Diana Montalion on Metacognition and Self Awareness:
If I were forced to recommend only one practice for improving thinking, I’d pick this one. But 5:00am journaling doesn’t work for everyone. At different stages of my life, different self awareness practices have worked — meditation, yoga, therapy and long hikes in the wilderness for example. Gandhi spun thread. When cultivating self awareness, what matters is practice , not the framework you use to implement it.
Epictetus on a Stoic meditation from the Enchiridion:
In everything which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved, remember to add this to the (description, notion); what is the nature of each thing, beginning from the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken, you will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.