“Making Conscious Choices and Practicing Self Awareness”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am very excited to be a contributor to Mt. Everest Mind Camp. Stephanie Graham’s mission of bringing together like minded, soulful people from different backgrounds to one website is an honorable and exciting mission that I am proud to be a part of. I am also honored to be a guest on this site along with the accomplished athletes, speakers, and professionals featured here, so a virtual thank you to all involved.”
As a management consultant, executive coach and speaker I am in a privileged position of helping individuals create more productive, healthy and meaningful work environments for themselves and others. Although each individual, team or organization I work with brings their unique set of challenges and accomplishments, I have noticed some similar themes emerge. This month I would like to share with you the theme of “Making Conscious Choices and Practicing Self Awareness” and how the small daily choices we make influences the quality of our lives.
The idea of Choices and Decision Making has been written about and theorized by many before me and, yet I feel compelled to discuss this idea again. We make thousands of decisions a day and many decisions we make occur in milliseconds. From the moment we wake our brain gets busy on making choices. We choose to hit snooze; we choose what food to eat and what morning beverage to drink; we choose our clothing for the day; we choose which way to drive to work; we choose to exercise or not; we choose to push ourselves through a tough deadline; we choose how to react to the stresses throughout the day; we choose how we will feel after the stresses and challenges of the day creep up on us; and we choose how to react when we make a mistake and the mistake is discovered. I could continue, but you get the point. Although we make a tremendous amount of choices each day, we often lose sight of the fact that with each choice we have an opportunity to create a conscious choice.
Conscious choices result in more productive outcomes and personal accountability. A conscious choice is simply a thoughtful choice or decision where we are prepared to accept full accountability for the outcome(s). We have a tendency to forget that some of things we do and their respective outcomes are the result of our choices, mostly because we were not conscious when we made them! For example, it is easy to accept that I chose to hit the snooze button therefore I was late for work. It becomes increasingly more difficult to accept that when I am having a bad day and I am in a terrible mood, that this bad mood is a choice…that I have chosen to be in a bad mood.
Importantly, the choices about our feelings and responses to life’s’ events help determine the quality of our lives. To make a choice to be stressed-out after you get in a car wreck, might be forgiven by others, yet it is this type of choice that determines the quality of the rest your day. To make a choice to be in a bad mood because your boss yelled at you, this is a choice. The point here is that every life situation requires you to choose your response and it is your response that will determine how your day turns out. At the end of the day if you say, “Boy, I’ve had a lousy day” keep in mind you made it lousy. But at the end of the day, if you say,“that was a great day”—you made it a great a day, you chose to make it a great day. Remind yourself on a regular basis that you have a choice about your reaction. You may not have chosen an event or the outcome, but you have the power to choose your reaction.
At times I have wished to find the ONE secret recipe for creating a successful, meaningful, productive life. Although I have not found one recipe, I have discovered two very special ingredients to aid in my quest to create a successful, meaningful, productive life. These two powerful ingredients (aka, actions) include: Choices and Self Awareness. See Figure 1.
In addition to making good choices for yourself and being in control of consciously creating your choices, how often do you sit and reflect on the choices you’ve made and their outcomes? John Maxwell, a leadership development author and speaker, states that, “development happens daily.” Although he refers to this in the context of leaders developing themselves, I believe it is relevant to humans developing themselves.
The average population will typically answer ‘No’ to this question. Below are two simple exercises to help you focus on your development each day. The exercises below (Exercises A – C) should take no longer than 5 minutes each. I would recommend getting a journal and keeping track of your learning and development.
To combine the powers of consciously creating your choices and bringing more self-awareness into your life allows you to create a more meaningful, productive and peaceful life for yourself and others.
Good Luck and Happy Consciousness!
Exercise A:
In your Learning Journal, take a few minutes to reflect on the following at the end of your day:
1. What choices did I make today that contributed to the quality of my life?
2. What choices did I make today that distracted from the quality of my life?
Exercise B:
Reflect on today’s events/situations. Pick an event that did not have the outcome you desire. Take 5 minutes to reflect and write your responses to these questions in your learning journal.
1. What role did I play in this event or situation?
2. What did I do that was effective, productive or constructive?
3. What did I do that was ineffective, unproductive or destructive?
4. What have I learned?
5. What will I do differently next time?
Exercise C:
Reflect on today’s events and situations. Pick an event that had a desirable outcome. Take 5 minutes to reflect and write your responses to these questions in your learning journal.
1. What role did I play in this event or situation?
2. What did I do that was effective, productive or constructive?
3. What did I do that was ineffective, unproductive or destruct ive?
4. What have I learned?
5. What will I do differently next time?
@ Dr. Shanna Teel Ph.D.
ABOUT DR. SHANNA TEEL Ph.D.
Dr. Shanna Teel is the Founder and CEO of Dr. Shanna Teel & Company, a leadership development and human capital consulting firm. She has had a dynamic career as an influential and inspirational business owner, consultant, coach and speaker, and holds the distinction of being called the “Oprah of Corporate America”.
Join Dr. Teel Ph.D. as she gives you greater insight into how we operate in our daily lives and how this affects the outcome of our goals and dreams and our outlook on life in her article, “Making Conscious Choices and Practicing Self Awareness”.
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