Self-awareness is an art of becoming aware of the mind and the physical body. The journey of self-awareness begins with understanding how does the mind work and ends with providing mental or physical diets relevant to your lifestyle.
The goal of Self-awareness is fulfilled when you realize, instead of believing the essence of becoming the controller of your mind and your physical existence is due to the interdependence of nature’s creations.
The art of self-awareness also supplicate to learn a few basic techniques in the journey of life, these are;
✅ How to Handle Anxiety
✅ How to Stop Unwanted Thoughts
✅ How to be Happy
➡ Chapter 1: 4 Steps to Be Your Own Life Coach
➡ Chapter 2: How to Understand Your Mind
👉 Part 1: What is Consciousness?
👉 Part 2: What is the Subconscious Mind?
👉 Part 3: How to Control Your Mind
👉 Part 4: How to Stop Reacting and Start Responding
👉 Part 5: How to Master Your Mind
➡ Chapter 3: Why Do You Need to Be Attentive?
➡ Chapter 4: How to Improve Attention
➡ Chapter 5: How to Boost Your Intelligence
➡ Chapter 6: You Are Here
👉 Part 1: How To Stop Unwanted Thoughts
👉 Part 2: How to Be Happy
👉 Part 3: How to Deal With Anxiety & Depression
➡ Chapter 7: What is Conscious Intelligence & How to Be Conscious Intelligent
In this article, I shall let you know the basics of self-awareness, the mind-body phenomenon of life.
So, let’s begin with understanding the mind.
Awareness About The Mind
In the article on how to understand your mind, I have explained the working model of the mind elaborately.
The human mind has basically three parts;
All the thoughts, anxieties, ideas are stored and generated in the subconscious mind, even the sensory (5 senses) inputs are not directly fed into the primary processing unit, these are also fed into the subconscious mind.
When anything from subconscious mind passes the gateway of the conscious mind, it is loaded into the primary processing unit, and whatever is loading on the primary processing unit, we experience the reflection of it.
The subconscious mind can’t decide what is right and what is wrong, but there are some default programs that are stored in the subconscious mind, those mapped with the conscious mind, determine your gateway or consciousness and ultimately your personality.
The default programs are runs on autopilot, autopilots are also called as habits. Habits or autopilot are developed through repetition. For example, if you are practicing distraction, you will live a distracted life as your consciousness will always try to get distracted.
All of the phenomena of the body are controlled by the mind; I think you don’t need an explanation on it. But, at the same time, you also need to understand how to control your mind.
The following four basic steps will help to boost your consciousness & control your mind:
✅ Regulate your senses
✅ Identifying the corrupted default autopilot programs
✅ Reprogram your corrupted default programs, wherever necessary
✅ Make clarity in thoughts
Your subconscious mind is always in the recording mode, whatever enters to it through, gets recorded and become wanted or unwanted thoughts in due course of time. So try to provide mental diet relevant to your life.
Spend time with yourself, close your eyes in an isolated place and start identifying your bad habits and make a list of it.
Make a plan to replace the corrupted habits, every force has an equal and opposite reaction. Identify the opposite reaction of the corrupted program and through repetition, replace it.
Have clarity of what you say or do and what you think. When unwanted thought breaks the gateway of consciousness, take a deep slow breath through the nose and out through the mouth.
Through self-introspection, you also have to identify which of the following mental state you practice most of the time and discard the unwanted one. The state of the mind can be;
Must Read: How to Control Your Mind
Awareness About The Physical Body
In high school, you have learned some basic fundamental of your body. The basic need of the body is oxygen and food. Everyone needs oxygen, but the requirement of the food may vary from person to person and it is also based on geographical conditions.
The oxygen we inhale is a byproduct of the trees those surround us. When you are in New York, you are inhaling oxygen from a tree of that locality, when you are in New Delhi, you are inhaling oxygen from a tree of New Delhi, and in the journey from New York to New Delhi, you have inhaled oxygen from many geographic locations.
Whatever we eat, be it flesh or veg, we all are in the loop of the food cycle. Essentially, we are living on this planet because of the natural conditions we have. A worm or an insect has contributed to growing a tree that gives us oxygen, and the foods.
In this universe, every living or dead creature has a purpose; everybody is doing their own duty, except a few humans. Even a mosquito has a purpose. Don’t you think so? It can work as a population control agent whenever required.
So, in the journey of becoming self-aware, you have to be conscious about not only about your body but also about nature and its creatures, for which this physical body is living. Suppose, you were sent to Mars without necessary tools; would you survive there?
The essence of caring for nature as a part of self-awareness reminds me of one of the beautiful quotes of the Bhagavad Gita:
“For one who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me, I am never lost, nor is he ever lost to Me.”— Text 30, Chapter- 6
While becoming aware of the body, you should also know that your body is made out of food; everybody has a different requirement based on physical or geographical characteristics. I must advise you to eat which is good for your health, don’t follow a common prescription, everyone has a different requirement. Remember, there is a huge commercial campaign going on, “What you should eat and what you should not.” Don’t fall into the trap and use your own rationale.
Conclusion
I hope you have understood that self-awareness is an art of becoming aware of the mental functions and our physical body which is living because of the conditions we have on this planet.
If you have any doubt, please do let me know in the comment.
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Ashim, the Founder of MindWiper, loves to learn, share, and educate various dimensions of life skills development. After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked with major ICT industries in India and finally he followed his dream to integrate technology for Cognitive Skills & Life Skills Development.