Since awareness is a skill, it’s possible to engage in practices that will deepen and build increased proficiency. Expanded awareness brings increased success.
What are you aware of right now? The room temperature? The chair you’re sitting on? The sun shining through the window? The music that’s playing? The hum of the A/C?
Awareness practices require keen listening and observation.
- Listen to how others communicate. One way to do this is to shut up! Most of us blabber on and while faking listening. We are just waiting to talk. As you listen, pay attention to how people say what they want. Do they say what they want or what they don’t want. You can then choose the door you want to open…the want door or the don’t want
- Choose to read a variety of publications. What piques your awareness about what you read?
- Learn to formulate your opinions and understand your own awareness in the world, in your life, and in what you truly stand for. You don’t have to agree with what you read or listen to. Actually disagreeing with an author or newscaster or speaker helps heighten your awareness.
- Once a week, turn off the media. Escape the constant barrage and go to the beach or take a hike. Push all the constant chatter out of your mind and focus on the sound and sights around you.
Awareness is all-encompassing. It includes everything you are and all that you have experienced. It embraces everything you have ever thought and said or done. And, it embraces everything you have never though and said or done. Hidden potential is the richest reward of expanded awareness.
Awareness stimulates us to know and understand ourselves at levels we could never enjoy without a conscious and purposeful focus.