Power Tool: Awareness vs. Ignorance

A Coaching Power Tool created by R. Satish Chandra
(Executive Coach, INDIA)

Introduction

Awareness and Ignorance is a no brainer when it comes to external knowledge, but it is important to understand “Awareness” and “Ignorance” in the context of our Self. Our current life situation is shaped by our awareness and ignorance.

Increasing Self Awareness

Our Self awareness increases as we experience life situations. Some examples of these normal life experiences are – trying to learn a new sport, we become aware of a particular group of muscles. Trying to learn a new subject, we become aware of our learning difficulty.

Some of us embark on a journey of Self awareness without waiting for normal life experiences to teach us. Many different methods like spiritual education – Self help education have sprung up to address this need.

At an extreme end, we find some of us lost on the quest for self awareness. Different masters, different psychometric tools give different views about ourselves and we get lost in which is the right perspective about yourselves. We find people signing up for one self help program after another to find if there is a better way of living. We also find a lot of people waiting to take simple actions to become more aware of what is the best way to take action.

Dealing with Ignorance

Yes, we know that we were ignorant of something when we become aware of it. Once we know about it – how we deal with it impact us. Some people experience Pain while some people experience Power.

Pain surfaces when we start on a path of why we were helpless, how come no one pointed out this perspective which we are ignorant of so far? Over time, this ignorance will attract many more areas which we may be ignorant of and may start to feel that we are not worthy of. Our Self esteem can drop. We may get into depression and finally into paralytic condition of not moving in life. It is in such situations that some of us build walls of not wanting to explore ourselves, as it is painful.

Power surfaces when we focus on choice of what we can do with this new found “ignorance”. From choice, we can choose simple actions, which will help us move forward and thereby increases our energy. And in this path to take action, we will discover many other perspectives and commit to taking action further to conquer this. It is in this path that some of us find that the journey of Self awareness quite Powerful.

Awareness and Ignorance are both important. Each has to a role of play in our life’s. How we have dealt with this so far, how we want to deal with this going forward help us to become “unstuck” from our current life situations.

Questions for Self Reflection

As coaches, we need to develop our own life skills and coaching skills on a continuous basis. Improving our life skills help us become more aware of ourselves. This journey would help us to find ways and means of how to become Self aware quicker. We will get exposed to many different tools to understand ourselves from different perspectives.

Some questions:

What is our perspective on going on a journey of Self Awareness?
Which aspects of our Self Awareness made more powerful?
Which aspects of our Self Awareness brought us more painful?
What are areas where we are “aware” but want to consciously “ignore” taking action?

Coaching Application

Coaching is all about help our clients become “unstuck”. Clients could be “stuck” due to various reasons. During a coaching engagement the clients wants to resolve a specific issue which is coming in his way. Using this as a key, the Coach can take the Client on a Self Awareness Journey. And as the client goes on this journey along with a Partner, he may become aware of some perspectives which he alone could not have found out.

As an alternative a Coach instead of taking the client on “why” Client is in this situation to “what” is making the client to “ignore” taking action.

Some probing questions:

What comes up when you ask yourselves why I am in this situation?
What are some actions you took as you become “aware”. What were your experiences with this action?
What are some actions you “ignored” as you became “aware”. What were your experiences with that?
How can you become more aware of this?
How can you family, friends, co-workers and me as a coach help you become more aware?