Cultivating awareness

Posted on February 08, 2013 by Bryan Engelbert, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it ~ Steven Pressfield The art of war

The emerging paradigm is of the creative leader, the person who is able to lead without others knowing that they are being led. This is not about power or influence this is about developing total awareness and self-actualizing our soul’s potential. This type of awareness comes as the creative process of accepting what we cannot change and changing what we can…our attitudes. As leaders our job is not to control or to influence, it is to BE the example for others which starts with becoming aware of ourselves and the world around us.
Here are some of my favourite tools for enhancing awareness:
1) Journaling
If you don’t already have a journal I highly recommend you get one. A journal will change your life in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. I write in my journal at least once per day. There are lots of ways to use a journal to develop awareness:
Writing an intention for the day within the first ten minutes of waking up in the morning. Brain research shows that pathways between your visual centers and executive centers are most open during this time. Use this time to journal what will be your primary focus of the day. This is NOT your to do list. This is your time to write out what you will be aware of for the day. For example…”Today I am smiling at every stranger I see” or “Today I am feeling grateful for the gift of friendship” or “Today I feel humorous”. Whatever intentions you choose make it present tense and positive. Then as your day goes on watch how your intentions start to reflect back to you. You start to notice strangers smiling back at you, you have an unexpected meeting with a close friend, you tell a really funny joke and the whole group laughs. It is amazing how transformed my world became when I started setting intentions in the morning.
At the end of the day as a summary of the day’s events. This is a good time to reflect back on your whole day with what you were feeling and why you were feeling it. You can record what thoughts you had at what moment or you can record a random act of kindness that you saw. This is your time to be TOTALLY honest with yourself. The benefit of writing out this summary is that you get to feel a sense of accomplishment for what you did get done, what you were aware of and what you are grateful for. Sometimes right away and other times over a few days it becomes easy to spot patterns of your own thought that you would like to change. For example I noticed that the nights when I went to bed after long hours on the computer my brain felt fried and I couldn’t journal the day’s activities chronologically. I got on a proper sleep schedule and my mental organization improved noticeably.
Whenever creativity strikes, if you are anything like me you love having all the solutions to any problem so when creative ideas hit you want to capture them. For this reason I try to always carry my journal with me. It is easy to say oh I will remember this but trust me writing it down when it hits and the circumstances around it will increase the likelihood of that solution being implemented and it will train your awareness to reward those creative insights thus making them more frequent.
2) Active listening
A skill shared by many leaders who have reached a high degree of awareness is being able to truly listen and understand a person. Not waiting for your turn to talk, not trying to solve their problems, but actively listening to their words and body language. Understand that this person is a reflection of an aspect of you and that understanding them will help you understand yourself. My favourite way to actively listen is to ask lots of thoughtful questions. A thoughtful question helps the person to explain something from an angle they may not have seen themselves and develop their own solutions. For example ask questions like; how would you solve that problem? Are there any other perspectives you could offer on the matter? What do you think his or her intentions were? What makes this an important issue for you personally? These questions will do two things it will train the people around you not to complain but to look for solutions within themselves and it will strengthen your relationships.
3) Hire a coach
Hands down the best thing you can do for your career and life as a whole. Working with a coach builds your awareness toward what it is you want to create in the world. Then they help you implement the necessary steps to create it. A coach is different from a mentor or a teacher. A mentor can show you their way, a teacher can show you someone else’s way, but a coach can show you your way. I worked with a coach for six sessions and I can’t even begin to tell you how helpful it was. It’s like having a regular meeting with that part of your brain that wants to give you everything you are dreaming of. I went from feeling lost and apathetic to feeling on course and purposeful. A few important things to look for in a coach are; experience in a related struggle or aspiration, testimonials from people looking to achieve the same thing you are, and finally chemistry between you and them during the consultation call.

The impact these tools have had on my awareness is amazing and I am so grateful having the opportunity to share them with you fellow emerging leaders. As I said earlier our job is to BE the example. We do not need inspiration or motivation; we need action and example of how to BE the change we want to see in the world. We need leaders who can encompass all of who they are in light and in darkness who will show us how to use our awareness in creative life enhancing ways.

Awareness Homework for RIGHT NOW:
Write out a) your vision of a transformed world in one page b) your top five strengths and an example of when you used each one. This will help you cultivate self-awareness which leads to mindful awareness.

“It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back” ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Written by Bryan Engelbert