Awareness: How to react less and respond more
The last time you were sitting in a job interview, answering questions and engaging with your potential next employer, did you take note of what was running through your mind? Did you feel your heart beating faster than usual? Or did you notice your feet tapping the floor nervously? Maybe yes, maybe no. It all depends on your level of awareness.
In simple terms, awareness refers to the state of consciousness. It is your conscious capacity to pay attention to the moment; the degree to which you can perceive what is happening within and around you.
We can think of it like the aperture of a camera. Aperture is the hole in the lens that controls how much light gets in. The smaller the hole, the less light that gets in. The bigger the hole, the more light. Awareness works the same way. When we have limited awareness, it means there is only a small amount of information that enters our conscious mind. Much gets omitted because there isn’t enough light, so to speak, for us to see more broadly. When we have a means of expanding our awareness, it means more comes into view.
In life, this means we have a greater vantage point over what is taking place in our current experience. With greater awareness comes the ability to have a more refined, expansive and evolutionary response and the begin shifting our experiences and interactions to ones that feel uplifting and positive, rather than full of friction and disconnection.
Imagine you’re having a difficult conversation with your partner. Words are exchanged and in the heat of the moment, the aperture of your awareness contracts, blocking you from having conscious attention on the sensations in your body or the thoughts running through your mind. Before you know it, you’re spewing out some harsh words and have a full-blown argument on your hands. Unable to be present to the fullness of the experience, we move into a reactionary state of mind, one that prioritizes self-protection and victory over shared experience and growth.
For any change to take place, there must first be awareness. You can’t change what you can’t see, right?
If you’re noticing friction or discord in areas of your life, the very first step is to begin practicing your capacity to expand your awareness. One of the very best ways to do this is with a daily Vedic meditation practice. Daily Vedic meditation opens us up to the expanse of our own minds, giving us greater perception of our internal experience, and that around us. Each time we meditate we get to turn our attention inwards and experience the vastness of our own internal world. It’s much like opening the aperture on a camera – we gradually widen the lens so that we can take in more information. More information equips us with increased knowledge on how we are feeling, how another person might be feeling, what might be taking place in a situation and therefore – and this is the really important bit – how we can best respond.
If you want a more expansive experience of life, work and your relationships, you must first start by expanding your awareness. Here are two more ways we can build awareness into your everyday– try them out and see how you go.
1 Pause before reacting
Take notice of your breathing, emotions and thoughts towards a situation/person.
Identify what triggers you. This helps in drawing similar behavioural patterns in the future.
2 Practice daily self-reflection at the start and end of your day.
Taking time to take inventory of your thoughts, emotions, speech and actions can help you notice the ways you react in day to day life. Questions you can start asking yourself:
Start: How do I want my day to be like?
End: How was my day?
Start: What are the 3 things I want to achieve today?
End: Did I manage to achieve what I set for myself today? What did I do well today?
Building an expansive state of awareness takes time. It’s a gradual unfolding, not something we switch on overnight. But when we devote ourselves to its unfoldment, we slowly start to notice more light come in, and this light infuses higher wisdom into every area of our lives.
If you’re ready to expand your awareness every day with a daily meditation practice, book a discovery call to find out more, or check out our upcoming Vedic meditation courses and dive in.