Consciousness Archives - Page 21 of 23

A Shortcut to Self-Awareness

July 25, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

If you aren’t yet convinced that much of what you do is completely outside your conscious intentions and control, the Enneagram might change your mind. At the time I wrote the following introductory post (Know Thyself) for my Enneagram blog Nine Paths, I had yet to learn just how much of our lives we spend on autopilot.

When you identify your type, you may find that the Enneagram knows you better than you knew yourself. It isn’t the personality equivalent of a Theory of Everything, but it gives you a place to look, a way to pay attention to what you’re doing, thinking, and feeling. It’s absolutely the best tool I’ve found for demonstrating how habitual and compulsive our behavior is and for expanding self-awareness. Unless we develop self-awareness, we have little chance of changing or overriding our compulsive behavior.

Know Thyself

Was the ancient Greek sage who inscribed those words at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi exhorting us to understand ourselves? It isn’t entirely clear. But it is clear that Socrates, who insisted the unexamined life is not worth living, meant exactly that when he used the same words. But how do we examine our lives? How do we get to know ourselves?

The Enneagram is one means to that end. It is an apparently simple, yet rich and complex system that reveals our strengths and weaknesses, our deeper-level motivations, and most importantly, the compulsions that often rule our (unexamined) lives. We move through this world under the impression we’re making authentic choices, but most of the time we’re just blindly following our compulsions, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. We’re living our lives on autopilot; asleep at the wheel.

Only after we become aware of our habitual patterns of behavior and responses can we turn the autopilot switch off and freelychoose what to do or how to respond. The better we know ourselves, the less likely we are to be ruled by our compulsions. The less we are ruled by our compulsions, the more open and authentic we are. Gaining this depth of personal knowledge and understanding has another benefit, also pointed out by Socrates: it helps us understand other people better, too. In fact, Socrates believed we have to understand ourselves before we can truly understand anyone or anything else.

At the simplest level, the Enneagram can be viewed as a personality typing system, but don’t think recognizing and accepting your Enneagram type will strip you of your unique sense of identity or individuality by lumping you together with every other person of the same type. Far from being a narrow one-size-fits-all box, each point has plenty of room for subtleties and variations.

Since it doesn’t simply pigeonhole people, but is a comprehensive and multifaceted system, it takes a bit of effort to fully grasp. Numerous books are now available on the Enneagram, written from various perspectives. Below is a very basic overview of the key elements.

Enneagram is a Greek word that means nine points. The Enneagram symbol is composed of a triangle and a hexad within a circle.

enneagram_small

The resulting nine points represent nine basic, or core, personality types, each of which has a unique perspective and approach to life. The theory behind the Enneagram is that we each polarize at one of the nine points. We then overdevelop the characteristics associated with that point, while leaving the characteristics associated with the other points undeveloped. So each point also represents a particular type of imbalance. Our core personality type doesn’t change over the course of a lifetime, but as we become aware of our imbalances, we gain the ability to moderate them. We are no longer ruled by them.

Read the rest of the post here.

Intentions: Mistakes Were Made

July 23, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Creating an intention seems like something that should be pretty straightforward. So why isn’t it? There are three common mistakes almost all of us have made when we’ve set out to do something.

Mistake #1

The clue to Mistake #1 appears in the first sentence of this post: the word should. We have many concepts about the way things should be, but even more about how we should be and what we should be able to do. In the context of creating intentions, the word should needs to be banished. It isn’t helpful, and it sets us up to have unrealistic expectations. Why start out by pitting your actual self against an idealized self who can easily do whatever it is you’re currently struggling with? That makes absolutely no sense, yet we do it all the time.

