Self-Awareness & Introspection

 Self-awareness allows you to self-correct.

How do we build self-awareness? There are many ways — but I’d like to mention a few that have stuck with me.

If you’ve just had a bad day, the default behavior is to want to forget about it as soon as you can, to avoid any detail that might remind you of the experience, to either close yourself in your private space and distract yourself away or get out to seek outside distraction, bad or good for you, to do whatever you can to forget.

But, that isn’t how we build self-awareness. Quite the contrary, self-awareness requires you to precisely go against your default or conditioned behavior. Your conditioned response, firstly, is to avoid pain. Secondly, to protect your ego from being attacked, and thirdly, to avoid challenge. But, without self-awareness we tend to repeat mistakes and bad days. 

Self-awareness, that humble, curious, and persistent attitude within every person is actually there to support and guide us away from avoidable mistakes — it is there to ask the confronting, painful questions very few are ready to face:

Self-awareness will ask you:

• Apart from what he or she did to you, what did YOU do that led to this mistake or bad day?
• Apart from what you were not given, what did YOU do or not do to make things better for yourself?
• Yes, people are selfish, but why did you trust another person more than you trusted yourself?
• Yes, money and jobs are scarce, but what skills have you developed to make yourself better than you were last month?

You get the point. And the point is that a humble and curious attitude allows you self-correct and therefore improve yourself, regardless of how bad or hopeless the situation has become.

A humble and curious attitude enables you to examine, persistently, the bad days as they come.

A humble and curious attitude encourages you to turn pain into strength, loss into opportunity, defeat into progress.

Self-awareness allows you to self-correct.

Cancelo Alvarez

The Challenge of Personal Finance

A Reflection on Healthy Choices

By Cancelo Alvarez

This past weekend, I once again examined my personal finances. After five years of reading and self-development, I’ve finally grasped the root challenge people face with money management. It’s the same challenge people face in looking after their mental and physical well-being.

As Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Traveled, we all have a healthy self and a sick self. And because life is designed with an inevitable end, many have adopted the sick self, almost as a way of damning existence. They’ve given up on living with purpose, values, or a positive outlook amidst the certainty of death.

However, unlike mental or physical well-being, neglecting your financial well-being hits you immediately. Let me explain. Skipping exercise this week won’t make you unfit, skipping a book won’t lead to a lack of inspiration, and skipping deep breathing won’t lead to disaster. But skipping your savings this week will leave you unprepared for an emergency months later. Buying fast food today ensures you’ll have fewer resources in the kitchen in a couple of days.

In other words, financial decisions are among the most critical choices you’ll make. They determine whether you live in poverty or tranquility.

Four Essentials for Managing Personal Finance

As you reflect on these, think about how far you’ve come with each—and feel free to share any strategies you’ve found helpful.

1. Investments: Are you building investments that will one day replace your salary?
   Think of real estate, shares in stocks, or even side hustles that gradually grow over time.
2. Income: Do you have a reliable income from valuable skills you’ve developed?
3. Savings: Are you saving aggressively? Are you saving at all?
4. Expenses: Do you track your spending? Do you know how much you’re spending on recurring expenses each month?

Many struggle financially because they neglect one or two of these essentials, usually savings and investments, and then wonder why they never have enough to live the life they want.

Investments are hard because they require sacrificing instant gratification. Instead of buying a new car or wardrobe, you put that money into something that grows over time. Savings are equally difficult because life’s unexpected turns can always shake your discipline. Yet, in the long run, those who save and invest consistently find themselves more successful and secure.

Ultimately, it’s not just about surviving—it’s about thriving financially, by making every decision today a step toward your future freedom. So, which of these essentials are you mastering, and which ones still need work? 

Brave Enough to Grow

Reading Time: 1 minute

• 300 words

---

It is exceedingly hard and uncomfortable to point out and address one’s weaknesses—yet it is strangely tempting, even enjoyable, to point out the weaknesses of others.

How do we find balance between these two extremes? I propose a simple mental habit, especially for those who desire growth over pretense.

If you are reading these words, it means that you are human. Unlike animals, which cannot read or be taught to do so, humans possess unique abilities. As humans, we share specific strengths and weaknesses. Somewhere within all of us lies the potential to excel—whether as public speakers, inventors, or individuals capable of resilience after failure. Likewise, buried within us are the roots of envy, bitterness, and other negative traits that trouble the human heart.

Recognizing this shared humanity can lead to a profound realization: The weaknesses we identify in others often mirror weaknesses within ourselves.

Here is a habit I propose for those brave enough to try it:

When you identify a weakness in a friend or stranger, immediately ask yourself: In what way is this very weakness inherent in me? In other words, how am I, like my friend or this stranger, also unaware of my own shortcomings—whether it’s bad breath, poor food choices, or a negative reaction to feedback?

This habit offers solid benefits: It increases awareness of our own weaknesses, reduces the tendency to criticize others, and fosters a deeper appreciation for our shared human experience. We are all connected, revolving together on this large globe called Earth, suspended in the vastness of the universe.

Cancelo Alvarez

Broken Teachers, Broken Students

Reading Time. 1.5 minutes

• 345 words

---

 "When teachers are confused and uninspired — they will contribute to the general failure and complacency rate."

I wrote an article dedicated to Your Environment last month. The aim of this article was to emphasize that ‘education’ in a destructive, stagnant environment can easily turn to dust and a badge of shame.

