Awareness at work

1. Awareness at work
Practicing Awareness Can Increase Effectiveness In Your Job
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Credits
Article source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/practicing-awareness-
can-increase-effectiveness-in-your-job-482102.html
About the Author
Tim Wright, Ph.D. is a freelance writer and busy internet entrepreneur living in Virginia.
Visit his website at: http://myinternetbusinessnet.com
Introduction
Practicing awareness is not commonly associated with the necessary set of skills for a safe and
productive workplace. But a conscious decision to expand your awareness can increase your
effectiveness in every area of your life, including your job.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org

2. Awareness at work: awareness works
Practicing awareness is not commonly associated with the necessary set of skills for a safe and
productive workplace. But a conscious decision to expand your awareness can increase your
effectiveness in every area of your life, including your job.
Awareness is a state of mind where you are conscious of and alert to certain facts,
circumstances or areas of knowledge that affect you or others in some way. Awareness implies
a keen perception and consciousness of your environment and the various elements operating
within that environment.
One problem with awareness is that our conscious minds are only capable of holding and
processing a limited amount of information at any one time. The amount of stimuli and
information available to us at any moment is literally overwhelming. It is necessary, therefore,
for our conscious minds to "filter" the massive amounts of information that our senses and
mental processes constantly encounter in order to avoid being overloaded.
A part of the brain called the "reticular activating system" is responsible for filtering out non-
essential information in our environment while bringing relevant information to our attention.
An example of this is hearing your name spoken over the announcement speakers at a crowded
and extremely noisy airport. The majority of the "noise" is filtered out and dismissed as
meaningless background chatter. When your name is announced, however, your reticular
activating system allows you to become conscious and aware of this information because it is
important to you.
Another example of this is when people purchase a new car. Oftentimes, in the days and weeks
following their purchase, they begin noticing the same model "everywhere," whereas before
their purchase they were unaware of these same cars on the road. This information (i.e., the
make and model of their new car) is now "relevant" and subsequently their awareness of this
information increased.
Increasing awareness, therefore, begins with making a conscious decision about what types of
information are important to us. Once this is established, we are more apt to notice and become
consciously aware of relevant information within our environment when it appears.
Awareness can be focused on any area or experience that we determine to be important to us.
In safety, for example, an increased awareness of potential hazards and risk factors begins,
first, with deciding that our safety and the safety of others is important to us in terms of our
priorities and, second, by educating ourselves on the specific hazards and risk factors that exist.
If our goal is to become more aware of our emotional reactions to certain situations, the first
step is to decide that these emotional reactions are important to us. From here, we can begin to
notice what these reactions feel like in our bodies and how they affect our thought processes so
that we can examine them from an objective point of view. The challenge with emotional
awareness is that the emotions themselves often have a tendency to make us unconscious of
everything else while we are experiencing the emotion. A conscious decision to notice and
focus on these reactions is therefore essential to increase our awareness.
Awareness, of course, is only the first step toward positive change. Awareness must be
followed by some form of action. Without awareness, however, it is impossible to be effective
in the types of actions we take.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org

3. Levels of awareness can be compared to a series of concentric circles-the larger the circle, the
larger your sphere of awareness. The goal is to expand your awareness to include elements that
are important to you.
Let's do a quick exercise. Stop what you are doing and be as still as possible for one full
minute. Listen carefully and try to identify as many sounds as possible. Write down your
responses.
Were you aware of these sounds before you did the exercise? Probably not. Most of the time,
we "filter out" these sounds because they are not important to us. When we expand our circle
of awareness we begin to notice things that we were not aware of beforehand.
Now do the same exercise as above; only this time, instead of listening for sounds, look around
and list as many colors as you can find. Again, write down your answers.
Once again, you probably began to "notice" aspects of your environment that were outside of
your awareness before you did the exercise. Expanding your awareness is often a choice of
what you decide is important to you at the time.
The next time you feel yourself getting angry or stressed out, take a moment to "notice" what is
happening in your body. What physical manifestations are happening in your body? (The word
"emotion" literally means "outward movement." - "e" = "outward;" "motion" = "movement.")
For example, is there tension in your stomach? Chest? Neck? Eyebrows? Are there any
changes in your breathing?
As you continue to expand your levels of awareness, you will be better equipped to make the
positive changes that will increase your effectiveness in achieving the goals you set for
yourself. Take some time to determine your priorities and consciously decide to become more
aware of things that have an impact on the areas that are important to you. When you make this
choice, your awareness will began to expand naturally. And when your awareness expands,
your effectiveness on the job will increase as well.
Keywords
Awareness,safety,effectiveness,productivity,consciousness,reticular activating system
Appendix: What is AmAre?
In Italian, AmAre means "to love"; in English, interconnectedness: (I)Am (we) Are. AmAre
stands for being:
* A – Aware and Accepting
* M – Meaningful and Motivated
* A – Active and Attentive
* R – Resilient and Respectful
* E – Eating properly and Exercising
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org

4. Being Aware: aware of context, aware of feelings, intentions. Aware of how we see things, our
strengths, values and biases. Aware that, happiness and meaning are not only an end result
which shines from far in the future; it is also within us, here and now, and it is about the way
we live. Happiness is the way. Through our awareness and actions, we gain the courage to
change the things we can change, the serenity to accept the things we can't change. And the
wisdom to know the difference.
Being Accepting: of things we cannot change, which are inevitable. Of how other people are,
and especially how we perceive them.
Being Meaningful, by doing what matters, when it matters.
Being Motivated means we cultivate our motivation on a daily basis. Some motivations may
be common to all, like to live peacefully and be kind to others. Some are more peculiar. When
we pursue a specific goal in our daily life, being motivated means to know what we want to do,
by leveraging our strengths and grow the energies necessary to move into Being Active.
Being Active is important, because actions bring tangible results. We also need to be
Attentive, so we can be receptive of the feedback and reactions to what we do in any given
context, and adapt. Being active and being attentive are a self-reinforcing loop which brings
happiness and other positive results to us and to the people, beings and environment we listen
to.
We also need to be Resilient. Life is not always a big smiling adventure, sometimes external
situations can be tough, so it is important for us to bounce back on our feet. Sometimes, there
are factors which do not facilitate our peaceful living, so we need to be persistent.
Being Respectful is important, because resilience is about persistence and not growing a hard-
skin. Respectful of us, other people (who are, too, trying to be happy, and likely also trying to
live peacefully, sometimes in ways which look different from ours), beings and environment.
Eating properly, in terms of quality, quantity and company, is important. For us, and for the
impact it has on the environment.
Exercising is also important, both for our body and mind.
Please visit http://www.amareway.org/ for more step-by-step information and tools to put this
formula to work for your goals.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org