From Knowledge towards Awareness

The soles of your shoes shall tell you the quality of balance in your walk. Important is to notice it consciously.

I have a friend who is into health and fitness. Another one is all about Robotics and Automation. Everyone has an area of interest. If you notice someone for a while, if you look closely, you can define a person pretty much in a word or two. Interestingly, if that word matches with yours, you can have an extraordinary bonding.

Now, how to know a person?

To know someone in a scientific way, Dan McAdams, a professor at Northwestern University, states that, "there are "three levels of knowing" someone. Level 1 is a description of a person's broad, general traits, such as shy, outgoing, intelligent, or warm someone is. Level 2 provides a description of an individual's personal concerns - descriptions of personal striving, life tasks, strategies of defense and coping, and similar matters that involve the specific times, places, and endeavors of the person's life. Level 3 is the identity. As one moves from Level 1 (general traits) to Level 2 (Personal Concerns), one moves from the psychology of a stranger to a more detailed and nuanced description of a flesh-and-blood, in-the-world person, striving to do things over time, situated in place and role, expressing herself or himself in and through strategies, tactics, plans, goals, and so on...Then what is missing? The answer stems from the..mindset of...individuals [who] are expected to create selves that develop over time and that define who they are...what is missing is identity."

Pretty scientific, han?!!

Do I have to be a psychologist or a psychoanalyst to know someone - And because I always talk about focusing on self - to know and become aware of myself?

We can do this - finding individual's word. For example, I think India's word for so long have been RELIGION and CAST, America's word have been POWER, Japan's word have been IMPROVEMENT. Likewise, you can find a word which fits your character (please mind that I have not said personality).

How to find this word? How to become cognizant?

It's very simple - Put a reminder for every hour to bring you back to the present moment. Once you are in here-and-now, ask yourself these questions -

1. What was I just thinking (about)?

2. Can those thoughts enhance my life and my standards?

3. Can those thoughts increase peace and add balance to my life?

4. If answer to questions 2 & 3 is no, Can I replace these thoughts and thought patterns with better ones which are, necessarily, assertive?

This can definitely help you become mindful of your unconscious and sub-conscious habits which you can improve for your betterment. Out of on an average 60,000 thoughts a day, even if we become conscious about 1//10th of those, imagine the quality of difference we can make in our lives within one year. Thoughts are food of our mind. And you are constantly feeding it whether you want it or not, whether you are watchful or not. People are becoming more and more health conscious. It's equally important to become thought conscious, mind conscious.

Habit of self-awareness takes you to the habit of self-improvement. The first step towards change/ improvement is knowledge. The second step is awareness.

What do you want to feed your mind? And what are you feeding? I hope only positive and creative thoughts. Are you a fearless dreamer? Tell me - which thinking is better - a) I'm all right as long as I'm not sad, Or b) I'm very happy and I contribute same to the world ?

Get up and smile. Still there is hope of better future because this world has got you.

Here are some quotes on awareness, just to emphasize its importance:

Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradles.

- Virginia Wolf

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

- Abraham Maslow

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

- Helen Keller

Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions.

- Stephen Covey

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

- Unknown (to me)