If you have created an intention to do something because you think you should do it or you should be able to do it, let it go. You’re not going to be able to commit to something you should do, and you’re probably not willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it since you think you should already be doing it. The fact that you aren’t doing it means you’re just not trying or you’re lazy or incapable or have no will power. You’ve prejudged yourself as somehow lacking, so you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Mistake #2

Sometimes there are entire areas of our lives we want to revamp, so we create an intention to do just that. No baby steps for us; we’re going for the gold! But trying to tackle too much all at once is another recipe for failure because the chance of succeeding is miniscule at best. When we take baby steps we have a much better chance of accomplishing what we set out to do. Then we can build on our success. When we aim to do it all at once and miss the mark, we end up with nothing but a reinforced sense of ineffectiveness or inadequacy.

Another thing to remember is that when you try to do many things at the same time, you’re giving yourself many opportunities to fail. If you want to develop a habit that involves doing something multiple times during the day, start out by creating an intention to do it once or twice a day—or even every other day. Once you’ve succeeded with that, you can expand on it. This is the kind of mistake we often make when starting an exercise program. Add Mistake #1 to the mix—the belief that you should be exercising for a certain number of minutes every day—and you might as well just pick up the remote and head for the couch.

Mistake #3

The third mistake we make when creating an intention is that we are vague rather than specific. Maybe we aren’t consciously trying to give ourselves wiggle room, but that’s what vagueness does to intentions: it paves the way for us to wiggle right out of them. There are a lot of reasons we’re vague. Maybe we think just creating the intention should be sufficient. (Is there a voice in your head that says if you really want to do something, you’ll do it? Tell it to shut up.) Or our schedule is too variable for us to be specific. Or we want to maintain our flexibility. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

The reason for being specific when creating an intention is that vagueness simply doesn’t work so creating a vague intention is a waste of time. If you want to do something twice a week, decide on the days of the week and the time of day you will do it. If your schedule varies, make appointments with yourself and write them on your calendar or in your planner. Treat your appointments with yourself the same way you would treat an appointment with someone else. Give yourself a little respect. If you know what result you want, think through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Make the steps your intention and the result will follow.

Creating an intention really is pretty straightforward, but only if we know what works and what doesn’t work.

Perseverance Is Magic

July 21, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 5 Comments

Perseverance Trail Head (Photo credit: AlaskanLibrarian)

After creating an intention and choosing a tool or technique to help focus our attention on it, we will surely achieve quick and easy success.

Are you laughing? That was supposed to be a joke. Remember, doing something intentionally and deliberately—and staying focused on it—requires conscious attention. If we’ve already got a habit in place that we’re trying to change, we have to convince our brain to go along with the plan, and that isn’t going to happen overnight.

The problem is that we’d prefer instant gratification, while our brain requires persistent effort on our part to convince it that we really do want X instead of Y. When at first we don’t succeed, we might decide it’s not worth the effort. Why bother? Just go with the flow. Or we might chalk it up to being weak or lacking discipline or having no will power. So we give up—to prove the point, apparently.

Perseverance isn’t the same as dogged persistence. Sometimes there’s a good reason to stop attempting to do something. One of the reasons for paying attention is that we might recognize that it isn’t precisely A we want; it’s more along the lines of B. Or we might realize we’ve bitten off too big a chunk and need to pare down our intention. Perseverance just means we keep moving toward the desired outcome. It’s incredibly simple. We don’t need to chastise ourselves. We don’t need to make up excuses. We just pick up where we left off and keep going. It isn’t a competition or a race. It doesn’t matter when we get where we’re going, just that we get there.

Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential. ― Winston Churchill

It helps to have a cheerleader—a person or a group of people—who can encourage us. We don’t need someone to call us out on our failure to achieve instant results. We need someone who recognizes that what we’re trying to do isn’t easy, not because we’re incapable or lazy, but because we’re human and our brain is very set in its ways.

Perseverance gets a bad rap in some quarters. It isn’t flashy or catchy or stylish. It’s often linked with discipline and endurance and sounds like something that’s good for you or that builds character. But perseverance is the key to accessing the brain’s autopilot. It really is magic.

