This week I was I asked to talk to staff at an organisation about self awareness. Now the very definition of self awareness is conscious knowledge of one’s character and feelings, but I am using the phrase conscious self awareness here very deliberately.

I do believe most people have a modicum of self awareness, but when I think about the degree of my own self awareness, I can see that I was pretty unconscious of lots of aspects of myself in the many seasons of my life to this point, I can also see that my self awareness is still unfolding.

In hindsight there is a great divide between conscious awareness versus unconscious or subconscious. I was aware of myself in many basic ways, I was aware of myself as a physical entity, and I was aware of some of my character traits, values and beliefs. But I was almost completely identified with my thoughts, I was not aware of myself from many other perspectives – including a more conscious awareness of myself.

The process of conscious awareness really began in the kind of self development work that has become common in many corporate type workplaces; the aim was to understand my traits, styles and preferences. This was in search of career and personal success.

As I began to understand myself more in relation to others, I realised I couldn’t just be categorized neatly into a personality style or a Myers Briggs profile, and my personal inquiry moved into more probing questions like:

What is it like to work for me? Have me work for you?
What is it like to have me as a customer?
What is it actually like to live in close quarters with me?
What is it like to share responsibilities with me?
What is it like to have me as a mum? What is it like to have me as a daughter?
What is it like to have me as a neighbor? As a member of the community?
What is it like to have me as a friend? As a relative?

The more I looked, the more confused I got initially, a big warning sign that I was not living authentically, but I had no idea who the real me was.

Since success did not bring the happiness I thought it would, with an unfulfilling career, lack of energy and clashes in relationships disfiguring the landscape of my life, then began the search for meaning.

I began to ponder questions like Why are we here? and What is the meaning of life? Like a fish swimming in the ocean, who sees only the water world before it and knows nothing of the existence even of a world above, that is how equate my own perceptions of life until I started to learn about the nature of our existence.

As I began to see my life and our world through an entirely different set of lenses, a much broader part of me began to awaken and ask “who am I?”

This led to questions like:

What would it be like to be free of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control people and circumstances?
What would it be like to look at everything in my life as helpful, prompting me to look at myself, others or situations with curiosity rather than defence?
What would it be like to feel myself as an essential part of a perfect whole?
What would it be like to feel connected to everything else?
What would it be like to sense the universe within, the collective individual consciousnesses of the thirty seven trillion cells of my body?
What would it be like to feel an intrinsic part of our cosmos?
What would it be like to truly know that I am master of my own destiny?
What would it be like to co-create with the very imperative for life?

With a broader perspective on life itself, I started to see how interconnected everything is.

This question of Who am I? is one about my true nature.

I can look in the mirror (literally), and see all that my mind tries to hide from me. My soft sensitive skin tells me what my mind and experiences cannot, it displays my essential self. But the set of my jaw and lines on my face tell me about the harshness of the journey.

When I observe what is going on in my body, there is much more to be revealed about the emotional waters upon which I sail.

When I look in the mirror figuratively and see what is being reflected back to me from other people, all the things that trigger me, and the things I admire, there is a wealth of knowledge to be uncovered.
Claire Zammit talks about this process of discovery as the old stories, old patterns that halt us on the way to self actualization. These lie at the deepest level of self awareness, and they arise and get set in motion from our earliest childhood years, long before our conscious memories begin.

The kinds of mantras going on (unconsciously) within us are things like I am not worthy, I’m powerless, I am not enough, I’m a failure, I’m alone and so on.   

She gives some examples of how these halt our progress towards the things we really desire in our life, and stop us from reaching our full potential:

• “You cannot attract love and an extraordinary partner on top of an inner sense of being unlovable. You could meet the right person but you can’t receive their love so you push them away.”
• “You can’t magnetize support on top of a belief that you’re alone. Because you have ways of being where you’re hyper self sufficient so there is no room for anyone to contribute to you.”
• “You can’t generate success on top of a deep feeling of being unworthy because inside (this feeling of being unworthy) you don’t really invest the amount of time or resources that you would need to do a good job/to create success, and you use that as evidence you don’t have something of value to contribute.”
• “You can’t discover your purpose on top of a feeling of not being enough because you won’t show up for opportunities or take the next steps as they come to you.”
• “You can’t make lasting changes with your health if you believe that you don’t matter. Your self care practices are not going to stick because you will habitually turn your attention back to taking care of everyone else because you feel so anxious when you shift your attention towards taking care of you.”
• “You can’t make an impact on the world if you secretly feel you have nothing worthwhile to contribute, because even if you met that marketing genius who could help you launch, the chances are you’d create something that doesn’t produce value for people – which would be more evidence of I don’t really have anything worthwhile to contribute.”

