The Power of Awareness.
Why People with Developed Self-Awareness Can Do Things Others Can’t.
“To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do.”
— Vironika Tugaleva
Author and meditation teacher, Mukesh Mani, often shares simple anecdotes on awareness. In one such illustration, he told a story of a monk walking along a road when he heard the sound of a horse approaching. He then turned to see a man on a horse quickly coming his way. When the man reached the spot where the monk was standing, the monk asked the man, “Where are you going?”. The man said, “I don’t know, ask the horse.”
On more than one occasion I have driven myself to my office and, only after parking my car, realized that I have no real memory of the drive I’ve just had. I am like the man on the horse, passive on my own journey, relying on muscle memory to take me to places I may not even be interested in going, but for which I have no better alternative destination in mind. A different destination would take a lot of conscious effort, requiring a bit of personal agency, and a whole lot of calories I’d prefer not to burn in the process.
Our brains have developed this wonderful capability of automating most of the routines of our lives. It saves time and energy, allowing us to brush our teeth without having to think about measuring the amount of toothpaste we need, so that we may direct our attention to more important matters. It allows us to steer the car, sip our coffee, talk on the phone, and make lunch plans all at the same time. We are able to complete many tasks each day, such as my typing this article without having to think about where any of the letters are on my keyboard, through the sophistication of our muscle memories, fueled, in part, by the habit center of our brains. What a gift!
Unfortunately, it’s not a gift we use particularly well. As our lives have become increasingly modernized and automated, we’ve progressively put more and more of our conscious thought away and let habits and routine dictate our lives. It isn’t just the awareness of driving and teeth-brushing that has been taken offline; it’s the bulk of our entire lived experience. This personal automation, and the reactivity that it fuels, leads to a host of professional and personal problems which leave us feeling defensive, unsatisfied, angry, and disappointed. As Carl Jung once said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
As I write about in my book, “The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence” we have an awareness crisis. A comprehensive study written published by Tasha Eurich concluded that 95 percent of people believe they are self-aware, but only 10 to 15 percent of people actually are. The reasons for this are extensive and complex, as I explore in detail in my book. But, if I were to summarize the awareness crisis into one category it would be, we’ve all gone to sleep to ourselves and each other.
The ancient typology and personal growth system, ‘The Enneagram’, can help us rediscover the parts of ourselves that are hidden in the shadows of our own awareness – the parts we have obscured from consciousness because they were too painful to acknowledge, confront, or allow others to see. Most emotional awareness approaches involve directing our attention to changing what is already known and ignoring the depths of what is unknown in us. Building our awareness, however, is predicated upon discovering our why’s… why we lose our temper… why we suffer from crippling self-doubt… why we get stuck in worse-case-scenario thinking… why we lack self-control, struggle with inertia, compare ourselves to others, withdraw from others, make regrettable decisions, feel misunderstood, and so much more that we often wish we could change but can’t, because we don’t really know why or what to do about it.
Building our awareness begins by connecting with our own unconscious motivations Through the process of self-discovery, we have the opportunity to reconnect with our authentic personhood—our often-hidden desires, repressed emotions, unmet needs, and the self-limiting stories that interfere with our ability to be our best selves. Doing this requires readiness and courage to face all of the difficult feelings that may surface in the process, as we experience why we covered up these parts of ourselves in the first place. I encourage you to get the guidance and support of a coach or a therapist to help guide you on this journey and process any negatively-experience emotions that come with building authentic, comprehensive awareness so that you can learn what these emotions are trying to communicate to you without pushing them away, which is the antithesis of awareness. Our emotions are a profound source of insight that must be understood and leveraged in every facet of our lives. Part of the growth work I lay out in my book includes learning to step into the language and experience of emotion in every area of our lives.
People who do this work of developing comprehensive self-awareness which includes reconnecting with our physical feelings, emotions, and the often-untrue stories we carry that frame our perceptions, are exponentially more impactful, happier, and more satisfied than those who don’t do this work. If you’re new to this work, here are a few simple things you can put into practice right away (there are many others). Give them a try and see what comes up for you after a few weeks of practice:
3. https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it
Building Awareness of Your Physical Feelings
Do a Body Scan each morning. With your eyes closed, take a few deep, cleansing breaths. Then slowly direct your attention to the top of your head. What do you notice? Is there any tension there? From there, direct your attention to your face and then down to your neck and shoulders. What do you notice there? Continue directing attention down through your torso, legs, and feet. Do this practice with openness and curiosity. What do you notice?
Reconnecting With Your Emotions:
Build your emotional vocabulary by getting a Feelings Wheel and/or an Emotions Thesaurus and setting it on your desk, or having it up on your monitor, then naming aloud whichever emotions you are feeling several times throughout the day. Like the Body Scan, do this with openness and curiosity. What are your emotions telling you? The stronger and more negatively experienced emotions hold the most information.
Thinking About Thinking:
As you learn to distinguish between physical feelings and emotions, reflect on the frames you hold up to situations with openness and curiosity. Keep a journal and make a short entry each day that includes observations about any stories and beliefs that are sitting behind your biggest and most uncomfortable emotions that day. Ask yourself questions such as, “What am I believing about me, them, or this situation?” “Is it accurate?” “What if I’m not right?” “What would my future self want me to know?”
People with developed awareness can do things that other simply can’t. When we courageously commit to living mindfully and exploring our inner depths in order to live more honest and rewarding lives, we increase our optionality. Instead of allowing the proverbial horse to determine where we go each day, we reclaim agency over own path. We begin to wake-up and show-up in our own lives in ways that we simply haven’t before. This type of awareness moves us out of the reactivity of automation and into thoughtful intentionality. The impacts can be profound if you’re ready to take control of your own horse.
