Self-identity can be a tricky thing, as we don’t always like who we see in the mirror.


(Be the example of what you desire to see in the world)

Which is why today’s words of wisdom are self-reflective dynamism, as the ability to take a personal inventory at any given moment is key in reinforcing a healthy perspective, while also being able to maintain yourself throughout the day.

(I saw some conversation online recently that rephrased “self-care” as “scheduled maintenance”, and the irony of not taking time to check in with oneself leading to a breakdown. If one looks at self-help through this lens, as if they are taking caring of a piece of equipment they care about, then the reasonable phrase that follows is “if you do not find the time to schedule maintenance before hand, your equipment will find time to schedule it for you”, which is an excellently ironic way to keep in mind that leaving check ups till the last second leads to disaster, and not helping yourself out now, is going to hurt you even more in the long run.

To that point, we look at our Words of Wisdom today, those words being “Self-Reflective Dynamism”, and how they might be able to help you get in touch with some well needed personal maintenance you can perform on your own at any given moment, to see how you’re doing, like a check in process. Sometimes, my words of wisdom are far more abstract concepts involving personal identity, and or an axiom of some kind, that when broken down, can relate to the individual, and either help them in real life with an interesting philosophical concept to mull over, or even possibly in deconstructing the idea of something metaphysical one can apply in the world of the virtual, and thus relate to being helpful within gaming itself, and those are all well and good. A couple of weeks ago, the words of wisdom was “Vibe Time”, and it was a super bare bones and back to basics approach of being more literal, simplistic, and straight forward with the wisdom, as it very much relates to the idea of philosophy, and I find one of the reasons so many people bounce off of philosophy, is that it seems too impenetrable, abstract, alienating in it’s structuralist sense of relation to academia, etc., so to break down the concepts into not only more approachable, bite sized ideas that can more practically relate to the everyday, one can find a lot more worth in their approach in engaging with philosophy, especially when it’s beta tested on a worthwhile guinea pig (I.E.: Me), in seeing just how useful it can be.

Sounds like a lot of build up, but I like to “show my math” as it were, when concocting a premise, in showing you I did put some genuine time and effort into coming up with this stuff, out of the selfless idea of attempting to help others (and you) in the process, which I think is a worthwhile endeavor. I think it’s also worth it to mention, I did actually work with another individual on today’s concept, and using Socratic Methodology, we were able to deduce how best to go about this, so this one should be quite helpful, I think, based on their reaction.

Lots of setup, but I felt it worth the time to preface this with all of that. So, Self-Reflective Dynamism, is essentially an effort in taking personal inventory, in strengthening the mind-body connection, in order to not only increase efficacy of self to better deal with the day, but as a vital checkup process to see how one is doing. Both the mind and body can have dramatic affects on each other to boot, so if one is out of whack, both likely are dysfunctional on some level, and mental health is far too sorely dismissed out of hand, so it’s a much easier place to start in terms of self-help to get motivated. It is worth it to mention that this process should be looked at flippantly: the best way to approach philosophy is to consider it nonsensical, don’t take it too seriously, but also don’t commit to it on bad faith measurements, so that the thought process that comes from it is a serious product and a worthwhile moment of consideration.

So the process of “Self-Reflective Dynamism” is going to be a three step process, and how “literally” you want to do this is up to you, but if you only commit to this process metaphorically, you will have to simulate a part of it with your brain, so your call. I want you to have a conversation with yourself, if you can, literally walk up to a mirror, and make eye contact with yourself. If that is too real, you at least have to have a genuine dialogue with yourself, preferably out loud, but an inner monologue works too. I think the more literally you follow this process, the more helpful it will be, but baby steps of course to your comfort level.

So, we are going to ask ourselves three questions in this process, and in doing so, understand where we are at overall, but definitely in the immediate. I think it goes without saying, this process wont work if you’re going to be dishonest with yourself, so try to watch your own blind-spots and cognitive dissonance along the way.

After reacquainting with yourself, either in the mirror or in your head, out loud or internally, ask yourself the first question: “How do you feel about yourself?” You can phrase it this way if you wish, but having a genuine dialogue with yourself, as in conversing with question to answer as if two people are present, may help frame the issue in a more genuine light. Asking “How do you feel about yourself?” will help to immediately inform you of your emotional state, and likely reveal how emotionally connected with yourself you are. If you hesitate with an answer, or feel uncomfortable even answering or addressing the issue, that is your first big warning sign that you are emotionally disconnected with yourself, and need to explore why that is. The rest of the exercise is kind of irrelevant if you are unable to get past step one with the emotional connection phase, but is instructive of where you need to start the self-help process, and essentially at least acknowledge you are not doing okay at the moment, though you may also just be distant from yourself overall. Worth finding out why either way.

