Have you ever moved or wanted to move away and start over, make a drastic change so your life would change? Have you ever changed jobs because of a difficult situation that you don’t know how to deal with? Have you ever find yourself in the same situations multiple times and you don’t know why the same things happens over and over again? Have you made a drastic change and end up in similar environments and/or situations you were before? One of the biggest steps in self-awareness is becoming aware of your microuniverse.
Any given situation you are part of, is a reflection of your whole world – how you see it, how you experience it, how you act or react in it, your role in it, and your participation in it. It’s taking the whole and seeing it all in a smaller version. This is what’s referred to as the microuniverse. The microuniverse is the reflection of your world within a situation or environment.
If you take a group of 20 people and leave them in a room from an extended period of time, you will find that at some point someone will start complaining, feeling angry, getting frustrated, becoming a ‘class clown’, gossiping, creating groups, etc. Whatever happens in that room, is a microuniverse. It will be a representation of what actually happens in the world. If you are one of those people in the room, the question is – how do you respond, what choices do you make, how do you navigate those situations.
When you take the time to reflect on what’s happening, you start seeing how you have responded to situations and how you have been interpreting the world around you. When you are not aware of these things, they still happen – they are simply happening unconsciously, in patterns that keep repeating themselves endlessly. Have you heard that saying that goes “no matter where you go, you will be there”? It means we can’t escape our pattern, reactions, view of the world, and perspective… unless we become aware of them and consciously change them.
If you find yourself in similar situations where you feel people are aggressive towards you, feeling unheard, getting frustrated and angry about things, someone is picking on you, or someone is getting you into trouble somehow…start paying more attention to your thoughts, emotions, feelings (that is, your interpretation of the emotions), interactions, choices, and everything that is you. Do your best to see yourself and your life from a third person’s point of view. Become an observer. When you are starting to learn how to become an observer, you will reflect on things that happened. Later on, as your self-awareness grows, you will be able to be an observer in real time, as things happen. When you become an observer, you are able to separate from your emotions and interpretation of the experience, instead you are able to see things in a neutral way, just as they are without adding or subtracting. You start uncovering your own patterns, your core beliefs, and your contribution (in the choices you’ve made) in every situation.
The point is not assigning blame, it’s taking self-responsibility for yourself. Have you heard “it takes two people to fight”? It means each person is fully responsible for their individual choice to get involved in the fight – it does not mean each share half the responsibility – both are fully responsible because each person is fully responsible for himself/herself. The same applies to everything in life. Granted, it is a struggle to accept responsibility for one’s actions when the other person is in the blame game – however, in this situations, you have to understand that accepting responsibility for yourself it’s exclusively about your own personal growth. The other person is responsible for their own choices and actions. No one can make someone take responsibility, only take their own.
Becoming aware of your microuniverse, is one of the steps to gain self-awareness of yourself. As you become more self-aware, your choices open up – you don’t need to react, instead you can take time to reflect and make better choices, act in a way that aligns with the person you want to be in the world. That’s why “if you want to change the world, change yourself first.”
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