It was a warm summer day and I was sitting in the shade.
With my laptop, writing, in a downtown area of a small town in Southern California.
I recall several small children playing nearby.
The children changed as the hours passed. Boys, girls, brothers, and sisters.
The parents were always nearby.
I observed as the children jumped around this old fountain.
Brick by brick, jump by jump, the children were chasing each other in this large concrete fountain they turned into a playground.
As the children ran around this concrete playground, some parents watched closely, others did not.
I remember the look of one child’s face as she leaped across the two large bricks. It was a face of accomplishment. A way of saying, “I took a jump, I made it, I can do it.”
Little by little, these children were building their awareness about themselves, their world, and their possibilities.
No awareness about the potential pain of falling and breaking an arm, or a hand, or chipping a tooth on the hard concrete.
No awareness or idea of the fear.
Blissfully, the children played in their cemented playground.
As adults, these childhood moments of exploring our world often set the habit and story we tell ourselves for the rest of our lives. Until examined, it may never be changed.
My story of awareness
Starting at age 9, I grew up with the Internet.
I remember reading a thousand+ page programming book at age 9, too.
I craved awareness. My curiosity was insatiable (I used to tell myself).
Awareness helped me build cooler lego sets.
Awareness helped me become a better programmer and build larger and more complex projects.
Awareness helped me pursue my interest in media and creating videos.
Awareness helped me intimately understand technology and how it works.
Awareness helped me work on hundreds of freelance projects with clients around the world between the ages of 9 and on.
Awareness served me well. And there were times it didn’t...
I recall sitting at a coffee shop near San Diego, California. From inside the coffee shop, I remember a woman walking up towards the coffee shop. In business attire, she fell, and dropped her suitcase. I remember the awareness I felt in that moment. Aware of tripping, aware of the pain from the fall and the empathy I felt, aware of the desire to help, aware of my human instinct to help another human. And I did nothing. By the time I became aware of my awareness in that moment, she had already picked herself up.
I recall being paralyzed by my awareness. Instead of moving forward in my life, I laid in the fetal position on my couch thinking through all the possibilities and different options for a project I was working on. It wasn't about brainstorming. It was about the physical feeling of being stuck because I saw so many possibilities. It was a burden.
Or other times I didn’t know what to do with awareness. Instead of deciding, I was stuck in my world of awareness. Instead of moving forward, I stopped, and raised my awareness. Eventually, I became my own bottleneck. I stood in my own way.
Instead of having awareness about life and myself, the awareness had me.
I became a slave to it.
I vividly remember one scene in my mid-teens where I was reading a thousand page book at a wedding reception. No socializing, no human discussion, no embrace of the people around me, only raising my awareness. Only learning.
Tens of thousands of hours of videos, podcasts, books, thoughtful discussions with people, articles, technical chat rooms, and more. These are not exaggerations. I am not bragging and I have nothing to prove. I am sharing my story, this is what is true for me.
More awareness, more knowledge, more understanding... where does it end?
My awareness eventually stopped serving me. I had to learn to cope with it.
Understanding awareness
According to Wikipedia, awareness is the “ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns.” Additionally, on Wikipedia, in biological psychology, awareness is defined as “a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.”
According to dictionary.com, awareness is “the state or condition of being aware; having knowledge; consciousness.”
Awareness allows us to see possibilities.
Awareness allows us to create connections around our internal and external world.
These possibilities and connections serve us in different ways. Sometimes, it helps us make an informed and smart decision. Or maybe it helps us get what we want. Or maybe it is a survival skill we learned young.
There are several types of awareness.
Awareness of our external world involves awareness around products or services. Or maybe it’s awareness of our environment, or events happening around us. Or maybe it’s awareness about our friends and their lives that we see on social media. Or it’s awareness around injustices in the world, poverty, or changes in our food supply. Or it’s awareness around the industry we work in and the opportunities and threats that exist.
Awareness of our internal world involves awareness around ourselves. Call it self-awareness. It’s awareness of self and awareness of how we see our world. It’s awareness around our physical, mental, and emotional states. It’s awareness about our unique circumstances and how they shaped us.
Awareness comes from every experience we have. It comes from the Internet, friends, family, TV, movies, documentaries, experiences, and more.
Knowledge and information is an abundant resource. It is not scarce.
How awareness can be a burden
Let’s go back to older times where our species lived in tribes and our idea of the latest and greatest technology was a hammer.
No Internet, no social media, no phones. Older times.
If something happened to another tribe of people 50 hours away by foot, does awareness alone really matter?
Unless there is direct value, why pay attention? Unless there is value in terms of knowledge sharing and the opportunity for increased efficiency or effectiveness or quality of life, why pay attention?
Awareness to know simply for the sake of knowing can be useless.
The bigger question is what do you get out of knowing? What does awareness get you?
When we do not honor our awareness, it can control us.
Stuck, paralyzed, trapped, confused, gridlocked.
