Let Awareness, NOT Judgment, Set You Free

“Try seeing your world and yourself this way, eyes open to whatever is before you, mind free of dichotomies. Are you good or bad, fragile or tough, wise or foolish? Yes. And so am I.” ― Martha Beck

This month I’m focusing on the second layer of Leading from the Inside Out, Awareness. I’m in the midst of writing the Awareness chapter of my book. I’ve blogged about it before, in fact, I’ve blogged about it quite a bit, which makes sense because it’s a tool that I use and sometimes misuse or at least misconstrue. What’s got my attention right now is how I conflate awareness and judgment without even realizing it (you could say that I’m unaware of this conflation much of the time) and the impact of this combination is usually anxiety. When I began my journey of coming home to myself (without knowing that’s what I was doing) almost 9 years ago I was stuck in a spiral of negative thinking. In terms of the Positive Intelligence (PQ) work that I do, my saboteurs were having their way with me. 

I was completely immersed in the lies of “I must make everyone happy at all times” – people must like, better yet love, me for me to be safe and “I must get it right, even better, perfect” – mistakes are crises and show my imperfectness which is not acceptable. Those of you who have been following my journey may notice some common themes here, yep, there I was and here I still am in all my perfectly imperfectness! 

​During that time, I was doing all the things I was “supposed” to do, in fact, you could say “I had it all.” I was starting my own business and working on some new and interesting projects, I was parenting four children/teenagers, I was spending time with friends and family, I was coordinating the household, and on and on. All of these things were amazing and I was experiencing most of them from a place of not enough, try harder. So essentially I was missing it and by it, I mean everything. What I know now is that I was so stuck in my head that I truly was absent from this wonderful life I was creating much of the time. That’s when I hired myself a leadership coach. I had taken on a new, high visibility consulting project with a Fortune 100 company and I wanted support. Best decision I’ve made, thank you to Therese Kienast for transforming my life.
 
What’s interesting about that time is that I thought I was highly self-aware and actually what I was, was highly self-critical. It took (and still takes) coaching and the Radical Leadership program for me to realize that awareness and judgment are two different things. Thank goodness, because who wants more awareness if it makes me feel bad about myself like the constant inner chatter of how I’m messing up does? No thank you, I’d rather be blissfully ignorant to this “awareness” aka judgments. And that’s what’s interesting, awareness is in some ways closer to ignorance in the way it feels than it is to judgment. Awareness is just noticing without making meaning. It’s observing without evaluating, it’s being curious about what is right now (hence the need for being present first). What a relief! Curious awareness is fun, light, open and shiny. Judgment is hard, heavy, dark, and confining. Awareness is a light that we get to turn toward whatever we choose to notice. That’s all. And when we notice without judgment possibilities emerge. I’m exploring what pure awareness is and feels like this month. Join me and let’s chat about it in the comments.