Attention Is Essential

July 19, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 7 Comments

Intention is a great catalyst. It gives us something to aim at, a focus, a goal. But after creating an intention to do something, we also need to pay attention to what happens—to what we do, what we think, and what we feel. Paying attention helps us override the brain’s autopilot so we don’t simply fall back into familiar patterns and habits.

Attention is the same as awareness or mindfulness. Since much of what we do is done automatically, we tend not to be very mindful of our own thoughts, feelings, words, and behavior, let alone the effect we might be having on other people. We aren’t fully present most of the time.

There are various kinds of mindfulness practices, including mindfulness meditation. Meditation has many great benefits and is an excellent habit to develop and maintain for general health and well-being. But it isn’t the only way to be mindful, aware, or attentive. In terms of following through with an intention, a practice or a tool that helps us focus on the behavior we’re trying to generate may be more useful. Here are three suggestions:

Self-Awareness Pie Chart

Draw a circle a couple of inches in diameter and divide it into three slices that represent how much of your attention in that moment is on your feelings (F), your thoughts (T), and your body (B). Put the letter designations inside the appropriate pie slices. Then write your answers to these questions:

How do I feel emotionally?
What am I thinking about?
How do I feel physically?

You can write as much or as little as you like. If you use this exercise to help with an intention, the best time to do it is when you have done—or not done—what you intended to do.

Theme Word or Phrase

Come up with a word or phrase that reminds you of what you’re trying to achieve. Write it on Post-its or index cards and put them where you’re most likely to see them. You don’t have to limit yourself to a word or phrase. You can come up with a theme song, an image, a string around your finger, or anything else that focuses your attention.

Questions

Create two or three questions you can ask yourself each day, such as:

What is my intention?
Why do I want to do [whatever it is]?
Am I committed to doing [whatever it is] today?

You can ask and answer the questions on paper, in your head, or you can invite a friend to ask them.

It doesn’t really matter what you decide to do, as long as you do something to keep your attention focused on your intention. It takes many repetitions for your brain’s autopilot to get the message.

Intention Is Powerful

July 17, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

Autopilot Off (EP) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We humans have a propensity for following the path of least resistance. We tend to do the easier thing, the thing that takes the least time or requires the least effort. Often the result is that we do what we’ve always done because that’s what’s familiar. We know how to do it so we don’t have to put much thought or effort into it. In fact, we can—and do—do what we’ve always done on autopilot. Because it’s so easy, operating on autopilot is very appealing, even compelling.

But autopilot only works when we’re in familiar territory. Novel situations require conscious thought, and conscious thought requires more energy than autopilot requires. We’re sort of programmed to conserve energy by continuing along the path of least resistance. That’s why habits are so difficult to change or break. The way our brains conserve energy is by developing subroutines whenever they can and turning them over to the unconscious. This enables us to get by without having to think about a great many things we do. Yes, my brain made me do it is a valid excuse.

Our brain’s autopilot keeps us alive every day, but it can be difficult to interrupt. Autopilot behavior could be called habitual, unconscious, automatic, unmindful, or routine. What it can’t be called is deliberate.

If we want to do something deliberately, as opposed to habitually, the first thing we need is an intention. If we don’t have an intention in place, we’re likely to succumb to the siren song of the path of least resistance. That’s just the way we’re wired.

An intention is more than wishful thinking or a good idea. An intention is something specific we are committed to doing and willing to put the necessary time and effort into. Creating and acting on an intention requires our conscious thought. If we want to break away from the path of least resistance and carve out a new path, we need to ask ourselves if we’re committed to doing it and if we’re willing to do whatever it takes, including feeling uncomfortable.

We also need to get very, very specific. It’s fine to begin with a vague or general objective. That’s the way most ideas start out. But if we want to give ourselves a fighting chance at succeeding, we need to spell out the what, when, where, and how of what we intend to do.

Acting deliberately and thoughtfully is the opposite of running on autopilot. It takes practice. It requires energy and effort. But first of all, it requires an intention.