You are likely familiar with the experience of trying to offer feedback to a person who has little interest in developing self-awareness, realising that it’s a waste of time and energy and can even back-lash in punishing ways. Fortunately, there are other ways to handle such situations.
Self-awareness can be viewed as the measure of one’s connection to oneself and through that, to the world around them.
Feelings and sensations are the enablers of self-awareness. The human’s ability to be a feeler-sensor-responder is one of the traits that make a human, a human.
So, self-awareness in its developmental context is the ability to accommodate much more than just one’s personal feelings and sensations.
Caring people are recognized by their sensitive, compassionate mindfulness to other people’s feelings and struggles. A mindful person senses pain and struggle in others because he or she senses the actuality of it in their inner theatres of feelings.
Those who are departed from their feeling mindfulness live at distance from the very essence of humanity. Think for a moment about the consequences of such a state of being. There are those leading entire nations falling into this category.
Developing awareness gives birth to indispensable skills: Detecting subtle – yet telling – mood changes in the workplace; detecting new trends and opportunities; sensing the proximity of danger; perceiving subtle warning signs and imbalances from different parts of one’s body; the ability to perceive change in progress at many levels…
While at it, let’s also touch upon pressure systems. Without pressure systems, there will be no such thing as ‘weather’. And, there also will be no such thing as human achievement. To achieve, a person or team must create the fitting mental pressure system that generates the needed outcome.
The (big) mistake that many managers make is their preponderance/addiction to keep their foot pressing on the high-pressure pedal. The human design accommodates two complementary energy pressure systems that are governed by inner speed control: High speed to high pressure and low speed to low pressure. (This is a somewhat crude representation of a profound human design trait that a great deal can be written about) We are thus meant to skilfully combine and alternate between the two rather than becoming subject to one, to the point of disconnection from the other.
Low-pressure time is not just chill-out, relaxed time. It is knowing when to take a side-step to create space for something else. To access the eureka domain, one must be able to consciously access a low-pressure state of being to facilitate the appearance of fresh thoughts, ideas and perceptions.
It is a wise leader/manager that develops the know-how to use these two systems to facilitate the process of getting the best out of those under their charge. This includes the crucial mindfulness to the maintenance of people’s well-being. And the director of ‘surfing’ the high/low – low/high pressure system is… self-awareness.
Self-awareness is one’s compass to greatness
David Gommé
World Copyright 2018© David Gommé