Probably like you, I have a lifetime of hurts, I decided to let them mean something and propel me towards more joy. Everything before this level of inquiry on the journey to conscious self awareness is simply scratching the surface.

My old stories and patterns were so entrenched that this slow unfolding was probably necessary to get me to even see them. The level of pain derived from being separated from my essential self generally has to be pretty intense for me to take action, after all, perhaps like you, I learned to be someone else to please everyone else from the starting gate.

Despite all that, I don’t believe life is ever done pointing me in the right direction. When I say right direction, I don’t honestly think any one of us can get it wrong. It seems more like a game of snakes and ladders where we might go forwards a few steps and then slide backwards, but eventually we end up in the right place.

Will you take the risk to look at your own inner stories and patterns? Because the truth is, when we are held back by an unhelpful belief that is a sure indication that the very opposite of that belief is the one that will unlock your potential.  Stepping into conscious self awareness at a deeper level, is about fulfilling our potential; our potential to feel joy and feel fulfilled and to make a positive impact on the people and world around us.

If you want to dive deeper into conscious self awareness there are many roads that can be taken. In my articles I often refer to those resources I’ve found helpful; there is an abundance out there taking many forms from self help to online courses and working with various practitioners. The work of looking at our subconscious inner stories and patterns is often referred to as just “the work” or “shadow work”, as well as many other names like parts work, fragmentation/completion process, Internal Family Systems, Inner Child Work, Jungian Psychology, Freudian Psychology, Inner Shamanic Journey Work and the list goes on.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Am Worth It – Are You?, Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness, Honour Your Story but Free Yourself of Its Shackles and How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Since I rather spectacularly injured my toe on a wooden pallet last month, which would not have happened if I hadn’t been rushing, I have been reminded to give myself more space between things I want to achieve in a day.

I had been too keen to try to fit in a walk at the beach between commitments and, while it had been great to feel my feet in the warm sand, it had meant rushing back to get the kids’ afternoon tea ready for school pick up. As a consequence, I then found myself blocked in by a delivery when I was already running late.

Each week when I sit down at my keyboard to help crystalise what I’ve learned, there is most often an obvious theme that arises. This week, like many others, has brought mixed blessings; swinging between moments of kindness, insight and serendipities, and frustrating misunderstandings, delays and (to first appearances) blocks.

I wondered what the common thread was between them, because there is usually an ah-ha moment in there somewhere. This week I reflected on the gift of time, or allowing myself more space between the lines as I like to call it, and how small changes have had a major impact on my life.

For example, the kids needed an extra day at home after the weekend; they were far from recharged and one had been unwell, and I was glad to be in a position to give it to them. Though part of me breathed a heavy inward sigh, realizing the things I had planned would need to wait, I enjoyed sitting by the stream in the sun in the local reserve while the kids built a magical paradise for themselves from branches, stones and leaves.

The next day I was thankful to have gotten through my only appointment for the day when I got a call
from the school to pick one of them up. Again, part of me sighed as more plans were waylaid, but nothing critical and I enjoyed some one on one time with my oldest child. The day after, I prioritized a yoga session straight after school drop off, needing to find my equilibrium, and (literally) just as I finished the phone rang again, to go and pick up my other child from school. I was deeply grateful for the timing, and spent some wonderful one on one time with my youngest child.

Life can be like that with kids, especially at the moment with our winter weather and COVID19 restrictions. The kids are tired and schools are cautious, and I’m grateful to be able to accommodate it all with relative ease because I’ve stepped back from continuously having my foot full down on the throttle.

In contrast, if I look back on my early life, I can remember the constant feelings of anxiety attached to the need to get somewhere; to keep up with mum’s walking pace, to catch a bus, to get to the pickup point for swim training in the mornings, to get to school afterwards, to get home in time to eat lunch and get back to school before the afternoon bell… the list goes on.

