Self-awareness and awareness

Self-awareness

While empathy is usually thought as a tool to understand others, it is also be a very powerful tool for self-development.

Observing and empathizing with oneself as if one was another person can give us a new and more objective vision of things. This objective and “external” self awareness is often looked for through techniques of meditation or psychotherapies (for which a professional helps us look at ourselves). We will see how the use of empathic techniques can help us achieve similar results on a day to day basis.    

 Self awareness is not easy for various reasons: lack of attention, intensive external/social solicitations, lack of time for oneself, emotional wounds,… In general one can say that the main barriers to objective self awareness are emotional and intellectual habits.

 After living in a city for many years, one often tends to have a structured and very partial vision of the area. A routine has developed: one often goes to the same places, drive mechanically from home to the office, knows where to find ones favorite food items in the supermarket… It takes something external to break our routine (a new job, visit of friends, a sickness,…) and realize details of the surrounding world. Thus I remember that it took the visit of a cousin for me to realize that the road I was taking every day was of an unusual red color. 

The same applies to how one perceives oneself: we develop routines. Some people focus more on their look, on their mind, on their emotions, or social environment… Some elements of self will be given importance, and some will not. One rarely has a clear self-conscience, exploring all dimensions of one’s humanity: physical, emotional and intellectual.

Without this clear vision, one will not be able to truly understand other people and the world. Indeed true empathy calls for an optimum and comprehensive use of all self-resources. Missing the expression of some of one’s dimensions will result in a truncated and distorted vision of the world.

Such distortions can be overcome by breaking emotional and intellectual habits, and raising one’s general awareness of the world.

Awareness of the world

A developed awareness of the world will provide good concentration skills, understanding, and a precious sense of presence and reality.

This can be achieved using basic empathic recipes and exercises such as:

1- Developing senses. We all have senses that we use more than others. For a while, focus on one of the senses you don’t use much, focusing for example on the smell or taste throughout the day. You can also try to concentrate simultaneously on two or more senses.

2- Enlarging my vision of the world. This is one of my favorite exercises. When walking, try to be aware of things happening in your peripheral vision, and not only in the “focused center”. You will see that after a bit of practice, your eyes do not necessarily focus on the center of your vision. You may also considerably increase your sense of presence.

The same can be done with hearing, smell, touch or taste, but I recommend to start with sight.

3- “Touching the world”. This empathic approach will give you a more intense experience of the present surrounding world and develop capacities of projections of experiences. I look for example at a small hill in front of me, where there are meadows and one large tree. I imagine the feel of the grass, the touch of the trunk. I can also feel the shape of the hill as if I was touching it with a giant hand, or imagine that I am this tree, standing immobile in the middle of the meadows. This creates a great sense of presence, develops imagination, and extent the range of experiences.

4- Listening to micro-emotions. During the day, listen to the various emotions you experience: stress about something, doubt about what you read, feeling attracted by something beautiful, happiness to meet a friend,…  Do not try to change those emotions, but try to be aware that they are here throughout the day.

Warning: do not focus too much on an emotion, or dig into it – especially if it is a “negative” emotion. You would feed this emotion by doing so, and miss the objective of this exercise.

Do not forget yourself…

As briefly explained in the article “empathy versus sympathy”, one of the dangers of empathy is to be sensitive to strong external experiences and influences, and lose self-perception, which should always be at the core of empathic experiences. Persons who want to develop their empathy are often generous and sensitive, which are additional factors of risk.

Whoever wants to develop her/his empathic skills should therefore dedicate a consequent amount of time to develop self-awareness, and general awareness of the world. Indeed, the proposed empathic recipe is not aiming to provide mystical experiences during which one actually live through someone else, but it optimizes one’s potential of understanding by allowing the synthetic use of one’s own resources (senses, thoughts, emotions, experiences and imagination).

Additional resources

Joshua Bell in the Metro of Washington (includes videos):

An interesting experiment organised by the Washington Post and the violonist Joshua Bell in the metro of Washington, to see if people were able to recognize outstanding beauty in an ordinary context. It makes us think about our awareness of the world...  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html 

 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell  (en français / in French)

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