Henrik Karlsson (@henrikkarlsson): "There's a fairly common assumption that to know yourself better, you should attend to yourself more—journal, introspect, meditate on your patterns. And there's something to this. But also. The more you make yourself an object of attention, the more you reinforce the narrating s…"

There's a fairly common assumption that to know yourself better, you should attend to yourself more—journal, introspect, meditate on your patterns. And there's something to this. But also. The more you make yourself an object of attention, the more you reinforce the narrating self—the self that has problems, the self that needs fixing, the self with its story of development. I notice that when I, instead, sort of forget about myself and attend deeply to the outer world (when I unself as Murdoch would say) I actually see myself more clearly in a paradoxical way. If I engage fully with something other than myself—another person, a challenging task, nature, a genuine question—I notice that another self reveals itself. The self as subject rather then the self as object. The self-knowledge I gain by losing myself in attention of the Other is a knowledge that is less like a fact about me and more like a taste. I think both kinds of self-awareness are useful. But … why am I saying this? Yeah:

There's a fairly common assumption that to know yourself better, you should attend to yourself more—journal, introspect, meditate on your patterns. And there's something to this. But also. The more you make yourself an object of attention, the more you reinforce the narrating self—the self that has problems, the self that needs fixing, the self with its story of development. I notice that when I, instead, sort of forget about myself and attend deeply to the outer world (when I unself as Murdoch would say) I actually see myself more clearly in a paradoxical way. If I engage fully with something