Growing into adulthood, I took that ethos into my career. As I was climbing the corporate ladder, I had many operational tasks and targets to deliver on, and people to manage, but I also had to make time for the more strategic thinking and delivery, which is where my natural aptitude and focus were and, ultimately, where I wanted my career to head.

I worked long hours and they were jam-packed. Then I had babies, and there was hardly a minute of my life left unscheduled, and that which wasn’t became open season for the kids to get in their mamma time, which they naturally wanted and needed. 

I was great at multi tasking if you were to look on the surface; I could tick a lot of boxes on the to-do list. But where was the space in between to actually process the events and interactions of the day in relation to my own journey here on Earth? My adrenaline and cortisol levels were so high my mind was constantly absorbed in basic survival, in flight or fight mode, there was no space to process anything at a deeper level.

While I’m pleased I at least stepped off the corporate wheel, it is fair to say that old habits die hard. Dialing back on commitments has been a long and painful process, especially with children in the picture. Their dependence on an adult, me in this case, creates all sorts of new and seemingly unending commitments that are no more attractive than the array of dull weekly meetings I was obliged to attend in corporate life. Learning healthy boundaries and how to assert them has become a priority.

Still, I notice I have a propensity to load up my days too much on occasion, and life delivers me a swift and painful reminder (like the toe incident) to leave myself some space.

A few weeks back I was doing an exercise, led by Dr Jean Houston, on subjective time. She gave us one minute of clock time to go and explore something we have always wanted to do – one suggestion was a trip around the world. In my case, I decided to imaginatively take the trip to visit my family in the UK that we had to postpone last month due to current travel restrictions.

In that one minute I was able to imagine: my partner taking the kids and I to the airport, both legs of the flight (even the change-over’s in Los Angeles and London), arriving at our destination, the car ride back to my dad’s new house, looking around the house and garden for the first time, and even some of the people and places we might have visited; all this while also imagining some of the little parent-child moments I might face in escorting the kids on such a trip.

It’s amazing what can be achieved in the mind alone when I’m in a relaxed and focused state.
Yesterday, as I drove to a long awaited appointment with a doctor across town, I found I was aiming to be early so I would feel relaxed and more likely to take in the details of our meeting. I had also gone prepared with a list of things I wanted to discuss.

Afterwards, with no other commitments planned, I drove to the pool thinking through everything I had learned as I swam. Then I went home and made notes as a reminder, something I would previously have made no space for and then would likely have woken in the middle of the night recounting the conversation – or a month later some important information might have worked it’s way back to conscious memory.

In fact, that particular appointment was one in the private rather than public sector, and the glorious difference in the doctor-patient interaction was the gift of time in the consultation; time to explore the issues more on both sides. Straight away I felt the difference; it did not feel rushed so, as well as the things I had wanted to convey, I was also able to ask the questions that arose in my mind during our
conversation.

Unlike in the exercise with Jean Houston, one minute of clock time would not subjectively equal all the time in the word in a rushed doctor’s appointment. In fact, the feeling of being rushed evokes that flight or fight response and tends to freeze my brain so is counterproductive. In the public system I too often think of the questions I want to ask long after I’m out of my appointment.

I wonder how much time and money could be saved in the public healthcare system if a little more care was spent upfront simply to allow for a more relaxed doctor-patient interaction?

For me it’s not about finding hours and hours of time in my calendar, it’s about taking a bit more time upfront with things, being smarter in relation to when and what I schedule, and consciously including all the things that I used to just try and fit in somewhere.

All this is to say I don’t need a lot of clock time in order allow myself the gift of time. The gift is more about a focus on:

• exposing the list of things that don’t always require a specific clock time but do need my attention; like paying bills, grocery shopping, washing, preparing food, weeding and so on
• leaving deliberate space between calendar commitments so that I’m not rushing from one thing to the next, and I actually have time to take care of my other responsibilities and process what is taking place in my life  
• making deliberate time for the things that nourish me, including regular meditation, time in nature for appreciation and contemplation, swimming, yoga and writing
• dropping into my heart space around issues that trigger me to ensure I am acting from a place of authenticity and not mounting a full scale defence or attack that perpetuates things I don’t want in my life – this is an amazing time saver, when I think of all the hours/days/weeks/months/years I used to ruminate on what had happened or what I thought should have happened or what might happen in the future, not to mention how much worse I always felt

There was a particular misunderstanding this week that sent me into a bit of a tail spin. Previously I’d have mounted a defence and gone in guns blazing. Given I hadn’t planned to see that person until next week, the issue would meanwhile have dominated much of my thoughts as I stewed.

