You might think that this article deals with a very new age topic. Consciousness is the basic ingredient for any change and therefore for personal development at 360 °. Let’s start with how to build self awareness. For me, being aware means being able to break away from a personal dimension and understand reality as it is.
How to build self awareness?
Awareness is like a muscle: it must be trained and maintained. Here is a list of 7 ways to expand your awareness:
You can do this by repeating the phrase “I want to expand my perception and awareness” several times a day or by writing it in your journal, adding to it any thoughts that come to mind. Keep reading: How to deal with toxic people at work?
Embrace the TRUTH
Accepting the truth makes you stronger, choosing falsehood weakens you. Always choose to face reality and to always tell the truth. Yes, there will be consequences in your relationships when you begin to always tell the truth, but the first to take advantage of it will be you in the dialogues you make with yourself . Once again your internal change will be reflected outside. There will probably be people, who in the past have become accustomed to half-truths, who will no longer want to be near you now that you are telling the truth, on the other hand you will have the opportunity to create new relationships based on sincerity with wonderful new people.
Act with COURAGE
Moving into action with courage increases your awareness, choosing cowardice lowers it. Everyday life gives you challenges in the form of “problems”. When you face your fears and get out of your comfort zone, fear vanishes and your problems turn into opportunities, but if you run away from your fears they will continue to grow.
Express COMPASSION
Compassion raises your awareness, cruelty destroys it. Compassion is the basis of unconditional love (the highest form of love) and the sense of connection with the whole world. A great way to expand your awareness is to look for signs of unconscious cruelty within you. Who or what can’t you bear or hate deeply?
Expand your KNOWLEDGE
First of all: know yourself. Use a journal to keep track of your life: what works and doesn’t work for you, what your thoughts are, what your moods are. Ask questions you can’t answer. Search for people with different points of view, bombard them with questions and find out what their representation of reality is.
Direct your ATTENTION
A distracted mind is a mind without power. Meditation is a great workout to learn to manage your mind. Sit in a comfortable position and dedicate only a few minutes to direct your attention to your breathing and let go of all other thoughts.
Take care of your ENERGY
Your body is the means by which you make all your experiences, but without energy, your awareness decreases dramatically. Consciously choose which food you put into your body, as it has an enormous influence on your energy level. Keep your body and your motor intelligence in motion with regular movement. Learn to recognize when you have energy drops and learn how to restore your energy quickly.
We used to say that awareness is like a muscle and like any muscle that is atrophied when you want to bring it back into shape, I have to reactivate it gradually: you can’t expect to go to the gym and on the first day lie on the bench and raise a 180 kg barbell. I get you a stretch and it’s very likely that you won’t go back to the gym for a while … 😉
Analyze the 7 areas listed (Intention, Truth, Courage, Compassion, Knowledge, Attention and Energy) and choose the one where you feel weakest and decide that for 30 days you want to take a micro-step out of your comfort zone every day. It doesn’t take much, but it’s important that you do it every day.
WHY should you increase your awareness?
Awareness is the condition necessary (but not sufficient) for any change: how can you think to change a situation, if you are not able to correctly perceive what is the current status?
The first step to go somewhere is to decide not to stay in the same place. – John Pierpont Morgan Tweet
A person with a high awareness has the ability to:
- Take decisions weighted, intelligent and deliberate
- Maintain a positive emotional state regardless of the circumstances
- Choose and develop empowering beliefs and eliminate depression
- Learn to know the “monkey”, that is to learn how your brain works, the mechanism of your mental processes, what makes your emotions and your behaviors unleash
- Focus on the important things, while you set aside distractions
Create an accurate model of reality
We all possess these abilities at a more or less developed level. School and traditional education do not help us much to develop our awareness: they do not teach us how to make the most important decisions in our lives, how to increase one’s motivation and self-esteem, how to recognize if one’s beliefs are useful to the goals we have chosen.
People with a very low awareness often make inconclusive and little-focused reasoning, make inaccurate observations, worry about things that are not important, have beliefs that do not help them and live in negative moods, which generate a devastating pessimism, of which they do not even realize. Typically “they follow the flock”, they do not like to take risks and shun responsibility. When you talk to one of these people, the question spontaneously comes to you: ” But are you doing it or are you there? ” I’m sure you also know at least one person you recognize in these characteristics.
On the other hand, people with a high awareness have mastery of their mind: their way of thinking is lucid and they deliberately decide what to direct their thoughts to. They have control over their emotions, knowing how to recognize them and how to channel them and change them. When you talk to them it is typical to experience a sense of clarity and be stimulated by their conversations. These people live proactively, they are emotionally resilient, they want to change the circumstances rather than be victims. They show courage and compassion and know that this way of being is what we were born for.
BENEFITS of increased awareness
The benefits of greater awareness are multiple and very powerful, it is not easy to categorize them because they are all interconnected with one another since the increase of one influences the second, which in turn gives further benefits to the first:
Greater sensory acuity
As you expand your awareness all your senses expand their perception and allow you to capture a whole series of signals that you didn’t even know existed before. This allows you to create a much more accurate map of your reality. Moreover it causes several enormous beneficial cascading effects, such as greater happiness, as you are able to better perceive what you like and what you do not; better state of health as you are able to perceive what your body needs and to distinguish between what is good for it and what is not; more rewarding relationships, as you are able to better interpret the mood of those around you and perceive the subtle signals of body language.
Greater ability to perceive oneself in an objective way.
Greater mental clarity
When you begin to address one of your weaknesses, such as your financial well-being and decide to change some of your beliefs, at first you seem to understand nothing (you don’t know what is correct to eat, how to prepare dishes, etc), you find yourself lost and in a state of confusion, but if you continue on your journey outside your comfort zone, you will then make a quantum leap of awareness, thanks to which you will have much greater clarity thanks to the new convictions you have made yours.
Greater discipline
The ability to have greater mental clarity and to be able to direct one’s thoughts, from enormous advantages to the level of your discipline.
Greater inner peace
When you increase your awareness and start to direct your thoughts and control your emotions, you become much more balanced and what happens inside you is also reflected in your external reality.
Share your experiences in the comments!
