Awareness

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Starting Up Your Own Self Detective Agency
Part 10 - Awareness

It may seem obvious, but we will say it nonetheless:

With awareness you are likely to create more choices in your life
Without awareness you are likely to repeat the same actions, the same thoughts, the same emotions over and over again
With constant, ongoing awareness you are likely to grow and develop and change – and hopefully flourish
With constant, ongoing unawareness you are likely to stay the same

Q: What would you say you are most aware of in your life?

Q: What would you say you are least aware of in your life?

Johari window

Johari window is a great way to visualise which areas to focus on in order to improve your self-awareness.
Within four different windows there are four different versions of yourself, each with varying degrees of self-knowledge and shared knowledge.

Following on from the explanation above, we invite you to use your own personal Johari window in order to make notes and add to every time you make a breakthrough in your understanding of yourself.

My Johari window

MY PUBLIC SELF	MY PRIVATE SELF

MY HIDDEN SELF	MY UNKNOWN SELF

Blind spots

A blind spot in physical terms refers to a part of our eye that cannot see.
A blind spot in psychological terms refers to a reality that we cannot see (or refuse to see).
There are a number of reasons why this may be.
One of the biggest causes of blind spots comes when our own values and beliefs and experiences cloud our thinking and our judgements.
Another reason is the fear of what we might see, coupled with the perceived threat to our very being if we find out that things aren’t quite how we thought they were.

Just like a roulette wheel, we all have a bias towards certain areas; sometimes this is fine and at other times it can cause problems in our lives.

One interesting aspect of blind spots is that we are good at spotting other people’s apparent blindness to reality, but less so for our own selves.

Yet there is every chance that through investing more time in yourself, you will overcome these blind spots and get to a place where you are not threatened by what is really going on in your world and the world around you – where you can see across a 360-degree landscape.

We are all leaking information

Everyone leaks information about themselves whether they are aware of it or not. This is great news for a self detective, as it gives you a chance to increase your knowledge about yourself and those around you.

As well as body language, bodily sensations hold clues as to what is going on for someone at any moment in time. Crying, blushing, numbness, increased heart rate, tension, change in tone of voice, change in breathing, and many, many other sensations besides, can all be useful to create a bigger picture of how we all tick.

Below are some examples of shifts in our bodily functions.
If they are applicable to you, can you fill in the blanks:

I get butterflies in my stomach when…

I feel empty when:

I get tearful when:

I get a huge shot of adrenalin running through me when:

I get goose-bumps when:

I blush when:

Self-watching

Here is a task you may want to set yourself:
The next time you end up with some free time, reflect afterwards on what exactly you did with it. Let’s say, a meeting with someone gets cancelled and you don’t have to do a single thing for two hours.
How would you fill this free time? Is it time well spent? Do you fritter it away on the same old, same old? Do you do something for yourself or something for someone else?

There are no judgements to be made on what you do with your free time. We just think it would be interesting to work out your default settings, to find out what your routines and habits are; and change them if need be.

The importance of taking time out of your everyday life to check in with yourself

In 2010 a volcano erupted in Iceland, resulting in a plume of ash clouds that lasted for six days. During that time about 10 million people across Europe had their air travel plans disrupted.

For some people the whole event was a nightmare, while for others it was an opportunity to embark on a real-life adventure, returning home using whatever transport was available. Some people saw it as a great excuse to sit back and relax for a free week, while another group of people realised that they didn’t want to go back to the life they had been leading. They had no desire to return to their house, to their partner, or to their work.

Due to the enforced break in routine they were able to see something that they hadn’t seen before: a true picture of their situation. Once they had seen this reality there was no turning back. There was no way they were going to sleep-walk their way through the rest of their lives.

For these people the ash clouds gave them a rude awakening, albeit a life-changing one.

Clocking yourself when you are alone

Sit down in a quiet room for roughly five minutes. Put any distractions (phones, books, radio, etc.) out of arm’s reach.
Sit down and do precisely nothing.

Any thoughts that arise, let them come and go.
Any feelings that arise, let them come and go.
Any bodily sensations that arise, let them come and go.

At the end of this time, take a further two minutes to reflect on what just happened. Using the enquiring self detecting nature, did you find out any clues about yourself?

For example, how restless and distracted were you? How difficult was it to stay seated? How much boredom did you experience? What do you think lies beyond the state of boredom, or indeed nothingness?

Observations:

You may wish to repeat this exercise off and on for different lengths of time.

Do you notice any themes or patterns? Do you notice where your mind, your emotions or your body are trying to take you?
What might this say about your habits and your routines? What might this say about your needs and wants?

Themes/patterns:

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