As adults we are often times beat
ourselves up for doing things because “we should have known better”. We can be really hard on ourselves when we
make a decision that we believe didn’t have a favorable outcome especially when
we think we should have known better.
Today I am asking you to let yourself off the hook just a little bit by helping
you to understand that there is a distinct difference between having an
awareness of something and knowing/having knowledge of something. I know that
it sounds very cliché to say that when you know better you do better, but this
is in fact a true statement.
Awareness is intellectual whereas
knowledge is experiential. Awareness is
simply that you have an idea or hold a concept in your mind about something.
Just because you have been told something doesn’t mean you know it. It matters not if you’ve been told this same
thing over and over again, that does not indicate that you know it. Awareness is the basis for knowledge but
should not be mistaken for knowledge. For example when you were a child you
were told not to touch the stove because it was hot. Your parents would go through great lengths
to keep you from touching the stove so as to prevent you from harming yourself,
right. They would say to you things like
“no no that’s hot” and as a toddler for a while you would even repeat it that
phrase out loud anytime you would come near the stove. In your mind you knew the stove was hot and
instinctively knew it was dangerous because of the cautionary tone in your
parent’s voices when they warned you to stay away. It wasn’t until you actually touched the stove
and experienced the sensation of hot that you actually had knowledge of what “hot”
meant.
Now let’s take this example
to the extreme and say that as a child you had never come in contact with
anything that was hot because your parents were somehow successful in keeping you
away from all things hot (I said extreme) but they had always warned you that
things were hot like fire, stoves, food, sun, sidewalks, drinks ok you get my
drift. Ok so now let’s say you’re 40ish
and you are ordering your first cup of coffee on your own ever and in all of
your excitement you drink it as soon as you are handed the cup and scorch your
tongue. What do you think your reaction will be aside from screaming and
cursing? It will likely be to say to
yourself I should have known better, right! Well how could you have KNOWN better if you had never experienced any
real effects of things that are hot even though you had been told things were
hot all of your life and knew that hot meant bad or could have some adverse
consequences should you come in contact with that sensation. Again I know this is an extreme example but I
think it helps me to illustrate my point perfectly about the difference between
awareness and knowledge.
I say all of this because
there are so many of us who are holding guilt and torturing ourselves behind
things that we didn’t know. Let me say
that age has nothing to do with knowledge only experience does. Just because your parents, teachers,
preachers, or president have told you something a thousand times doesn’t mean
you know it, it means you have an awareness of it. Using the coffee example again now that you
have had an actual experience with the sensation of hot you will use more
caution around all of those things you had been warned were hot all of your
life because you now KNOW what hot can do. So what you thought was a cliché: doing better
because you know better is in fact a truth. You will do better as you KNOW
better so lighten up on yourself.
P.S. And oh yeah that coffee
example can be applied to any situation in your life
Happy Loving xo
