Awareness - Separation - Redirection

Environmental awareness is a tool by which we train our brain to connect to specific sensory inputs. It is used daily, and it shifts our attention away from disruptive thought patterns. With practice, it becomes automatic and calms our mind.

On any given day or moment, we can quickly assess our relationship with any of the four kinds of awareness and see which part of the circle we are in. We then can choose to use our tools to move in whatever direction we want. But we can’t redirect unless we know where we ...

The first necessary step in using awareness is looking for clues that we are not as aware as we might think. By the way, if we think we are “aware” or “enlightened,” then we have already demonstrated that we are not aware. Any labels, positive or negativ...

Thriving is not as instinctual and must be cultivated and nurtured. If we are trying to use pleasant experiences, power, and material possessions to compensate for unpleasant emotions basic to survival, it can’t and doesn’t work. We

Emotional awareness is difficult in that we are training our brain to experience pain that we have been suppressing or repressing. Remember, emotions reflect sensations generated by our various physiological states—safety versus threat. They drive our behavior to avoid d...

Second, understanding and nurturing different types of awareness enables us to learn skills in each of these arenas. Here are four suggested types to use as a baseline.

• Environmental
• Emotional
• ...

Once we are aware of where we are at in the circle of life, we do have choices. We can remain where we are—even if we are in the red—take a “refueling break” by entering the green center, or move on by engaging in blue activities.

Freedom is being ...

The circle of life provides a foundational reference point of awareness for embarking on any healing journey. The challenging aspect of using it as a tool is that we must allow yourself to feel everything—but only as we can tolerate it. Allowing ourself to feel anxious i...

Ingrained patterns are the essence of who we are; they make up our life view and evolve to become the lens through which all new information is processed. Since the human brain is programmed by interacting with others, each individual is incredibly unique. The early inpu...

The essence of chronic mental and physical disease is being exposed to sustained levels of threat physiology. Our body is consuming resources for survival, and we cannot heal in this condition. Healing can only occur when we feel safe enough to ...

Once we become familiar with and skilled in developing these levels of awareness, we can actively use them as tools to calm down and redirect our nervous system. Some people make the strong argument that awareness is the only tool we need to heal. We know that we can’t “fix” ourself; our ...

Awareness of the stories we create about our life to make sense out of where we fit into the world is particularly necessary. Many of the stories have been programmed in by our family, friends, and society. A high percentage of them are actually cognitive distortions that continue to keep...

Awareness is at the core of both survival and thriving. These are separate, and learned, skills.

Survival is instinctual and includes whatever strategies we have embedded over our lifetime. However, many of the ac...

Having awareness is critical. We can’t solve problems in any domain without understanding details from both our perspective and that of other involved parties. If we are projecting your views onto a given situation, we are not going to come up with consistently viable solutions....