Instead I took time to notice the rant in my head, and drop into my heart to figure out how the issue was really making me feel and why. I explained my fears and concerns to other person as concisely as I could, seeking clarification. She understood and, to my relief, there was more to the situation than I was aware of (as is often the case) and we were, in fact, aligned in our thinking.

Allowing myself the gift of time also means allowing it in others; to allow them the space to consider things I’ve asked or said before responding. It means I allow things to unfold in their natural time, like allowing my body time to heal without the compulsion to act now and intervene.

The more I give myself that kind of space, the more I notice I allow it in others. I notice too the difference in how my body feels, more relaxed, like it’s not fighting itself, nor fighting with others. The quality of what I get done is better, and the quantity strangely hasn’t suffered, everything seems to still happen, and more easily.

When I look back on that constant compulsion I used to have to do everything now, I can easily remember how stressed I was. Now I realise I will never be done, so I may as well increase the quality of my interactions with others and situations by allowing myself and them the gift of a bit more time. Do you allow yourself the gift of time?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Kneel at the Doorway of Your Heart to Usher the Dawn of a New Era, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

One topic my partner and I have often butted heads on, in the many years we have been together, is my propensity to engage in alternative ways to maintain my health and wellbeing that don’t involve a GP’s prescription pad.

While I eat fairly healthily, practice meditation and take exercise regularly, don’t partake in any of the modern habits of drinking coffee or alcohol, and use various therapies as and when I need them, he is the opposite.

We are very much opposites in many ways, but for some reason this one seems to needle him more than any other and – in turn – his reaction inflames me. What I discovered this week was the reason it triggers me so much is not actually any of the reasons I had pinned it on.

My mind had placed its bets on all the usual things that trigger me around healthcare. Amid the most stringent levels of restrictions here in New Zealand I wrote to our Prime Minister advocating for access to my customary homeopathic remedies, rather than being restricted to pharmaceuticals, for me it’s important to have freedom of choice.

But from that line of thought, anger spirals me down the path of political greed, money and pharmaceutical control and off into the realms of patriarchal oppression, which is not exactly productive when trying to resolve differences between my partner and I.

When I finally dropped into my heart space to explore what my inner sense of self had to say about it, the voice was much softer, and hurt. It said “I don’t want begrudging acceptance of my priorities; I want support and encouragement to be the best me I can be”.

I decided to sit with this and go deeper, because unlike many of the issues that rise up from my subconscious, opposition to pursuing alternative forms of healthcare doesn’t have any obvious link into my upbringing prior to my early twenties, which is when I first pursued it.

After really allowing myself to feel the way I had after our last argument about it, with my eyes closed, I then looked into the blank movie screen in my mind – a technique I first learned from Brandon Bays many years ago. It doesn’t involve searching conscious memories; it’s more about being in a deeply relaxed state and waiting for an image to appear once I asked myself when I had first felt like this.

To start with I just got vague images: a pinafore dress, a stripy top. It was me somewhere between the ages of five to seven; I had my glasses on so I must have been at least five. Those glasses were the standard issue British National Health Service glasses of the day.

While I was glad the colour range in the late nineteen seventies had expanded from the iconic plastic tortoiseshell rims, they were still limited, and I felt totally frumpy in them. That brought with it a flood of memories, the “money doesn’t grow on trees” and “there’s not enough so don’t ask” messages.

A swathe of memories related to practical clothing and footwear then came flooding into my mind, in particular this really lovely pair of navy blue leather school shoes that I really wanted but had to settle for the cheaper clumpy black ones instead.

Then there was the hideous hand knitted red aviator-style hat with small navy pom poms all over it, like one of those velcro hat-and-ball games, that I was told to wear under pain of death. And the pink brocade rubber swim hat with chin strap I was made to adorn when I first started training with the speed squad, looking like something out of a nineteen fifties synchronised swimming musical.

The list of examples that made me feel embarrassed and dowdy seemed to go on, and they all pointed to a feeling of “I’m not worth it”. And while healthcare outside of the National Health Service had never really been an issue I’d had to contend with, I certainly knew that anything deemed self indulgent was derided.

