Awareness

We live in a world today where being unaware of something is way more difficult than being aware of something. The constant stimulus in the form of phone calls, text messages, emails and app notifications has made being unapprised of the “general affairs” next to impossible. However, there still seems to be a certain segment of which we are dangerously unaware.

Today, let’s take a stab at deciphering the outcomes of this elusive facet of life.

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

Abraham Maslow

Cambridge Dictionary defines awareness as the knowledge that something exists, or understanding of a situation or subject at the present time based on information or experience. And in today’s day and age, I don’t think there is a very large contingent of people who don’t have the ability to maintain awareness about what is happening around the world.

At a single tap, we not only have the ability to know what has happened on the other side of the globe, but also share it with other people and “spread the awareness”. We share and consume content at an astounding rate.

But the awareness I am referring to today is not this general or global awareness. I am talking about a facet of life which in my opinion has both gained and lost a lot of weightage in today’s world (For people thinking gained and lost, bear with me, we will address it soon).

That facet is self awareness. Now what exactly does self awareness mean?

Self awareness is a phenomenon explored in various streams of academia and theory, including but not limited to philosophy, psychology and religion. In effect, it is a concept which allows us to have complete control over our personality traits and characteristics, by having a more in depth understanding of what (& how) we are.

There are a lot of benefits of having self-awareness. In one of my previous articles titled Absolute, I touched a little bit upon how awareness can help us prevent jumping to premature conclusions. In addition to this, a higher level of self-awareness has been linked to improved relationships, higher levels of happiness, more confidence and better communication skills amidst a litany of other benefits.

Now, the question arises, if there are so many benefits of having improved self-awareness, a lot of people must be working on this domain, right? As always, let’s look at the numbers, shall we? Per a study conducted to gauge the levels of self awareness by Tasha Eurich, the author of the book “Insight”, 95% of the respondents believed that they were self aware.

But after a series of tests, the actual number came out to be between 10 and 15%, extrapolating which tells us that only 15% (the ceiling statistic) of the world is self aware and is able to experience the benefits that we have discussed so far.

So far, we have talked about why the world needs self awareness and how only 15% of the world has it. Are we going to discuss how to develop this personal strength? Unfortunately, not today. What I want to discuss is how 80% of the population (which I might very well be a part of) uses this incomplete notion of self awareness.

The Paradox of awareness

I have a question, and I want you, the reader to be as honest as possible. What is one very small thing you really want to do, but you’re sure you won’t be able to do it, and why? The why is what I’m more interested in.

The why’s I want to tackle sound more like the following:

• “because I know I can’t”
• “I don’t feel like doing it”
• “It’s not the right time”
• “I just don’t have the time, I’ll get to it later”

Interestingly, there are various defenses that we use to protect these (for the lack of a better word) excuses, all thanks to our so-called self-awareness. After all, who knows us better than ourselves, right?

However, if we were to question or get questioned as to why these reasons are valid, I’m more than certain that we would find that these are just tactics we play to shield ourselves from the truth, which more often than not is that we are not being true to our values.

People who boast a great degree of awareness have a tendency to become way too stuck to certain philosophies that they hold on to because of the “awareness” they have gained.

Again, I’m not separating myself from anyone here, because I’m just as prone to giving reasons like these when I’m asked why I am not doing things I really want to do. But what I want to emphasize is that awareness has great potential of becoming a limitation as well.

We see a weird form of self awareness that people use, which is truly resultant in them placing caps and ceilings on themselves. “I don’t like this”, “I can’t do that” and so on, which maybe one of the components of it, but that is not the entire picture. It is just as important that the part of the sentence following the “because” is just as real and prudent as you believe your understanding is when you say you can’t do X, Y or Z.

In short:

Seeing through one’s own shit is an art everyone should aim to master.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