The past few months have been filled with new gifts of awareness. The primary catalyst was my meditation retreat in December. It formed a wave of new awareness, arguably a tsunami of awareness, that I’ve been tumbling around in ever since.
It seems to me that, as children, we enter this world as lumps of malleable clay. As we progress through life, our shape takes form, molded by our life experiences. Our parents. Our schools. Our friends and peer groups. The culture we grew up in. In the brain, we call this process neuroplasticity. As we learn about our environment, our brain forms and prunes neural connections, reinforcing those that fire regularly and shaping who we are.
Research suggests that the lion’s share of this period of neuroplasticity typically ends between the ages of 20 and 25. There was a time in history when we believed the brain had finished growing at this point. We were mentally fully-formed. Blessedly, we now know that neuroplasticity continues throughout our adult life. It may slow as we get older, but we continue to form new neural connections and trim outdated ones throughout our lives.
My sense is, as we go through this process, we aren’t just shaping an existing lump of clay. Those life experiences cake on layer after layer of additional clay on top of what we had when we began the journey.
As my brain is flooded with new “gifts” of awareness, I find I’m not just reshaping the clay. I’m actually stripping layers off, getting back to the essence that lies underneath. I’ve discovered a useful tool to support this process.
Gifts of Awareness
I think some examples are in order to help explain what I mean when I talk about gifts of awareness.
One category is what I’ll call “micro-gifts.” These are what I’m inundated with these days. They are the “atomic habits” of awareness. Thoughts that pop into your head unbidden, that have popped in dozens or hundreds of times before. You recognize why they popped up, and you’ve sorted through them before. But a lifetime of conditioning keeps bringing them back anyway. Some examples:
- Stepping on the scale each morning, because that’s what you’ve always done, even though you are comfortable with your weight and don’t need the data.
- Walking into the kitchen to eat a snack, realizing you’re not hungry, but you’re on autopilot because that’s how you fill a short gap in your day.
- The urge to identify the bird you’re looking at, when you know what really matters is the beauty of the bird and being present in the moment.
- Any time you find yourself second-guessing, third-guessing, or hundredth-guessing a decision you’ve already made and communicated, because your brain can’t seem to let it go.
These examples (for me, at least) are all relatively simple cases. They don’t require deep inquiry, but left unchecked, they can leave my brain spiraling out of control. The best tool for dealing with this is a little bit of sandpaper, sanding off the clay.
Then there are the “macro-gifts.” These are the big aha moments that arise for the first time, that require a deep level of inquiry. That could be through journaling, meditation, or with a partner through coaching or therapy. Sandpaper isn’t going to cut it with a macro-gift. This is where you need a chisel.
One example for me? Seeing how my lifetime of experiences built up a concept of romantic relationships that feels completely outdated with my current way of being. This was a major epiphany. A short walk engaging the wizards of my Default Mode Network isn’t going to unwind the years of conditioning here. I’ve had lots of conversations with myself and others, and I imagine I’ll be chiseling away at that one for some time to come.
I’m not prepared to tackle macro-gifts today, but I do have some insights on micro-gifts I want to share.
Micro-Gifts of Awareness
A few weeks ago, a thought popped into my head for the umpteenth time. It was one of those micro-gifts of awareness. I wanted this thought to stop popping up. I’d processed it before, traced the conditioning to its source, and decided to unwind that conditioning. But deciding to unwind it and successfully unwinding it are two different things. I needed some sandpaper.
A voice entered my head at this point, giving me simple, clear instructions.
Acknowledge it. Honour it. Release it.*
That made a lot of sense to me. I acknowledged that the thought was arising from conditioning I had not yet completely unwound. I thought about why that historical conditioning created the thought and how it may have served me well in the past. I honoured that conditioning. And finally, I gave myself permission to release the thought.
The whole process took about thirty seconds. No deep inquiry. I didn’t have to drop what I was doing. Just a little bit of sandpaper.
I thought about getting to my computer to capture this insight so I didn’t lose it, and the voice spoke again.
There is no need to write this down. We’re going to remind you of this so many times, there’s no chance you’ll forget it.
And that is how my day played out. Thought after thought surfaced, and when it was a micro-gift of awareness, I acknowledged, honoured, and released. Like a child popping soap bubbles out of the air.
It’s become one of my favorite tools right now. I’m not just helping a thought work its way out of my brain and float on by. I’m also helping my brain let go of generating the thought in the future.
Putting It Into Practice
I encourage you to start paying close attention to the thoughts that enter your mind unbidden. If this thought is a new gift of awareness you haven’t processed before, it will probably warrant a deeper inquiry. But if it’s a recurrent thought that you’ve examined before, and the awareness it brings is not new, try a little sandpaper.
- Acknowledge the source of the thought. What conditioning causes it to continue to surface?
- Honour the conditioning behind the thought, and how that conditioning has served you in the past.
- Release the thought. Permit yourself to let the thought float away, and give your brain permission to stop bringing it back.
* I know in America we spell it honor, but I think honour is a much more elegant spelling, so I’m going with that. Spell check be damned.
I am an executive coach and life coach with software executive roots in higher education and EdTech. I coach because I love helping others accelerate their growth as leaders and humans. I frequently write about #management, #leadership, #coaching, #neuroscience, and #arete.
If you would like to learn more, schedule time with me.