That has stuck with me, to the point that, after several whiplash injuries in my twenties, when the Osteopath told me (when I was around age thirty) he had done all he could and recommended ongoing massage therapy to manage the aches and pains, I felt guilty and self indulgent about booking a treatment.

Logically I understand the context of all these messages I had been given in my childhood. Both my parents had grown up in post war Britain, and rations were in place most of their childhood. My mum’s dad died when she was age seven and my gran was a single working mother the whole time she was growing up. Times had been tough, and – in contrast – my life was really pretty darn comfortable.

However, as a little kid who felt my light being dimmed in all these unfashionable, frumpy things that I wasn’t given any choice in, I just felt that I was not worth any extravagance.

This is one of the reasons, later in my thirties when I received a big bonus cheque from work and had no debts to pay, I took that money and carefully chose myself one of the most extravagant things I could imagine, a delicious big diamond solitaire ring, which I wore for many years.

Suffice to say, the ring did not heal me, nor did the holidays or all the clothes and other material choices I’ve had the privilege to make since, apparently still inside was the voice of a little girl who was sad because she didn’t feel worth it.

As an adult, I have come to know each and every human is born worthy; it is not something we have to earn. But that part of me hadn’t got the memo. Of course, once uncovered, I went through a process in order to soothe and heal that particular emotional signature, the same one I described in How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present.

Listening to the beautiful Sarah Blondin this week, she reminded me that we are taught to search for our worth, taught to find ways to prove our value, by people who were lost to their own given worth too.  She says “in all of your searching and all of your gaining, you are simply uncovering what has been here all along waiting for you to discover”.

As to my partner, what lies behind his issues around this topic is for him to uncover, but if my own experience is anything to go by, I can be pretty certain it isn’t any of the things that we argued about.
For my own part, I hear Sarah’s challenge “How would your life be different, dear one, if you could remember you are worthy, as you have always been?” and her insight “it is in the moment we stop trying to prove that we learn how to receive”. Profound.

It’s interesting that it took someone trying to govern how I manage my health and wellbeing to flush out that little voice that still lived within me, but I’m glad it did because it now allows me to live more authentically.

My dream is that each human recognize and reclaim the sovereignty of their own soul, heal the emotional signature of all their childhood wounds and inherited trauma that tells them they are anything less than the beautiful, whole souls they are. We are all worthy and deserving of that.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul, How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present, How Relaxed About Your Own Differences Are You? and Take Your Broken Pieces and Make a Beautiful Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

When someone asked me whether I was aware that I projected a lot, I had to pause for a minute and think about it. Projecting seems to me one of those modern words that gets banded around a lot by kids who have been in therapy.

The truth is that I project all the time, as I would guess most of us do given we see the world through our own unique cocktail of heritage and experience (this is also a projection, which I could validate by citing various studies and renowned experts, but I won’t as I’m only throwing it in to highlight how pervasive projecting is). When I hear about something happening in our world, I project myself into it and conclude how I would feel about it. 

Just this morning my daughter was telling me about a class treaty she and her classmates have been working on; and today are signing. In New Zealand our kids are taught about the Treaty of Waitangi, said to be the founding document of New Zealand. It was an agreement signed in Maori and English one hundred and eighty years ago between five hundred and forty-ish Maori chiefs and the British Crown.

As my daughter was explaining the class treaty, it did in fact seem to bear a remarkable resemblance to its namesake. Like the original treaty, it sounded rather like it had been written with an agenda (in this case about behaviour and compliance to school rules) and, like many of the Maori chiefs of the time, it sounded as though my daughter intends to sign it despite feeling uncertain about her commitment to it.

Now the feelings this evoked in me were pure projection. If I put myself in her shoes, I would be that kid refusing to sign. I am a person who commits to principles, not rules. So I was totally fine with things like “respecting one another and property”, I was not fine with things like “not swinging on school chairs”.

In fact, that particular rule sent me spiralling into a rant about modern education in general, sarcastically restating the rule as “we promise to act like robots and sit still in our chairs and be talked at for hours instead of acting like normal human kids whose bodies want to move and learn through experiencing life”.

This, of course, is classic projection. In short, I am not my daughter; I am not going to class today and having to decide whether to sign this treaty. While I can share my views, it is really up to her to find her way around these issues. In fact, it is exactly this kind of experience that will help her figure out what her own truth is and – in the fullness of time – the best way for her to communicate her own boundaries and opinions.

