On Training Consciousness

Like many people, I’ve been taught many different subjects at school and university about how the world works. Over time I found it useful to organize the knowledge in my head in layers: galaxy, earth, countries, social groups, living organisms, cells, atoms, etc. This mental model helps to organize knowledge by integrating new facts and principles into a particular layer. The only missing piece in this model is me, the mind that perceives the world and takes action. This subject was not covered in my formal education. I was left with almost no knowledge about how my mind operates and how I could master using it over time. I’m going to share how I gained this knowledge and how it has benefitted me.
It’s important to highlight that the knowledge about how the mind works is not life-critical. Parents and society give basic guidelines, e.g., don’t be greedy, temper your anger, boys don’t cry, etc. One can live a long life just having this basic knowledge. Life events happen to a person, and the person reacts by following instincts tamed by social norms and directed by social habits. However, the lack of knowledge about a mechanism means less ability to operate it properly, so the reaction of the mind becomes an additional source of surprise. A lack of ability to properly operate the mind also leads to fewer conscious decisions, which means less freedom. However, one can also choose to make more of conscious decisions, which requires understanding one’s mind.
I have also noticed that this topic is considered uncomfortable for many people and is usually avoided. I got to look into this topic myself as part of my executive coaching sessions, which were aimed at making me a better manager. However, those sessions were mostly about understanding my own emotions because emotions stimulate and direct actions. This coaching’s key idea was to learn the skills of understanding and processing emotions before taking any action. By practicing this skill, I learned that I’m not just practicing to become a better manager. I’m practicing to become a more conscious person so as to become a better manager. However, training to become more conscious has benefits beyond my initial goal. It provides opportunities to make better choices in other areas of life.
Meditation was a good starting point. When I share my experience with people, they get interested and start researching it, usually by reading top links on Google. Quite often, those links mention many benefits like becoming calmer and more relaxed. The problem is that those articles mention too many subtle benefits, which distract attention from the main one: meditation helps to train a new skill that registers thoughts. It’s a valuable skill because one starts to recognize thought patterns and learns how to redirect attention. Choosing where to redirect attention helps to escape monkey-mind — thinking the same thoughts over and over again. However, the main benefit of this skill is the awareness of what is going on in your mind. That might not sound too exciting. The benefits become clearer once a person has had multiple sessions that focus on developing the skill above. I learned most of this from using Headspace.
The way we perceive the world can have a significant impact on our decisions and the ultimate outcome. For example, one of four drills of learning to ride a motorcycle on a track is vision training. The way the rider looks at the track, wide or narrow, changes speed perception. It seems like a good analogy for what happens in life. Perspective dictates our perception of events. One’s emotional state often defines perspective. One effect that everyone could share is that the same regular troubles seem easier after a big success and more difficult after a big failure.
I started to learn about taking into account my emotional state in a very basic form by learning a simple rule from an experienced creative director — refrain from making big life or project decisions in a “triggered” state. A sign of this is that you can’t see how the opposite of your opinion can also be true. It’s hard to track how many times this has helped me, but it was my starting point to learn how to account for my emotional state when making decisions. I can see some similarities between a drunk driver and a person unaware of their triggered state. In both cases, the person feels very righteous despite having a lack of knowledge or skills. In such cases, a lack of consciousness can only be compensated by help from others.
As I said earlier, most of my learning and practices about how my mind works came from my executive coaching. The coaching is based on a methodology produced by conscious.is. This company has created a framework that helps to grasp the context of how a problem is solved. For example, the context could be a tense discussion with manipulative and passive-aggressive moves, while the content could be a missed deadline or sales target. The context includes the emotional state of the participants, which can have a bigger impact on the final decision than the content.
The conscious.is group has released a book that is a great intro to this topic. However, it’s not enough to just read and understand the material. One needs to practice the exercises with multiple repetitions. After long enough practice, one can use work-related tensions and challenges to gain even more practice. In such a way, the work turns into a game-like process that brings a lot of fun and joy.
Getting your team on board can be tricky. The barrier is the psychological discomfort or block to discuss and share emotional states freely. For example, when people hear terms for the first time, they often associate the whole practice with a cult. So far, I’ve seen two successful occasions to practice with more than one person: group coaching sessions and starting with a person who has a genuine interest in psychology. Once at least part of the team is comfortable talking about it in a safe space, you can build confidence and strategies for how to share those practices with the others.
The core idea of those practices is that we perceive troubles at work as an immediate life threat. Let’s be clear: a missed sales target could lead to some bad consequences, but our lives are much safer than those of our predecessors from whom we inherited this reaction. Like our predecessors, we often still react to a problem in the fight-or-flight response, which translates into getting scared or angry. Those reactions are fine if the best solution is to move fast or freeze. However, our modern lives are about being creative and looking for solutions, not running or fighting for our lives. This is especially true for people in management positions. If they can’t handle their emotions, then they can make an issue bigger. Basically, a lack of consciousness could be perceived as a hefty tax on productivity because it heavily impacts creativity.
Parenting is another area where consciousness is crucial. Kids test you all the time. They often know your weak spots. At the same time, they imitate your reactions and responses. Therefore, being a good role model is more effective for parenting than announcing rules of good behaviour. The conscious leadership methodology can be effectively applied to parenting as well. I was surprised to spot the main concepts from the conscious leadership course during a quick tour of my daughter’s new school printed and glued to the window near the classroom entrance. It is an intermediate public New Zealand school. My daughter later mentioned that they were introduced to those concepts. I also learned during the conscious parenting course that kids are often quick to grasp the concepts and love to play those games with parents. Family is another great place to practice dealing with emotional states and help each other to understand them better.
Given all of the benefits, I also noticed that mastering consciousness is a long-term game, similar to working out in a gym. You’ve got to work hard to achieve results, and you start to lose them if you stop. Another good analogy to explain this work on consciousness is like being drunk all the time and working hard to get sober for a short time.