll find in practice that it is quite difficult. At first, almost everyone forgets to self-observe. That s why it makes sense to leave reminders around, maybe notes on your mirror or computer screen to keep bringing you back to your self-observation. Below, you ll find examples of self-observation exercises that clients have done over the years. They are divided into three main categories: business, relationship, and personal. It s not that I don t think these domains influence each other; it s more that by dividing a person s life into three categories, it...