That is the power awareness has over us when we do not have power over our awareness.
I hear it all the time.
I hear how people get stuck. We verbalize all of our scenarios. We create certainty in an uncertain future. We hold ourselves back by the stories we tell ourselves.
This creates mental tension. Mental tension chokes us.
Because our brains are wired to respond to fear, awareness that evokes fear (even if a simple thought) is stronger than other facts or knowledge. I have seen this specific pattern when we are sensitive. I define a sensitive person as someone who is affected by their environment (by people, environment, nature, spirituality, etc). As a way to cope with our sensitive biology, we create awareness as a survival tool to minimize threats.
It’s not new information that awareness alone does not change behavior. For instance, we may mentally understand the importance of exercising and eating healthy, but our behavior may not reflect this.
As children, our awareness of life is limited. At some point, we become aware, and how we learn to cope with our awareness is the differentiating factor in how our awareness serves us.
Similar to how we enjoy vacationing and often new experiences, the brain is wired for new connections and novelty. Sometimes, instead of satisfying this biological desire, we fill it with new awareness in front of the TV, or reading, or even gossiping. I don’t see this as good or bad. I see this as a way of coping with a natural part of our biology and existence.
Sometimes we may not be aware of our awareness. This article may change that.
Understanding the 3 areas of time investment
There are three ways to invest our time.
If every day consists of 86,400 seconds, then we have a new opportunity every day to decide how we want to spend our seconds.
There are 3 primary ways we can invest our time:
1. Area of Concern.
In this area, we spend our time with things we’re concerned about. They are things we can’t influence or have power over, but things we are concerned about. For instance, certain disputes happening in other parts of the world, or violent and terrorist acts.
2. Area of Influence.
When we invest our time in our area of influence, we are focused on things we can influence. We invest our time in our work, or with our family and friends. We know we have the potential to influence those around us and the different activities we’re involved in.
3. Area of Power.
Lastly, we have the area of power. These are the actual things we have power over. It is the most abstract and it can require the most amount of effort. I am talking about ourselves. I am talking about our freedom in how we respond to life and the things that cross our path. When we don’t invest our time here, we live in autopilot, responding to life in ways that we have always responded to life. I love this area, I have invested a lot of time here (and I invest time with my clients here, too). Underlying this area is a fundamental belief that may not be true for some. The belief is that we have power over our lives.
People who are empowered and proactive in life spend most of their time in the second and third areas. Investing time in things we are concerned about can be valuable, but what you get ouf of that?
If you’re still searching for your purpose in life, investing time in the area of concern can be of value because that can evolve into an area of influence (if you decide). However, left unexamined, focusing time in the area of concern without the ability to influence (or exert power over) can leave someone insecure, disempowered, and lacking confidence.
How do you spend your time?
What to do about the burden of awareness
Think about your level of awareness as your wardrobe.
Yes, imagine your level of awareness is like your closet of clothes.
Do you collect clothes your whole life and never get rid of anything? Doubtful.
You probably buy clothes at different times in your life.
You have clothes during your childhood that you eventually outgrow.
You have casual “go out and have fun” clothes.
You have nicer clothes for that special occasion.
How do you get here?
Well, you probably go pick out different clothes, maybe try them on, see what you like, buy what you want, disregard the rest.
Eventually, over time, maybe the clothes in your closet slowly starts to disappear as you evolve your tastes and personality.
Why not do the same thing with your awareness?
Why not learn about new things, find out what you like and what works for you, and disregard the rest? Maybe this is about changing your beliefs. Maybe it’s about changing your awareness about your future (or even yourself).
Philosopher and author Francis Bacon famously said, “Knowledge is power.”
Well, not really. Knowledge is not power if you do not have power over your knowledge. Think about it.
When I evolve my awareness, I turn it into instinct. When certain variables happen or exist, I learn to respond in different ways. This serves me because it allows me to consciously create my habits and evolve my way of being in a way that I mindfully believe in.
Awareness is a tool, but only if we use it as a tool. Sometimes, the tool uses us. This happens when our awareness and the way we see the world is in control of us. We are not in control of the tool. I believe it is within your power to decide how you use your awareness.
Ask yourself questions around your awareness. Does your awareness empower you or does it limit you? It’s one or the other. If it empowers you, it gives you strength in the life you want to live. If it limits you, it holds you back and prevents you from moving forward. Ask yourself how your level of awareness serves you and then decide what you want.
Take your awareness to the offense. There are two ways of living: on the offense or on the defense. If I am on the defense, I focus on how life affects me and how I can defend myself. If I am on the offense, I focus on what is possible, and I move in that direction. The answer lives in where you choose (consciously or not) to focus.
When you know what you want to do with your awareness, learn how to change the story you tell yourself.
Understand how metacognition can serve you in seeing how you are aware of yourself and your world.
Does your level of awareness have power over you or do you have power over your awareness?
What do you need to let go of?
