I learned the coolest thing about Self Awareness on Friday and I wanna share it with you.
Hope you’ve all had a relaxing, rejuvenating weekend and you took time out to do something for yourself. I actually slept in this morning. I’d completely forgotten that I’d turned off my Sunday morning alarm and woke up 20 minutes after I was supposed to meet my good friend Stu for training. Thankfully he was amused and happy to head home and spend the rest of his anniversary with his wife. I obviously needed the sleep but to be honest I’m still feeling pretty shite about letting him down because I hate being that person. I always try to be early for appointments and follow through when I commit.
I hate to be late, never mind not show up at all.
Early is on time and on time is late — someone said that to me once a long time ago and it really stuck with me.
Anyway today I wanted to talk about self awareness around out behaviours and this great scale I learned about which starts at having no control, being frustrated and blaming others on one end, to being conscious and in full control at the other.
Now you may wonder why it matters, but think about how your responses to loved ones differ when you get home when you have a shitty day at work and when you‘ve had an epic day at work. Our nearest and dearest are usually the ones who bear the brunt of a bad mood because they are usually an easy target and for the most part we know that they’ll still love us.
But we do have to consider how our reactions affect our relationships with others. I know I’ve snapped at my kids before when they’ve come to ask me a question and I’ve been wrapped up and stressed out on a project. Which goes completely against my values as a person because these kids are the most important people in my life.
Here’s my interpretation of how this scale works…
Well the beginning of the scale is External and Unaware, meaning you’re unconsciously blaming anything and everything for your problems and frequently living in a state of frustration and blame.
Then we move to External and Aware which is where you’re still blaming anything and everything for your problems but you at least know that you’re doing it.
Then we move to Passive Awareness where we begin to take ownership of our behaviours and start to accept the effect they have on ourselves and those around us.
Conflicted Awareness is where there’s still a tendency to assign blame when things don’t go right. You tend to feel conflicted about whether to blame others or blame yourself, but you’re still living in a blame environment.
Burdened Awareness is where you’ve ceased to blame others and you’re full on blaming yourself, everything is your fault and you feel the burden of that blame, let it hold you back or use it as a shield to hide behind.
The next step is Active Awareness, where you begin to realise that everything cannot possibly be your fault no matter what the circumstances and you understand that there is a way you can move forward and take control without the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Then it gets really interesting as you get to Active Improvement. You’re over blaming others and yourself for the way your life is going and you start to actively seek out ways you can improve yourself and move forward. You take responsibility for your actions without assigning blame and you begin to feel free.
And finally we get to Proactive Awareness. This is when we are totally aware of how our actions and behaviours affect ourselves and those around us. We are grateful for life opportunities, we are proactive in creating a life that is in sync with our values and beliefs, where we are in full control of living our best life.
I found this completely fascinating because I can totally relate to each step on that scale. I’ve worked really hard to get from living a lot in burdened awareness, where I’d blame myself for the actions and decisions of others, to the point of almost feeling incapacitated with the burden. To now being in between the last 2 stages, active improvement and proactive awareness where I’m working to take full ownership in a real way and letting go of stuff which no longer serves me so that I can live my best life and give my best to those who matter most in my world.
So my thought for you today is to
Think about how your actions and behaviours are affecting your relationships at home and at work.
If you’re happy with where you are or if you’d like to grow these relationships further.
If you’re a person who likes personal growth, which I’m assuming you are if you’re listening, to work out where you are on the scale of awareness currently, and think about how you can take action to move forward from lack of awareness to awareness to total awareness.
The reason I learned this in the first place is because I’m working on a secret squirrel project to bring better workplace wellness to the world. That’s going be launching real soon, and I can wait to share it all with you when its ready.
Stay Fearless
Sare
