When I say build consciousness what I mean is build your ability to identify cognitive distortions and habitual patterns of thought that do not serve your authentic self.
How do we do this?
By actively taking an observer seat inside your mind.
Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong...
It's actually very difficult because of our habitual conditioning.
As humans, from the moment we are born, we are being influenced and conditioned by our surroundings and the people we are engaged with. This becomes our subconscious way of being. We might not notice that our beliefs, morals and values are not exactly our own but were influenced by how we were raised, who raised us and our encounters with peers and the outside world. Do to this conditioning we don't even realize we think or perceive things certain ways because of how ingrained they are in our being.
When we start to question everything we think and what we believe in, we are beginning to build awareness around the way our mind works and how we process things. We can do this by identifying thoughts, beliefs or perceptions that bring up intense emotional responses.
Intense emotional reactions are usually a sign that our perceptions, thinking patterns or beliefs are not serving us. This is the time to observe. This is the time to reflect and ask yourself "are these thoughts and beliefs my own or was I conditioned to think or perceive this way?" then I would ask yourself "are these thoughts or beliefs serving me in this moment?" If these thoughts and beliefs are not serving you, then why not practice changing them by adopting new patterns of thinking and/or new beliefs?
It's not easy adopting new ways of thinking but with habit and consistency we can rewire the way we think, ultimately reducing the emotional responses to these patterns of thought.
My suggestion is build awareness around the thoughts that cause you to feel an emotional response and ask yourself what these thought patterns are doing for your present moment. Then I would actively change them by saying something different or implementing an opposite action plan.
If you need help with this I suggest writing the thinking patterns down that induced an emotional reaction that effected you and rating the emotional response . This way you can visualize the thoughts, the emotional responses, their effect on you and study them, so when they do come up you have an easier time identifying them.
Happy observing!
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