Awareness: Seeing What Is
How Awareness Turns Reflection into Clarity and Choice
“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”
1. The Difference Between Reflection and Awareness
Reflection looks backward; awareness looks inward and outward, right now. Reflection reviews what already happened. Awareness observes without judgment what is happening now: thoughts, emotions, sensations, and surroundings.
In The Transformation Formula, reflection begins the process of change, but awareness keeps it alive. Reflection asks: “What happened?” Awareness asks: “What’s happening now?”
Science Insight: Reflection engages the hippocampus (memory and meaning). Awareness engages the prefrontal cortex (focus, regulation, choice). Together, they form a continuous feedback loop, reflection integrates the past, awareness guides the present.
Without reflection, you repeat. Without awareness, you react. With both, you evolve.
2. The Power of Awareness
Awareness is not overthinking or self-monitoring. It’s presence, the ability to notice what is, without adding stories or judgment. In moments of awareness, your brain shifts from reactive to responsive mode.
Science Insight: Neuroscientist Richard Davidson’s studies at the University of Wisconsin show that mindfulness and awareness practices activate the left prefrontal cortex, associated with calmness, clarity, and resilience. At the same time, activity in the amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm center decreases.
In other words, awareness creates emotional regulation. You see clearly without being swept away.
Practical insight: Awareness is like turning on a light in a dark room, you can finally see what’s there, even if it’s messy.
3. Awareness in Action: The Pause Technique
Awareness becomes real through practice. One of the simplest and most powerful tools is the Pause Technique.
When you notice tension, discomfort, or reactivity:
Pause. Take a single breath.
Notice. What am I feeling or thinking right now?
Name it. “I’m feeling anxious.” “I’m thinking about control.”
Normalize it. “It’s okay to feel this; it’s part of being human.”
Science Insight: Dr. Daniel Siegel calls this “Name it to tame it.” When you label an emotion, you shift activity from the emotional brain (amygdala) to the language centers and prefrontal cortex, reducing stress and increasing control.
Try this: Next time you feel pressure, don’t fix it, just name it. Awareness begins where control ends.
4. Internal and External Awareness
There are two forms of awareness, both essential for balance.
Internal awareness is your connection to what’s happening inside you: body sensations, emotions, thoughts, energy. External awareness is your connection to what’s happening around you: your environment, others’ emotions, tone, and energy.
Mastery lies in holding both.
If you focus only inward, you risk self-absorption. If you focus only outward, you lose authenticity. True awareness is connected presence, being grounded within yourself while attuned to others.
Science Insight: Research in social neuroscience (Dr. Dan Goleman, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence) shows that the most effective leaders and communicators cultivate both inner focus and other focus. They can stay centered without losing connection.
Practical exercise: In a conversation, notice both your breathing and the other person’s tone. That’s awareness in action.
5. Awareness vs. Analysis
Awareness observes; analysis interprets. Analysis often becomes mental noise, the mind rushing to explain, fix, or judge. Awareness, on the other hand, simply sees. It allows space between observation and reaction, the space where insight and choice arise.
As Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer describes it, “Mindlessness is when we act from habit; mindfulness is when we notice new things.”
Science Insight: A 2010 Harvard study found that the average mind wanders 47% of the time. When people’s attention wandered, they reported being less happy, regardless of what they were doing. Awareness brings the mind back, not by forcing focus, but by noticing where attention is and gently returning it.
Practical distinction: Analysis asks, “Why am I like this?” Awareness asks, “What am I noticing right now?” Only the second leads to freedom.
6. When Awareness Meets Defensiveness
Some people are wired to give, others to take.
The giver offers presence, kindness, and consistency, often without keeping score.
The taker receives easily but rarely reflects on balance. For a while, the pattern works. Until one day, the giver pauses. The giving slows, not out of resentment, but from a quiet wish for reciprocity.
That’s when imbalance reveals itself.
The moment the flow of giving changes, the taker’s comfort is disturbed. Sarcasm appears, disrespect surfaces, or an emotional attack arrives, an unconscious attempt to restore control.
Awareness is what breaks this cycle.
It lets you see the pattern not as personal failure but as energetic law: what has been sustained by one side alone cannot stay in harmony.
Science Insight: When you recognize a relational pattern, your brain moves from emotional reactivity (amygdala) to conscious regulation (prefrontal cortex). You gain choice, the power to respond rather than absorb.
In that moment, the invitation is simple yet profound:
Do not defend. Do not explain.
Stand in calm authority and say outwardly or silently:
“I give from love, not obligation. I will not feed what disrespects my energy. If you wish to meet me, meet me in mutual respect.”
This is power over force, strength without resistance, clarity without confrontation.
It doesn’t punish; it recalibrates.
True awareness is not passive. It’s the quiet reordering of energy.
When the giver becomes conscious, the dynamic changes. The relationship either evolves to reciprocity or dissolves into truth.
Either way, peace is restored, not by giving less, but by giving wisely.
7. Building an Awareness Practice
Awareness grows through repetition and gentleness. Here are a few simple practices you can integrate today:
Sensory Check-In: Pause three times a day. Ask: What do I see, hear, feel, smell, and taste right now? This grounds the nervous system in the present.
Body Scan Before Bed: Notice where your body feels tense or relaxed without changing anything. This builds interoception, your internal awareness network.
The Noticing Journal: Instead of journaling what happened, write one line each evening: “Today I noticed…” This strengthens observation without judgment.
Awareness becomes your most reliable form of intelligence, not intellect, but presence.
8. The Integration Point
Reflection looks back to understand; awareness looks within to see clearly. Together, they form the foundation of transformation.
When you cultivate awareness, you don’t just know more, you see more. And in that seeing, change begins.
This article is part of a forthcoming series based on my upcoming book, The Transformation Formula: How to Create Your Own Luck and Win the Lottery of Life, a practical guide to building a life that truly works for you, in your finances, your health, your career, your relationships, and your dreams.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Live by Design, Not by Default.
Until the next horizon,
Coach • Traveler • Believer in Intentional Living
