S4 Ep21: Self-Awareness and the Unknown
How and why does your approach to the unknown matter?
Sometimes, when you can’t put your finger on why you are feeling a certain way, the answer is simple.
The unknown.
When you are facing many uncertainties, challenges, and questions with unpredictable outcomes, you seek answers. Yet the outcome of all the above is utterly unknown.
Recognize, acknowledge, and consciously choose your approach
You can make choices to take a different approach. If you allow yourself to fall victim to your visceral senses when they’re negative, that’s the approach you’ll take to everything you do today. However, if you choose to seek positivity and take that approach, that will be the approach you take to what you do today.
Either way, the outcome is unknown. The truth is that outcomes on almost every level are largely unknown. No matter what you plan, what you do, or your intentions, shit happens you didn’t expect, adding to and altering the outcome and expanding how much is unknown.
Hence, if you have any desire at all to make choices and decisions for what your life looks like, choosing your approach to the unknown is a must.
The three primary ways to live this life
Every single human being is here for one primary purpose. To live. I’m increasingly believing that the meaning of life is just that simple. To live.
Let life live you
Curl up in a ball and await death
Get behind the wheel and drive life
Everyone shifts between these from time to time. Nobody is immune to being hurt physically, mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually. There are also other ways to live this life between and apart from these three.
Mindfulness and self-awareness of control in your approach to the unknown
We have a very limited amount of control over the world around us. Externally, this amounts to what we wear, to some degree where we are, and how we present ourselves to the world. Otherwise, all the rest of our control is internal.
What that means is that it’s all about conscious awareness. Rather than letting your subconscious mind do the driving via rote, routines, and habits, you’re choosing to apply active conscious awareness. That practice is mindfulness.
Via mindfulness, you can know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, and actions you do or don’t take. From thought, feeling, intention, and action, the choice of an approach to life is yours to be made.
NOTE: Your feelings and emotions are valid. Nobody but you can feel them, after all. However, you can assume control of them via mindfulness, and rule them - rather than let them rule you.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
This tool is for recognizing your approach and changing it if necessary.
To begin, set aside 5 minutes at the start of your day to do this uninterrupted.
Take a full minute to do some deep breathing. Focus wholly on your breaths in and out for that minute.
Then ask,
How do I feel right now?
What am I feeling now?
Is there anything I am anticipating that’s coming up?
Do I think today will be good, bad, or neutral?
Please write both the questions and the answers. Based on your answers, how would you define your current approach? Does it suit you? If yes, carry on. If no, here’s how to act to change it.
Take several deep breaths in and out to center yourself. Then, write down these questions and the answers to them, answering immediately as you ask:
What am I thinking?
How am I feeling?
What am I feeling?
What do I desire?
The above mindfulness questions help you be more self-aware and present, here and now. With this conscious self-awareness, if you are dissatisfied with the answers you can take action to change them.
That is the best way to face the unknown.
Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com
Original cover art artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations