Are You Aware?

How many times do you find yourself unconsciously moving through your day?

Yesterday I saw some girls nearly get hit by a car as they started to cross the road against the red man. Sounds pretty obviously when I say they were crossing against the red, right?

But the thing was they weren’t consciously aware that was what they were doing. Well at least not up until the car honked its horn at them…

So what happened?

These two girls were standing at the crossing talking to each other and then when they heard the sound of the crossing signal they stepped out and started walking.

Neither of them were consciously aware of their surroundings and had made it to the middle of the first lane before they were confronted by the car.

Note the car wasn’t going fast as there was no close call but it was definitely enough to shock the girls ‘awake’.

How often is this you?

Do you remember your walk to work? Or worse yet, your drive to work / home?

So often our conscious mind takes a back seat and we run our day on autopilot. Reacting to the triggers around us, in the case of the girls it was the audio trigger of the cross walk that had them step out onto the road.

Perhaps you can relate to this situation with crossing a road?

No matter what it is, what area’s of your life have you been unconsciously operating?

How to break this?

There are a couple of ways you can bring your attention to be more conscious throughout your day. One of the ways I started to impact my daily activities was to set multiple alarms throughout my day that would ‘break my state’ in the current moments.

The reminder on my phone would show up with a message along the lines of ‘What are you thinking about now?’ 

The rule when this went off was to stop and check in with my inner self. Taking stock of my internal state, my focus and also my awareness.

Now days I do still find myself at times unconsciously operating through my day. Although my awareness shows up often to check in with myself, to understand what my current state is etc.

My challenge to you.

Give that a go today, set 2 alarms / reminders that are designed to bring your attention back to you. When you do this take note of any patterns that are showing up. The patterns I’m referring to are the triggers that have to move into this unconscious, autopilot state.

For having an awareness on these will start to pay dividends for you over the long run!