Improving Interactions Through Better Self-Awareness and Objectivity

Article by Paula Lord

Originally Published in the Holistic Living Magazine

How well we communicate with others is a reflection of how well we communicate with ourselves. Compassionate, civil and productive communication with others is only possible when we are compassionate, civil and clear with our self-talk. Two factors which must be practiced and
developed are awareness and objectivity.

1. AWARENESS: We have to allow ourselves to register more and more subtle cues that our body is always offering. Most of us have learned to turn off our sensors and we may have become numb to sensations. The good news is we have simple and fun practices to reconnect our brains and our bodies, and to safely recover our ability to register sensations. Awareness of self can be developed physically (which will lead to emotional and mental awareness) only when we are willing to experiment and ask the question, “What am I feeling?”

2. OBJECTIVITY: When we do have sensations, we are often programmed to automatically give a cause, an excuse or an explanation for the sensation…we jump to conclusions. Have you ever done this with another person? Made assumptions about their behavior without knowing the various details of their current life experience? We react only to find out later the tremendous stresses they were under, and it requires us to apologize for our reactive speech or actions. Right? It’s pretty common. We can improve and grow by being more objective about our inner experience. Here is an example:

Let’s say we are practicing basic squats. We may feel pain in our knees or lower back during the exercise, or we may not be going as low as the teacher. Here are two different scenarios for our self-talk:
A. I can’t do that because I have a herniated disc. Or my old football injury made me inflexible. Or my doctor said I have arthritis.
B. I recognize discomfort when my body moves in this exercise. I am comfortable until my knees reach a 75-degree angle. I wonder what I could do to help myself find more comfortable mobility moving forward.

Do you see the difference between the responses? One is simply looking to find blame from the past to explain the sensation. The other sets up a neutral observation and seeks solutions to improve for the future.

What kind of relationships and communication might we have if we recognize that it doesn’t matter how we got here? The only thing that matters is how can we create something better from where we are right now.

Prana Posture LITE is a free weekly class offered live on YouTube on Tuesday mornings at 11:30 a.m. Here is where you can join a community of like-minded people who are interested in improving their self talk in order to improve outer relationships.