You cannot consciously and purposefully change anything without being aware of it first. Awareness gives you power to choose your actions. It is perhaps the single most important aspect essential for personal growth.
The Learning Cycle
You may know this cycle of learning:
- Unconscious incompetence
- Conscious incompetence
- Conscious competence and
- Unconscious competence.
We start the process unaware of what we don’t know (unconscious incompetence). Then through guidance or insight we realise that we don’t know something. We discover we need to improve (conscious incompetence). This spurs us to learn and consciously apply our learning. Firstly in quite a crude and clumsy manner. Then with progressively more skill as our knowledge and experience develops (conscious competence). In time we act with great skill without paying conscious attention to our behaviour (unconscious competence). Then the process repeats, endlessly growing our skill base and competence. True growth never stops.
This is as true for our feelings and emotions as it is for our practical and intellectual skill. Emotional intelligence is an important part of our behavioural and relational repertoire. Awareness of how the body feels is a route into our state of being in this moment. We recognise tension, discomfort, relaxation or pleasure in the body. That tells us valuable information about how our body responds to this current situation. It takes practice to notice these feelings in the body rather than think about them and judge the reaction. There is great power in noticing how we feel without judgement. Then we are free to act from where we are emotionally.
We can then make a choice about whether this response serves us and the people around us. Mindfully we begin to take responsibility and make changes to alter the way we affect the outcome.
Awareness Applied to Public Speaking
Recently I had a public speaking engagement. I noticed myself getting nervous, tense and shallow breathing developing into panic behaviour. As soon as I realised it I began relaxing and deepening my breath which calms me down. I was able to deliver the talk without any difficulty. Previous experience tells me that left unchecked this panic reaction leads to ineffective communication, forgetting my lines and not interacting with the audience. As a consequence the attendees do not get what they came for. It was better for all that I noticed.
How awareness influences conversations
When we are having a conversation with someone, very often we pay attention to what is happening between us and them. Is the atmosphere calm and relaxed, charged and edgy, aggressive and threatening? That is one level of awareness. Another is noticing what is going on for the other person and how they are contributing to the environment. A third is how you are feeling and how you affect what is going on. Only by being aware of how you are feeling can you affect the space around you consciously. The onus is on you to notice and then take responsibility for your role in co- creating the outcome.
Body as Tool Kit for Awareness
Over to You
How do you use your body to be aware of your state? What do you find easy or struggle with about awareness? Do you use your awareness of your body to adapt how you are in situations like the public speaking one I described? Are you aware of how you use your body when you communicate with other people and yourself? I’d love to hear from you.
Pass it On
Think this article or the Moving Meditation Course might be useful for someone you know? Why not send them a link to the blog or forward them the details of the course? I’d really appreciate you spreading the word.