Manila, 23 December 2020 — Making quality awareness your second nature.

A Pandemic Year-End

Come to the end of the year and there is so much on most people’s minds. Think of the work that you still want to complete, the year-end festivities coming up with your family and friends, and your much-needed reflection time to energize yourself for the new year. When that all comes together, it can feel overwhelming.

This year, the Covid-19 pandemic has added a new twist to all of those preoccupations, and that’s triggering a wide range of different emotions in people, from upsetting fears, loneliness, and frustration all the way to a new-found sense of empathy, gratitude, and fulfillment.  

What emotion are you feeling at the end of this year? And have you already taken some time to reflect on what you accomplished in 2020 and how that makes you feel? Are you dissatisfied with what you did not achieve this year, or satisfied with how you used the unexpected possibilities that you discovered on your path?

Your Quality Awareness

Now, as at anytime during the year, it’s the quality of your awareness that determines if you can make the best of the situation you find yourself in. Being able to lead yourself with awareness in this month of December is likely to have a high pay-off and learning benefit.

Earlier this month, we talked about Three Leadership Blocks that can leave you operating without sufficient awareness. We realized that we needed to look Under the Surface to shine a light on our own operating system, including unhelpful habits, self-limiting beliefs, and possibly some career-derailing patterns of behavior.  

We discovered that to work on the quality of our awareness, it helps if you already feel motivated and driven to walk on The Leaders Journey, to see yourself as a leader in transition who is keen to make progress, now, this month, and into the new year.

A Powerful Tool

Just like handymen will get their job done with power tools, having a reliable set of tools will also help you to sharpen your awareness. Here is one tool that I am happy to share with you: the 3 Worlds Awareness scan. 

This scan tool gives you the power to triple your awareness instantly. The more you practice this tool, the shorter the time it will take you to use it and benefit. Soon, it will become second nature for you to quickly scan your situation from these three perspectives, in a matter of just seconds.

I created this tool after learning from several mentors how to take multiple perspectives and do so rapidly. The three perspectives that you scan with this tool are irreducible. That means that wherever you are and whatever you do, and at any time, there will always be three worlds manifesting at the same time: your personal world of I and ME, your social world of YOU and WE, and your observed world of IT and ITS. 

To improve the quality of your awareness, the tool helps you to quickly scan ‘what’s happening’ in each of your three worlds, rather than letting yourself dwell too much on whatever your preferred perspective is at that time and place. The result will be that your awareness is more complete, more integrally informed, and that will help you make better decisions on your next action.

In an earlier post on the Three Bias Traps, we highlighted the risks of getting stuck by spending too much time inhabiting one of these three worlds. That will leave you either self-centered, overly dependent on others, or fixated on systems. Not a good place to be for leaders.

Join the Practice

If you’d like to practice the 3 Worlds Awareness scan, you can start so right away. And if you are interested to do that with others, and dive deeper into the use of this tool and the methodology behind it, then consider joining us in Grow3Leaders. As a community of practice, it’s not for everyone. Come when you’re committed to learning how to influence positive changes in your workplace together with colleagues you bring along with you.