Think about this, our parents, to make a living, have to choose a career, and usually the most readily available careers are government-run, such as nursing, security, and teaching. A parent is fundamentally a human who’s either consciously decided to get a child or unconsciously brought one into the world through lack of awareness. Therefore a parent is also a child with great responsibility to raise another child. A parent is a child because they are still learning about life, making mistakes, fighting their fears, filled with uncertainty, and more.

A person who is turned into teacher because they’ve met the system requirements but has no love or inclination for teaching is an exceedingly harmful person to the youth and to the glory of mankind. I shivered when this dawned into my mind — that, some of my school teachers were actually parents at home. Parents who were failing at parenting. Parents who are overweight because they are greedy around food, parents who are in debt because they are frivolous with money, parents who are mean and bitter because they’ve been hurt and betrayed by their romantic partners. In other words, parents who contribute, rather than reduce, to the confusion and the trauma transferred onto the youth.

I cannot help but strongly believe that had I been educated in a closed-environment by one or two dedicated mentors I would have thrived during my teenage years compared to this shuffling exposure to many uninspired teachers.

Children and teenagers are faced with a lot of challenges; poor parenting, destructive environments, peer pressure, self-doubt — but what’s frequently ignored is the added confusion and bitterness they get from teachers who are utter failures in their personal lives!

Home school your child, is my conclusion.

Cancelo Alvarez

 

Rising Above Financial Struggles

Reading time: 2 minutes

• 350 words

---

You shouldn’t have time to complain about life being hard. You should be busy getting physically stronger, mentally sharper, financially in a better place, building relationships with loyal friends who have your back, taking smart risks and investing in your future freedom. 

How to Improve Financially When It Feels Like You've Tried Everything

Many people feel stuck financially, convinced they've exhausted all options—school, job applications, even going door-to-door in search of work. When nothing seems to work, it's easy to believe that no one values your skills or what you can offer. But often, the biggest barrier isn't the lack of opportunities; it's a negative outlook and a pessimistic view of oneself and the world.

Before blaming external factors, reflect inwardly: Are you holding onto negativity and desperation? I've been there, and this mindset never worked. What did work was maintaining a positive attitude, having hope in myself, and committing to self-improvement.

Focus on Self-Improvement

1. Wellness: Exercise to combat stress and negativity caused by financial pressure. Meditation helps clear pessimistic thoughts, revives gratitude which creates space for resilience. 

2. Learning: Read to uplift your spirit and develop skills that open new doors, even if they start small.

3. Networking: Reach out, start conversations, ask questions, and offer support. Rejection is part of the process, but each connection brings new chances.

I once spent months applying to companies in distant cities, only to discover through a chance conversation that a company just 10 minutes away was hiring over 100 participants—and they needed someone like me. Had I been too afraid to speak to a stranger, I would have missed that chance entirely.

Rise Above Desperation

"If you find yourself filled with the anger and desperation of smothering poverty, you have to rise above it to communicate your hope. You have to reach inside yourself and find your sense of self-worth and your belief that you can and will do better. Then you have to reach out and communicate that belief." — Kent Nerburn, Simple Truths

Financial struggles can be overwhelming, but the key is to keep believing in yourself and taking action. Focus on what you can control: your mindset, skills, and interactions. With positivity and relentless effort, you'll be better positioned to seize opportunities that arise. 

Cancelo Alvarez 

The Inner Duel

 Reading Time: 1 minute

• 223 words

---

People get offended by many things when they are insecure: you are not poor because millionaires exist, you are not unpopular because good-looking people exist, you are not average because smart, talented people exist. You are the product of your training, efforts, risk-taking. — Orange Book

It’s You vs You. Truly, it is. You win the Gold medal not because you did better than everyone on the day of the performance, but because of your dedicated, deliberate preparation vs lousy, unguided training, because of your sincere commitment to small improvements of your strengths and weaknesses vs an indifferent attitude to either or both, because of your willingness to compete in the first place vs your resistance to challenge!

It is You vs You because you possess a Healthy Self and a Sick Self. For ages and ages it has always been that way. The two polarities you see around you: good vs evil, love vs hate, loss vs gain, tears vs laughter, etc. are all taking place within you also, and they compete for your attention.

The trick, therefore, to doing well is first accepting that you are both Sick and you are both Healthy. You are capable of being extremely sick if you choose to think so, and you are capable of being almost flawlessly healthy if you commit yourself to that also.

And secondly is it realizing that whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into — is largely dependent on which Self you feed minutely.

Cancelo Alvarez

Celebrating Our Similarities

• Reading Time: 2 minutes
  • 370 Words

---

 I discovered people are alike in many more ways than they are different.

I was heavily influenced by Morgan Housel when he wrote, “The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.”

In my early teenage years, I relocated to a more crowded environment, and in this large community, it seemed to me that people were convinced of how special they are—egotistical, indifferent, and insensitive to others. You see this in the levels of liquor and substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, crime, and the stagnation of adults. I strongly believe these individuals have willfully refused to study and learn about others. They’ve convinced themselves they know it all.

Worse, if they don’t know something, pointing it out only irritates them.

In such communities, where most believe themselves unique and special, you often find the most ordinary, wretched, and ignorant. They are ordinary because they follow what their friends or neighbors suggest; wretched because they lack the discipline to forge a new path, conforming instead and growing bitter; and ignorant because they repeat the same cowardly and selfish mistakes that shaped their upbringing.

Only when people begin to study humanity—the intricate, machine-like mind, the triumphs and failures of the past—do they become, not necessarily unique, but authentic, original, and daring. Only then do they appreciate the similarities between one another, not to lament over, but to celebrate strengths, alleviate weaknesses, and find a healthy balance between pleasure and purpose.

Cancelo Alvarez