If I project onto her my truth and actions, and try to make her feel she needs to align with me, then I am no better than the treaty. And, indeed, sometime in the future when she sits in therapy unwrapping all these beautiful (double-edged) gifts we parents often unintentionally give our kids, it would be just another thing that would help eventually call her to her own truth.

In this case I decided the gift didn’t need double wrapped and encouraged her to do whatever she felt was the best thing for her at this moment.

Projecting comes up so often that, as I became aware of it on my journey to me, I realised it’s my predominant mode of thinking. It is so insidious that it shows up in (what would at first appear to be) relatively minor ways. If I look at these minor things in a broader context, they also are pointing to some deep lessons in awareness.

Again, I have to look no further than this morning to give you an example. As I was driving the kids to school, we came to the usual busy junction we have to navigate. The junction opens up wide enough to allow two cars to use it simultaneously, one going right, and the other left. In a country that drives on the left hand side, it’s always the right hand turns that are trickiest as you have to cross the right lane to get to the left lane.

The issue with this particular junction, is that by pulling over to the right, to allow others to turn left, they completely block my view of that direction and I have to wait until it’s clear again. In short, I have learned that in order to get out the junction efficiently its best to keep to the middle of the lane and allow everyone to take their turn on a first come first served basis.

This causes me a tremendous amount of anxiety as I want to be seen to being considerate of others. I sit at that junction in the middle of the lane glancing in my rear-view mirror watching for cars coming up behind me who want to turn left, hoping no one will. When they do, or even when I’m just hoping they won’t, I start this line of defence in my head, ready to defend my position just as if I’m imagining the person behind will start tooting their horn or jump out their vehicle to approach me.

This is, of course, because I did have to defend myself in the face of angry onslaughts often as a child. It’s also because being considerate meant putting other people before me in the household I grew up in. Consequently I have people pleasing issues and, while I thankfully seem to have an inner voice that often refuses to put others’ needs before my own, I often carry a tremendous amount of anger and guilt in asserting my needs.

I vividly recall previous times waiting at that junction for extended periods, while thinking I was being good and considerate by pulling over to the right to allow others to turn left ahead of me, only to get frustrated and feel indignant at being held up longer. The feelings attached to those memories fuel my line of defence further; it really is an amazing cacophony of tales woven together.

Now I know this is all a subjective experience that stems from this inner voice that wants me to look good and just to the outside world. And I completely understand it in the context of my upbringing, but I recognise that awareness alone is not going to change that feeling of anxiety. I have to change the voice in my head by changing the emotional signature of those events in my childhood that first created that voice. To do this I’ll probably use the process I outlined in How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present.

However, this week, what I’ve been focused on is really flushing out the main taproots of my discord. I used a process Teal Swan recommended, and here are the points I considered:

• What things in others really trigger me? By others, I focused on my partner, kids and parents as those are the relationships that are close up and personal and I generally can’t escape from. I then listed each annoying thing down the left hand side of a sheet of paper. Examples included (unsurprisingly) traits like being inconsiderate, emotionally unavailable, messy and controlling.
• What positive intention could be behind each of these people adopting these traits? When I considered it, I could see the intention would have been some version of those people trying not to get hurt or rejected within their families, they were simply trying to fit into their environment as kids. There traits are a mirror of what I’ve rejected/disowned in myself. What are the opposite of these traits? I could easily see that if those people had adopted those opposite qualities they would have been consumed by their environment; it was therefore dangerous for them to do so.
• Then I created two columns alongside the traits I had listed as triggers for me: the first headed I am very much like that, and the other is headed I am never like that (to the extent it’s unhealthy). These are basically the only two options, to understand why it’s worth reading the article/watching the video on it.
• Note that this particular part of the process is where the rubber meets the road as I had to be self aware enough to own one of those two options. It reminded me of an Annette Noontil quote that has long since stuck with me “what I see in others I have in myself”; this is the crux of self awareness.
• For those traits I am very much like, I considered why was it dangerous for me to be the opposite? For those traits I am never like, I considered why was it not okay for me to be those? In both cases I decided I'd have either been swallowed whole or chewed up and spat out if I’d have been things like messy, unresponsive or inconsiderate.

I then repeated the whole exercise focusing on traits I admire/love in those other people, and finally asked myself whether there was anything I might have missed by just focusing on my nearest and dearest, I couldn’t think of anything negative, but I did add to my positives being open-hearted and light-hearted.

