If we carefully observe our daily activities and thought process, we will come to the point that most of our time we spent to think or to act for the things which are not related to us. either those acts or thoughts are from past or future or for someone else or for the other people. we are wasting our energy and our precious time for all those unreal things. Imagine if we spent same amount of time for ourselves or for our own values and for that same present moment, how much productive and how much effective we can be. thinking or acting as per our own level will help to open the limits of our strength, power and will help to grow us from life or business. in Vedas, before centuries it is described that the awareness is the reaction that is provided by the mind to the self.
Self awareness is an art to evaluate our acts and thoughts. the process of evaluating our self is little complicated. all of us have our own standards and values. we want to evaluate weather we are acting, behaving or thinking as per our own standards or values. most of the time we do not perform as per our merit and then we feel discomfort. we need to find out what is that makes us not to operate as per our excellence. To be at the best level of our actions, we need to be disciplined toward our own self. when we were young at that time our parents and teachers were teaching to be disciplined in our routine and behavior. Those teachings were not for that time being only but if we would have used it for the entire life, today we would not need to learn all these again. in our school days we never liked exams but those exams were used to evaluate our learnings. to be self aware we need to exam our selves neutrally and we should find out our errors. Once we can assess our mistakes then we can focus on those inaccuracies and can work to correct those inaccuracies.
After proper evaluation and finding the made mistakes, we need to start to work on those errors, so we can not redo it again. it is easy to find someone else’s fault but when it comes to our own self we try to save our selves by creating excuses. As long as we try to blame on others and not to accept our own inaccuracies we will not be able change those stored negativity into positivity. It requires great courage to accept our own slips and even more courage and understanding requires to work on it. what is that we can do that will help us to help to function at our level.
To function at our excellence we need to understand that what is that existing in us makes us happy when we do some good work and unhappy by making mistakes. That is our own self which is neutral and balanced in all situations. everyone is aware of their self as it is unique and different from other person or object. but it is hard to accept the existence of self or consciousness as there is no physiological evidences. for us awareness is related to the senses, we do all the actions for the pleasure of senses, we eat good testy food because our tongue likes it or we watch movies (good or bad) because our eyes likes to watch it. Actually the senses are the instruments which provides knowledge to the mind of that particular subject. senses, object and mind should be there to perceive the knowledge, if any of these are not present then we will not have knowledge of that object. once we accept that the instruments of awareness are not the senses or mind but the underlying self then we will be able to operate at our highest grade. our mind is like a mirror which is a reflection of our self but not the self. There is a very fine line between the self and mind. if we can understand this concept it will be easy for us not to be dragged in the directions of the attachments, and our behavior, decisions, actions and judgements will be accurate and productive. The short answer to resolve all the errors is to understand the inner self.
Researchers have suggested that Yoga is the best to improve self awareness. Yoga (not only Asanas) teaches us to know our true self. When we understand our true self, we will be able to understand the difference between the self and mind. This interpretation will help us to act, behave and live as per our own standards and values. There will not be any act or behavior with any prejudgment, attachment or to please the others then we will be able to see the excellence of our selves. Being aware of our real self, we will be able to observe where our thoughts and behave driving towards. we will be able to define weather we are on the right path or not.
Psychologist have Described two types of self awareness. Public self awareness and personal awareness. when I was young and my grand mother used to tell me that “one person can have many faces”. It means one person can reflect, act or behave in many way in various conditions. This sentence completely aligns with the public awareness, because this type of awareness can change as per the situations and people around us. here people act as per the acceptance of the social norms but their true nature might be different. For example if someone do not like to smoke or drink but he or she has to drink to comply with the social norms. Though it is good to be aware of our thought, acts and behave in the presence of people but we should be aware that we do not want to perform any low level of act which do not align with our own standards. it can make us more stressful and anxious when you want to act as per others acceptations. Personal self awareness is when someone is aware about their some act or thoughts which others do not know.
In short our consciousness is the one which has to be content with the act or thoughts of ourselves. If we look at the practices which can help to improve self awareness for example Yoga, Meditation, journaling, all these tools helps us to carefully evaluate , exam and to be conscious about our actions, thoughts and behavior ultimately that helps us to be better decisive, more productive and disciplined as per our standards.
Hope you enjoy reading this article, see you next month with new interesting subject. till then be yourself.