Empowering your Mind
Realize, Recognize, Respond
The three footholds Realize, Recognize, Respond form the basis of Aware-ly approach to creating a personalized path to conscious living. The idea to create a map for yourself is simple, but it does require a commitment and dedication to make it a practice.
Living a consciousness-aware life means being in command of your emotions rather than letting them take control of you, and making decisions with awareness.
The Formula
The Realize, Recognize, Respond approach isolates each emotion and lets you deal with them in a systematic fashion. There could be a claim that humans are complex beings with mental and emotional complexities that are hard to sequester. The counterargument is that we do not feel each emotion at the same time. There is always a theme or a central emotion in a certain moment based on the triggers and external environments and internal reactions to them. Even if we cannot always separate all our emotions, we can certainly find the premise of the strongest sentiment at a time.
An Example
Let us take a scenario- Mike did not get into his college of choice. The first emotion that strikes him is grief, which is the theme of the moment. As the feeling of grief settles down, he could feel shame. He is ashamed to face his friends, relatives, even family members. Slowly shame takes over grief. He transitions to the emotion of fear- what if he is rejected from other colleges of the same caliber. He looks back on his record and regrets not achieving a higher test score or not writing a great college essay. He reflects on his weaknesses and then starts the self-blame, shame grows stronger. Somewhere hidden is anger. He is angry at himself or his parents, teachers, friends, or the whole world.
Over time, Mike’s emotions fluctuate from a lower level to a higher one and then go back to lower. In a day, after knowing of his failure, Mike feels one emotion more than the other at different times in a day. To Mike, it is apparent that he is feeling all the emotions all at once, but the truth is that one emotion takes hold of his existence more than the other at a certain point. He feels overwhelmed and confused. Self-pity, confusion, and pessimism incapacitate him for days. He finds it difficult to find a sense of inner peace, even though he knows that he needs to find his strength and feel better, he remains at odds with the way out.
The above is a typical example of a person’s life. Our state could mirror that, even when the cause could be different.
In life, we all face such situations – loss of a loved one, unable to get a promotion, salary raise, losing a job, etc.
Examine the Process
In each circumstance, emotions work at a subconscious level creating havoc on our existence. That is where developing a habit of consciousness comes in, which helps bring the subconscious awareness to an explicit ground, give us the courage to accept, and alter our instinctual reaction towards the feeling.
The process is like this – I become aware of the theme of a difficult moment, I bring my subconscious to the state of consciousness, I acknowledge that emotion, and understand why it happened. I can do that in a few different ways- keep a journal or talk to my confidant. In one way or the other, I consciously recognize the emotion and its triggers. I evaluate the value of that emotion and decide if I should let it linger longer. The valuation will decide how quickly I will move away from that state by implementing some conscious steps. I alter my view and respectfully bow out of the inconsequential state and move to a more useful one.
If Mike knew how to follow the realize • recognize • respond formula he would think back and identify his emotion of the day. After feeling grief when he first found out about the rejection from the college, he brings the emotion from his subconscious to a conscious level. He accepts what happened, the trigger that caused his level of consciousness. He identifies the root cause of feeling that way. After much introspection and mulling, he recognizes that he was heartbroken at the prospect of not going to his dream school. He understands that the shock of his feelings is greater because he had pent-up desire and expectations from himself. For long he had imagined himself on the campus, he owned the paraphernalia of the college- stickers, t-shirts, jerseys, etc. – he realizes that everything is down the drain. Along with that he identifies the feeling of shame- he has not lived up to his own expectations or his family and friends will think low of him. He also recognizes the feeling of anger taking over somewhere along the course. He feels entitled to his feeling and let them linger, but his focus is now on those different emotions and how each of them affected him.
At the end cycle of the awareness, he realizes that he had felt a respectable amount of grief, shame, and anger. He cannot live in it forever. He knows that dreams do not die because of disappointing results. He accepts that it was his natural reaction to the disheartening and unexpected outcome. This is an achievement that will help Mike scale up his pathway because it is crucial for him to not only be aware of his state but also accept it.
Realization and recognition are the tacit conditions that prompt an overt state that inspires action – respond.
Mike focuses on the results of other colleges. He weighs in his self-worth. He is a 4.0 honors student with a great track record. He has taken hard courses. He has reasons to feel optimistic. He moves from feeling the depression that had taken over earlier and turns toward other areas of his life. He changes his way of thinking and takes action that is significant- e.g. calls other colleges to set up an interview so he could make a great impression.
In the above picture, we could see that Mike’s emotional state has value and a lesson, so it needs to be respected and recognized. It is easy for us to ignore a difficult emotion and feel that we have moved on from the negativity. Overlooking is not an answer or a healthy approach. It leads to the festering of negativity which develops into a bigger problem. It is also important to know that developing the habit of consciousness is a methodical process and should not be rushed and more importantly could not be hurried.
Each emotion has a value, it has a lesson, so it needs to be respected and recognized.
Brushing it underneath the carpet will not help. That is why realization and recognition are necessary to be a conscious choice. The third step of how to respond comes easy after that, as by then it is a conscious choice.
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