If you are able to answer yourself honestly, and you’re doing good, be sure to give yourself a comment of positive self-affirmation. If you are not doing well, figure out why that is. You should obviously likely know, but if your mind is repressing some idea or feeling, you may not, but having the convo with yourself will bring you to a front of intuition, and one of the first things that spring to your mind will likely either be the reason, or at least related to the source of your ire. Once you are able to emotionally connect with yourself, take note of what this entailed, and ready yourself for step two.

Step two is connecting with yourself cognitively speaking, and your next question should be “What do you think about how you are feeling?” if you are not doing well. If you are doing well, be sure to give yourself another moment of positive affirmation, but this time, task yourself with the challenge to your brain “What’s is something you do well, and what is something you can do even better?” This will get you to have a broader perspective of what your strengths are, and what your focuses might be in the immediate future, in honing in on some self-help you can fixate upon for the rest of your day or week. This lets you now know not just how you are feeling with your emotional connection to oneself, but now also cognitively speaking, you are able to connect with yourself, and understand your emotional state, and now also your ability to reason, and your spatial awareness of yourself within spacetime, and the here and now, helping you get in touch with a greater sense of your logical faculties and reasoning capabilities, helping to ground yourself firmly in reality and the moment itself. If for some reason you were able to do step one, but now have trouble with step two, your next question would be to clear up why you have no problem feeling, but have a brain fog enough not to know why you are unable to think so clearly at the moment, and this is just a shaking the cobwebs off kind of moment, as if you’re not stress testing your brain to work on the regular, it will be a use it or lose it scenario, and this will clue you in to maybe you’re too deep in the auto-pilot zone, and need to be more present for yourself, and the people around you.

Now, if you’ve successfully done step one and step two, having connected both emotionally and cognitively speaking, we move on to the last step, step three, which is connecting with yourself on a metaphysical level, or speaking more directly to your ego/psychological self. This one relates to the headiest of goals, and will be the most difficult, even if you have got the first two relatively easily, as this third bit relates to more of an approach of “self-actualization”, which usually entails a person being totally comfortable in their own skin with all their needs met, in being able to do it, so this last step is the hardest, so no worries if you struggle with it.

In speaking to your metaphysical self, your ego, ask yourself the question “How do you define you?”. This one, even if like I said, the first two were even fairly immediate or easy in approach, the last question will likely give nearly everyone a sense of pause, as it is a massive consideration, but this is a good thing, and shows one is truly trying to understand such a complex nuanced moment in spacetime as you in fact, are. An answer we are looking for with Step 3 is not totally defined, but relatively speaking, it helps to cement how you will define what you want the answer to be. The key to concluding step three however, at least as a starting point, or on a ground level fundamentality of sorts, is to have at least one word to start the self-definitional process. All you need is one word to start, and you can build more on it later, but if you start with at least one word, one confident, absoluterly true pretense, that you fully agree with, vet in your own mind, and see as an objective/subjective reality about who you are, then you can consider step three complete. I think it is worth mentioning, the person I did this with, made the initial mistake of describing how they “are” as opposed to defining the “who” they are. So don’t give an answer in describing how you verb, give an answer in describing how you exist, and the inherent qualities that lie within and you’ll start to understand more of what I’m getting at. You can see a similar setup in a Plato’s Dialogue entitled “Euthyphro”, in defining the difference of what makes one pious vs the inherent qualities of piety, if you’d like an even better idea of what I mean.

And that, in a nutshell, is self-reflective dynamism. If you’re anything like the person I worked with, kept yourself on task, and actually followed the steps of the process, you might get to the end, and similarly like they did, have a big smile on your face, feel satisfied with the takeaway, and be pleasantly surprised with the outcome of getting to know yourself better. Apparently, according to this individual, I should try my hand at therapy, as it seemed to really help!

And if it worked for them, and it worked for me, hopefully it will work for you, too, in helping to find out how you’re doing, what you can focus on in making it better, and help you understand your own identity, worth, and see the value of what you have, and or the direction you can move in helping to continue polish who you are, and what you eventually want to be.

As always, take care of yourself, and others.

~Pashford