Before we move to build our self-awareness muscles, we needed to fill our toolkit with self-compassion. As we become more aware of how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others, having self-compassion enables us to not get trapped in negative, ruminative cycles.
nnnnIn the section on self-compassion, we created some space in our minds for a different reality or experience than our current reality or that of our past. By viewing ourselves differently, with compassion, not ever-present criticism, we’ve now made room in our minds to build upon our self-awareness.
nnnnThrough this self-awareness module, as you notice yourself starting to pile in to beating yourself up, you now have some simple tools and exercises that you can deploy to circuit break any negative self-talk loop. This will be particularly helpful as we move through the self-awareness exercises within this module.
nnnnWhat is self-awareness?
nnnnIt’s how you perceive yourself and how conscious you are of all your internal processes.u00a0Thought; both conscious and subconscious. Emotions; what is it that you’re feeling in any given moment? Again, emotion can be triggered by subconscious thought processes, but can also be altered by what you consume. This makes self-awareness of physical senses important. What am I feeling physically? Am I aware of all the goings on inside my body? Knowing I am tired or sick or tight or stressed; all of these states are important to know as they all impact wellbeing and decision making. They also impact my relationships.
nnnnNot only knowing my internal state, but self-awareness extends to my physical environment. Call it situational awareness; building muscles in your mind and body to give you a better kinetic connection to your environment can help to keep you and your loved ones safe. Having studied the Japanese martial art Ninjutsu for over 10 years, part of that training was focused on identifying what is occurring around you that is not normal. You neednu2019t try to sense all of the goings on around you, as this would require too much of your attentional capacity, but simply keeping your sensory antenna up to identify what is out of the ordinary. This acts as an early warning system for your awareness.
nnnnThe other part of self-awareness is how I am perceived by others. Why this is important is that it’s very easy to become trapped in a world where my own perceptions of self are all that matters to me. This often leads to a sense of detachment from reality. It’s often the people around me that keep me grounded. By receiving regular, solicited feedback from selective people around you, you become more attuned to how you occur to others which helps to check whether your self-perceptions are consistent with the perceptions of others. When you hear someone say u201che has no self-awarenessu201d, this is the perception that they are referring to. It is a very common complaint heard describing ineffective leadership. As a leader, it is important to bring people with you on the decisions that you make. If you have little awareness of the perceptions of others, this task becomes very difficult.
nnnnSo how does building self-awareness help me?
nnnnFirstly, itu2019ll bring us closer to honesty. Being honest with ourselves will make clearing emotional attachments more powerful. This is because through our honest ownership of our emotional experience, we uncover perspectives that had remained hidden to us. This often allows for u201cahau201d moments accompanied by the experience of gratitude. Honesty makes us look reality in the eye and to deal with whatu2019s so; not to pretend that the reality in front of us is something that it is not.
nnnnSecondly, and more specifically, self-awareness will enable us to find space between reaction and response. This will create the opportunity for us to regulate how we perceive the world, how we communicate and how we ultimately engage with the world. Self-awareness will prepare us for the next step in our program, self-regulation.
nnnnLastly, increased self-awareness allows me to breathe when there’s tension and it frees me to accept reality as it is and not to fight it. This relates to the idea of removing attachments. Attachments are simply ideas of how the future or how the present and the future should be as opposed to accepting how the present is and allowing the future to unfold. You can influence, but you can’t control. Being committed to a certain future, but not attached.
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