| Awareness can be seen as a methodology, a plan | | | | is highly useful as a learning strategy for physical |
| for personal and professional achievement. It is a | | | | events from learning how to play an instrument |
| way to manage change. | | | | to playing a sport, it can be used, equally well, for |
| Awareness arises when doing requires learning. In | | | | any skill, even mathematics, or art, or the ability |
| sports, for example. As you play your sport, you | | | | to make a speech. |
| are not only acting it but learning about how to | | | | When you are doing something and just can't |
| act. The more fluidyour actions, the more | | | | seem to get it, it is because, in a sense, you are |
| well-rehearsed your form, the better you will play | | | | not really in your body, but outside it, feeling |
| it. | | | | disassociated. You are not focusing on what is |
| The absence of awareness is an ungraceful dance | | | | happening, what an experience feels like. Instead |
| between experiencing yourself as both a subject | | | | you are focusing on ideas of what should be |
| and an object. This method makes skill | | | | happening and you are looking at yourself in an |
| enhancement a challenge. The challenge arises not | | | | unsympathetic way. |
| because you are self-conscious, but because your | | | | The emphasis on what you should do, ought to |
| self-consciousness makes you self-critical. What | | | | do, and eventually must do, is, to say the least, |
| makes things even more confusing is having an | | | | unnerving. Your expectation means you are in an |
| observer add to your own inner dialogue with | | | | imagined future time and the contradiction |
| comments. | | | | between where you are and where you want to |
| The result of all this criticism is not an improved | | | | be throws you off balance. In other words, |
| performance, but a worse one. | | | | neither your mind nor your body is processing the |
| Unfortunately, this is the way most people learn | | | | existing information. Rather, it is lost in a confused |
| new skills. They fumble rather than flow. And the | | | | fantasy of future dexterity. |
| more they learn about how it should be done, the | | | | Awareness helps you to hone in on the desired |
| more even the fundamentals escape them. | | | | pattern. It is motivation in motion. |
| Somehow, despite all of this, people do learn skills, | | | | One possible reason why the obvious idea of |
| and sometimes become very goodat something | | | | awareness may appear insightful is that |
| that they once used to be excruciatingly bad at. | | | | awareness asks you to embrace the unknown |
| On the other hand, a lot of people settle for | | | | and make it your ally. It asks you to be |
| mediocrity or give up altogether. | | | | vulnerable. It seeks the wisdom of insecurity. |
| Introduce awareness into this process of learning, | | | | Ironically, as you explore this possibility, you find it |
| as a substitute for self-criticism, and all the | | | | truly liberating. |
| dynamics shift. What was painful becomes | | | | Criticism, on the other hand, enforces the known. |
| pleasurable; what was embarrassing becomes | | | | It is the struggle to embody the known and |
| amusing; what was serious becomes playful; and | | | | established theory of how something should be |
| what was rigid and stiff becomes pliable and | | | | done. In other words, it makes the learning |
| creative. | | | | process a lot harder. |
| Awareness is noticing, and not trying to fix | | | | Profound learning happens when you learn through |
| something; it is getting into the feeling and the | | | | yourself. |
| sensation of something with detachment. Balance, | | | | Generally people are so disconnected from |
| enjoyment, learning, and performance | | | | themselves that this feels weird. |
| improvement happen by themselves. | | | | The real gift of using awareness as a learning |
| The reason for the shift is because the attention | | | | strategy is not learning more faster, but learning |
| is taken from the left hemisphere, which is | | | | how to dance with the movement, falling into its |
| verbally-oriented, to the right hemisphere, which | | | | flow, experiencing its inner dynamics and unifying |
| can perceive patterns much more acutely. | | | | with it completely. It is having a time out of time |
| Another way of looking at it is a transference of | | | | experience. |
| a critical inner parent to a playful inner child. A | | | | Sometimes, it is when you don't try hard that |
| parent tends to correct. A child tends to explore. | | | | you succeed more easily. |
| While awareness, the cultivation of silent attention, | | | | |