It stands to reason that self-awareness is the beginning of the relationship you form with yourself. Whether or not your relationships with others are healthy will correlate with how well you know yourself. You must become self-aware.

It’s a Journey of Growth…

Knowing yourself…it’s exactly as it sounds. Think of someone you love, someone you spend a good amount of time with, someone you know and who knows you. Your relationship with them has gone from stranger to essential because you got to know one another.

You asked questions, you shared meals, you opened your homes and hearts. At some point, you began to understand one another’s behaviors and beliefs, how they differ from your own. If it’s a close friendship or a dating relationship, you may have even argued with them, encountered some conflict.

Bottom line: your relationship progressed because you discovered the other person. You uncovered who they are.

The same process takes place within yourself, in your own relationship with you, and the popular word to use for this relationship is self-awareness. The good news is, you can become self-aware.

For You…

If you want solid relationships with others, you have to form a solid relationship with you. Thus begins your self-awareness journey. You can’t have solid relationships with others and know them well if you don’t know yourself well, too.

I say “too” because a relationship with yourself (self-awareness) can happen in tandem with other relationships. It’s not necessarily a pre-requisite; more like one of those duel classes you had to take during the same semester in college. It’s possible to have growing and flourishing relationships with others while still walking your journey as an individual.

I feel the need to pull back right here for just a second and say this: Be warned.

The simple fact is self-awareness is a lifelong pursuit. Once you decide to embark, you can choose to stop or keep going; you set the pace; you figure your way through growth. Or you stagnate and stay the same.

Any relationship worth having requires persistent work. It’s not always easy to sit alone with yourself to learn how to understand your own emotions, gain perspective on your own struggles. No one likes to be left alone with their thoughts when those thoughts are powerful and dark, painful. But leaning into those strong emotions, being honest with yourself about how you feel, actively working to not justify your own emotions and behaviors…all exercise the same relationship muscles you will flex in connection with other people.

Regardless of whether you want to keep pursuing self-awareness and continue growing in understanding of your personality and individuality or not, your relationships with other people will be directly impacted by how self-aware you are. You decide if your relationships will grow healthier along with you as you become self-aware, or face the same recurring problems and cycles.

For Them…

Right now, you and I live in a time where self-awareness is almost a sport. To become self-aware and grow as individuals, then taking care of our emotions and mental states are worthy pursuits. They’re regular conversation topics among Millennials and Gen Z because so many want to understand themselves. They pursue knowledge of self because they believe deep down if they understand who they are, they’ll know where they stand in the world.

Self-awareness has become the key to our own happiness, especially in our relationships, and only we hold it.

Like I mentioned above, it takes time and energy and effort to get to know yourself.

The relationship you thought about in the beginning of this post…think about it again.

How many times did you feel like it wouldn’t be worth it in the end (not believed it,