Awareness + Intention: How to Be Radically Present in Your Own Life
How present are we with the people that are right in front of us? Integrated Being is a space where we take the time to slow down long enough to actually think about the lives we are living, not the lives we are performing or scrolling past, but the actual lives we live day to day. Today on the podcast & blog, we are discussing the power of awareness and intention and how they work together to help you become radically present in your own life. Awareness and intentions work hand in hand; one without the other goes nowhere. All things in life transform with small shifts. It’s these small shifts that can truly change the entire shape of a day, a relationship, and your life.
Awareness + Intention:
How to Be Radically Present in Your Own Life
It all started with a LinkedIn Post about the 3 wise monkeys.
In the original 3 wise monkeys, it shows three monkeys covering their eyes, ears, and mouth with the words: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. In this LinkedIn post, there was a fourth monkey. This fourth monkey was looking at his phone with the words: The fourth monkey has emerged, he sees no one, hears no one, and speaks to no one.
I felt called out, and it inspired me to think deeper about the awareness and intention needed to change this reality.
If we don’t want to be addicted to our phones & disconnected from those right in front of us, what does it take?
The original 3 monkeys are protecting themselves from something by seeing, hearing, and speaking no evil by literally covering their eyes, ears, and mouths. The fourth monkey is not protecting himself at all; he is willfully and passively taking it all in.
We can all recall how checking “just one thing” on our phones can lead to spending more time than we originally intended to spend on our phones. Eventually, we realize we didn’t hear the last thing that person across the table from us said and we wonder why we don’t feel more connected. Rather than thinking of this as a moral failure, it is the way our modern world has been designed.
We need to bring awareness to it.
Awareness happens the moment you realize that your phone has inadvertently stolen your attention from something you deem more important, but find you can no longer focus on. What do we do with this knowledge?
The fourth monkey is so powerful because it makes visible the invisible.
We can see ourselves in the fourth monkey. Once we see it, we can change it. Most people get stuck because they become aware of the pattern, and it makes them uncomfortable, but they just keep doing it anyway.
Awareness without intention becomes just an observation. It’s taking notes on your own life without ever editing the pages.
Intention is what turns awareness into change.
It's a lot easier said than done, but it's a reality we all deal with. It’s the quiet moment that happens after you notice the pattern and you choose to change it right then and there. Not in a few days or after you get your to-do list done.
Instead of “I’m never going to look at my phone in a meeting again,” try “for this next conversation, I’m going to have my phone face down or in my bag.”
One small choice at a time.
The quality of life is determined by the quality of the small, repeated choices that make it up, not the big, dramatic decisions. It’s the tiny one, the ones nobody sees, the ones you almost don't notice you’re making.
Awareness + Intention is a feedback loop.
You notice, you make a choice. You notice, you make a choice. And this continuous feedback loop grounds your life in intentional living.
The world is not going to do this for you. Modern culture has been designed to keep you busy and distracted. It takes intentional effort to slow down and bring awareness to the chaos of your life to make the choices necessary to bring order to the chaos. The magic of change is found in these small, benign decisions that add up over time to radically transform your life.
Awareness is contagious in a way that few things are.
Try these small shifts to bring deeper awareness and presence to your life.
Phone down practice. Leave your phone face down when connecting with another person. Notice what changes and what’s harder about this than you expected.
One breath check in. Take a deep breath a few times throughout the day and ask yourself, "Where is my attention right now?” No need to change anything, just start to bring awareness.
Want to dive deeper? Listen to the complete episode of Integrated Being to explore these ideas further and hear more stories that resonate with your journey.
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Together, we can create a life that feels balanced, joyful, and authentically yours.
Thank you for listening in and reading along… I look forward to connecting with you & going on this journey of life together.
xo, Lizzie