At first I was surprised to discover I struggled to come up with examples of people who exhibited these two qualities, but I guess it makes sense in a world that is still very much evolving into conscious awareness. These patterns I am discovering in myself have been playing out unconsciously for generations.

As we each use our projections as a tool to become more self aware, rather than using them as a way to blame others and avoid self awareness, I imagine it will become easier and easier to find examples of open-hearted and light-hearted people and that is a world that I look forward to living in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, How Relaxed About Your Own Differences Are You? and Take Your Broken Pieces and Make a Beautiful Life. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As I lay in bed this morning enjoying a quiet five minutes of my mind freely wandering, I was also acutely aware that my bubble was about to burst when the kids awoke, and the duties of the day began. I knew that it would only be when I sat down to type later in the day that my mind would have free rein to wander again.

That is the biggest obstacle for most of us, I believe, the feeling of more than enough time. When I watched a video from Sustainable Human on Why Everyone Deserves a Basic Income, I think the point was well made that we are so busy labouring to live that we don’t have enough time for the things that matter to us, which are often the things that would help us live in harmony with each other and the planet.

I can see where it begins, my kids are kept so busy with schooling (which they are not all that interested in) and are often too tired to pursue things they would rather be exploring. Yet I often think, as I drop them off at that cookie-cutter machine each day, they didn’t come here to fit into this world, they came to change it. But for that matter, so did you and I.

Listening to a friend of mine talk about the less than desirable state of governments today, and how much we had lost in moving away from local communities, I agreed with much of what was being said. However, I did not want to dwell on it, nor fight against it; it just feels like too much resistance.

What came up for me instead, were questions about what could replace these outdated systems. How could we maintain global infrastructure in a more localised world? Was that even the right question?

What I know for sure is that watching more videos, reading more articles or listening to more speeches to raise my awareness about today’s problems feels heavy on my soul, I’m already aware; the issues are huge in so many facets of our lives. What I’m interested in is a vision of what it could look like and how we get there. 

When I sat down to meditate and clear my mind, I had this vision of me sitting at an architect’s desk with a huge jigsaw puzzle spread across the table and only two or three pieces in place. All around me on the walls were white boards and notice boards, with lots of notes and questions posted all over them, a little like the crime or medical investigation rooms I’ve seen on TV.

I knew this was me sitting down to start to piece together a vision for myself of what the world could look like. I started to wonder if anyone had ever written a book as good as Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations, but focused on reconstructing the way in which public services could be provided.

Then I realised much of what he had written, at its core advocating organisations that are set up with autonomous individuals who have collective responsibility for outcomes (rather than employees with delegated authorities and limited access to information), was and could be applied to public services.

I also realised the question needed to be broader, in the sense of how each person in society who had an interest in that arena (be it roads, communication, education, healthcare, economics, justice etc) could participate to the extent they desired.

My mind was on a roll with questions and people who might have answers, and the boards in my imaginary investigation room were rapidly filling up with notes and insights. It’s something that deeply interests me, this question of what society could be like if we can function together in more conscious awareness of who we truly are.

While creating a vision of a new society is certainly one way to step towards a new world, it’s no more valid than anything else that people might do that brings them joy. For my partner, his mind wanders to the forest where he can bike, or the activity in the night sky he likes to track, or the renovation work he is doing.  I really think that time to ponder what we love is key for positive progression.

When I feel unhurried, free to pursue what I’d like, my whole system is more relaxed, more in tune with the things I truly want out of life. It’s easier to eat in ways that are healthy, to think about planting my own food, to take regular exercise, and to take the time to notice how my neighbour is doing.

These are all things during our lockdown earlier in the year that became very evident. It was a time of self reflection, of seeing negative patterns and revisiting what is important in life. Sometimes it’s all too easy to get caught up in the doing, which feels like a distraction from the main event of being who we have come here to be.

Whatever you truly enjoy and feel passionate about, pursue it as much as you can, as often as you can, take one day at a time. Even if it feels trite, or that it won’t change the world, it will change your world. Then imagine a world full of people pursuing their passion, which is a world changed for the better.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Take a Broader Perspective, Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together - A Remarkable New Organisational Construct, Be An Evolutionary, and The Hidden Ingredient in Really Effective Problem Solving. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.