Stay Curious

I heard a word this week that was new to me.  Metacognition.  My mind quickly drew a blank.  Metawhat?   Thankfully the speaker followed up with a definition.  He said it is where you are not managed by your feelings, you manage your feelings by thinking about your feelings.  Interesting, I thought.  I wanted to confirm what he was saying, so later I looked it up online and it listed metacognition as the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes.  Oh yes, I know that experience.

I spent so much of my life not paying any real attention to my thoughts and feelings.  I just had them and quite often, let them be the driver.  But the past several years I’ve been on a quest, some may say it was a mid-life crisis, but whatever you want to call it, I think what I really wanted was more.  More of what?  I didn’t yet know.  I just knew I wanted more.  And I wanted different.  I didn’t want to get stuck in being too afraid to take chances.  And that led me on the journey of discovering me.

I ran across a podcast where a well-known pastor was speaking.  He said when people start dating, they spend a lot of time and energy learning about the other person, what they like and dislike, what they enjoy doing, with the goal to learn as much as possible so they can make the person happy and love them well.  He then said something that made a light go off inside.  He said we need to date ourselves.  

When I thought about it, the one person I am guaranteed to spend the rest of my life with is myself.  No one else is in my head with me, only me.  What would happen if I started to learn, really learn, more about me?    

I began to be curious, seeking out what I wanted to do, spending more quality time with myself, reading books that make me think and explore different things, journaling, and because I am a person with faith, praying and talking to God.  

I can say it has been quite the ride. My investment has paid off.  I am more honest with myself.  I am learning how to let things go. It’s easier for me to admit there is a lot I don’t know, and that is okay.  This frees me to listen to other people’s thoughts and opinions.  When I react without thinking, and I still do at times, I try to think about why I reacted the way I did.  Sometimes I figure it out, other times not.  And there have also been instances that I’ve needed to go back and apologize and/or explain what I was thinking.  Not to show that I’m right, but to make things right with the other person.  All this effort has allowed me to feel more at peace and at home inside my own skin.

Learning more about our thinking and feeling is something we can all do.  I suggest starting small.  There are opportunities everywhere.  The next time someone cuts you off in traffic, and your immediate response is to yell, speed up so they know you’re angry, or even make a specific hand gesture…ask yourself why?  I think we tend to take it so personally, but why?  Or when you text someone and they don’t immediately text back, our go-to response is usually to tell ourselves a story: what I said made them mad, they don’t care what I think or feel, etc.  I know I’ve been guilty of that.  The goal is to start paying attention.

When I delve in to why I’m thinking or feeling something (metacognition) it almost always ends up with me not getting so worked up, and I feel an internal “shift,” like my mind just takes a big, deep breath.  Of course, if I pair that with actually taking a nice, deep breath, it’s a win-win.

So, my encouragement for today…start dating yourself, and stay curious.