Self-Awareness and Self-Compassion
BFNow Self-Study Module 1 – Overview
[This is part of the BFNow Self-Study section of this site. For more about this section, please look at About BFNow Self-Study and BFNow Self-Study Orientation.]
This an overview of what's in the module, how it connects to the rest of the material and recommendations for how to approach it.
A visual map for this module’s content
Here’s a diagram with the titles for each exploration page plus (some of) the linkages between them. I’ll add to this diagram for each module so you can stay oriented to how each page builds on those that went before.
Key Concepts and Terms
I’d like to offer you a set of key concepts and words that I encourage you to pay special attention to in this module. Many, but not all, of these are also in the titles of the exploration pages:
inner smile
sub-personalities
name them, claim them, love them, live them
proactive love
turn toward, be with, listen with empathy, act from your optimal zone
self-compassion
We will also be building on concepts from the Foundation Stones videos, including:
Optimal Zone (hOS Literacy Part 5)
upper parasympathetic nervous system (hOS Literacy Part 5)
defensive behaviors: projection, compensation, transference, displacement (hOS Literacy Part 5)
systems, territories and maps (Systems Literacy Part 1)
If you haven’t seen hOS Literacy Part 5 and Systems Literacy Part 1 yet, this would be a good time to do so.
Module 1 Explorations
Sub-Personalities – Exploration 2
Smile To Your Sub-Personalities – Exploration 3
Love Them, Live Them – Exploration 4
Be With Yourself – Exploration 5
PS – Why All This Personal Growth Stuff?
I sometimes get the question: “I thought this was a course about cultural change. Why all this personal growth stuff?” I’d like to elaborate here on of my thinking behind this.
We start with self-awareness and personal change for many reasons:
My experience is that the current constraint on many well-intentioned projects is the unacknowledged internal tensions that the people involved carry.
When you’re looking at things from a systems perspective, you discover that you are a part of the systems you want to change and you are frequently the part over which you have the most influence. It’s enormously helpful to become skillful in self-awareness and self-change as a way to accelerate system change.
You will be better at understanding and working with the inner dynamics in other people if you understand and can work with them in yourself first. To be effective, this needs to be grounded in experience, not just concepts.
All three harmonies – within, with others, with nature – are important for real cultural change but, for most of us, that means starting with the harmony within.
That said, I want to emphasize that for us, the inner work is just the beginning – just one part of a larger system and toolkit. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to look at BFNow Content to see the larger context within which we will be doing the personal work of the first three modules.