Know more About Yourself

These profound words inscribed at the “Oracle of Delphi” give us a lot to think about. It is through mindfulness that a deep understanding of ourself happens. Self understanding is the first step to develop mindfulness.
To understand who we are emotionally and what are our thresholds of patience , understanding , knowledge, empathy, compassion, etc. is so important.
Being blind to these assets causes us to experience problems in our relationships even with our child. We start to project and perceive our own issues as due to someone else and not ourselves.
As Victor Frankl said, “There is a huge space between trigger and response”. A habit we need to develop early on in life. So knowing that we all have our triggers, hot buttons, blind spots, and reaction to things happening around us, help us to approach things from a very different perspective. Experts, like OJ Sofer , Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hahn say that once you have a sound sense of why you behave, the way you do, or why you react in a certain way then you are better equipped to deal with conflicts, which occur 24/7 with children because of the pull and push between conformity and autonomy. Knowing your thresholds helps you to approach from a different perspective, and like Rosalind Weissman says be “ be a rock parent”. What the experts are saying, is that the emotional relating requires mindful awareness of our own internal state, as well as being open to understanding and respecting others, including our child. That is why it is so important to be self reflective and self-aware, so that we don’t spill over our own unsolved issues while interacting with our child.