Why and How to Become Someone Who is Awake
What Does it Mean to be Awake?
Awake: To stop sleeping; To become active; To become conscious
1. Being Awake Means Being Aware of What’s Going on Around You
Life is hard, and sometimes we don’t want to see the things around us. We don’t want to see the homeless people on the corners. We don’t want to see parents neglecting their children. We don’t want to see people full of hate and anger. We don’t want to see all the mindless days of work ahead of us.
So, we close our eyes. We escape into a daydream and abandon all the bad things, but when we do this, we also abandon the good things.
To be awake means to take life in as it is. See what’s happening around you and acknowledge it. Appreciate the good. Absorb the good. Note the bad, help when you can, and hope or pray when you can’t then move on from it.
2. Being Awake Means Feeling Our Feelings
We humans are complicated beings. We have big feelings about so many things, and sometimes it’s all just too much. So, we shut off and shut down and drift. We shove our feelings into a dark recess of our mind. When we do this frequently enough-we stop feeling altogether. We become numb and depressed. We break.
In Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, she talks a lot about embracing pain, and leaning into it. Pain exists for a reason. It teaches us. It tells us when something wrong. It shows us what matters to us.
When we lose people, it’s sad. Overwhelmingly so. We don’t want to feel feelings like that. But, when you look deeper at that pain… you see that that pain is all wrapped up in love and blessings. You wouldn’t feel that pain if you hadn’t loved deeply. You wouldn’t feel that pain if you hadn’t been honored with that person’s presence in your life. That pain is a miracle. It’s the miracle of connection, and love, and good memories.
When we’re injured, physically or mentally, pain lets us know that there is healing to be done. It lets us know when to go to the doctor. When to upgrade our diet. When to set clearer boundaries in relationships. When to change out habits.
Pain is not the enemy we like to think it is. So see the pain and feel it… Then see the joy and feel that too. Feel the Love, Feel the Fear, Feel the Courage, Feel the Despair, Feel the Hope. Feel Everything.
3. Being Awake Means Understanding where your thoughts come From.
You might think all of your thoughts come from you. Duh. You’d be wrong. Once we get to a certain age almost all of our thoughts are a result of our programing, of our hormones, or our circumstances. If you don’t think this is true, think about when you’re hungry, all your thoughts revolve around food. Think about that time you were obsessing about a purchase, how many commercials did you see for it, how much was it hyped up on social media? Think about that time you were tired and all your thoughts suddenly revolved around how hard everything was. Think about that time you were wired and how your thoughts revolved around how powerful you were.
If this is the case, then how do you find your true thoughts?
You have to get quiet. Go to that wordless place inside of you and see what really matters. You can learn how to do this with deep breathing, or with meditation, or with music. Just think of the things you do that make the words in your mind quiet. That’s where you go to find your true thoughts. Your true thoughts are beyond all the noise of the world.
4. Being Awake Means Taking Action
Once you get to the quiet and get to know your inner self…. Then you start to dream. But it’s just as easy to get lost in your own dreams as it is other peoples.
So, dream, then plan, the do. Or the dream stays the dream and you’re still just sleeping.
Being awake means literally waking up. Getting out of bed. Moving your body. Doing what you know is right. When you’re overwhelmed just focus on the next right thing. Put one foot in front of the other and do what you know to be right moment to moment to moment.
It will soon become habit. Action will become habit. And you will become you. Fully Awake. Fully Alive.
5. Being Awake Means Creating
The ability to create is what makes humans human. You don’t have to be an artist to create. Creation happens when you think of, or see, or feel something that doesn’t exist, and you find a way to bring it to life.
Create art.
Create a life.
Create a relationship.
Create a personality.
Create a habit.
Create a conversation.
Create a home.
Create a career.
Create an adventure.
Create whatever the hell feels true to you. Just create something.
Why Should You Become Awake?
You only get one life.
I can’t prove this. No one can. But, no one can prove otherwise either. If this is all there is. If there is nothing else. If there is anything you want to do, you have to do it now. Because there is no second chance after this.
If you spend your life thinking the way people teach you to think, and doing the things people tell you that you should do. If you spend your life watching other people live. If you spend your life high or drunk. If you spend your life lost in other stories. You don’t get to live your life. You don’t get to do the things. This is your only chance. So freaking take it.
No one else is like you
Literally. DNA is so complicated, and then you weave a soul into it, and smash it with circumstances. All of these things add up to you…. And no one else on this planet or any planet in any universe is like you.
This idea makes me feel both so big, and so small at the same time. Just like looking at the stars. I’m tiny compared to the universe…. And yet I exist just as the whole of the universe does. I’m complicated, just like the universe. I’m alive, just like the universe.
All of who you are makes you uniquely capable of unique things. Which means some of those ideas in your head, at least to the specific ways they’re in your head will never be brought to life by someone else. The things only you see, can only exist in the world if you create them.
There is this idea in Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic that ideas have a sort of existence on their own. She believes that if you don’t act on the ideas that come to you, they’ll move on to someone else and backs this up with real life examples.
However, if someone else brings that idea to life, it won’t look the way it would if you’d brought it to life. It won’t have the same impact on the same people it would have if you’d brought it to life.
Life is Beautiful
People who are asleep tend to be that way to avoid the pain and misery of life. And, yes, those things do exist. But, those things only exist because of the beauty. There is no loss without love. There is no sorrow without joy. There is no fear without hope. There is no peace without worry.
Beautiful things to remind you:
Sunsets
Sunrises
Baby’s Laughter
Beaches
Tacos
A good hug
Sex
Someone holding a door
A blooming flower
Storm Clouds
Compliments
Trees
Baby Geese
Puppies
A sparkle in someone’s eye
Dancing
Music
Skyscrapers
Paintings
To serve a purpose.
Whether or not you believe everyone was born with a purpose, life is definitely more meaningful if you find one. Everyone has something they can offer the world.
Maybe yours is to create delicious food. Maybe it’s too aid in solving some crisis. Maybe it’s to raise other little humans with big purposes. Maybe it’s to educate. Maybe it’s to tell a story. Maybe it’s to build something wonderful. Whatever it is, you can’t do it, if you aren’t awake.
To Win.
Literally just to shove it in the face of every past failure, of every insult, of every doubt. To conquer all the bad and become the best. To freaking win at life, you have to be awake.
What Stops you from Being Awake?
Distraction
AKA Escapism. There’s noting wrong with having a place to go shut off your mind and wind down at the end of the day. But when you go to that place in the middle of the day, or for increasingly long periods of time, or god forbid, live there. It’s a problem.
Succombing to escapism is like the definition of being a zombie. When you’re life is made up of all the things that aren’t you…. Games, Social Media, Television, Drama, Alcohol, Extreme Exercise, etc. You stop being you and you start being everything else.
Before you know it years can have passed and you’ll have no idea where they’ve gone.
Turn off the outside noise to wake up.
Self-Doubt
Living awake is scary. It means were responsible for everything.
But… it means we’re responsible for everything!. So yeah, if we fail it’s on us. But when we win, it’s also on us.
Take the chances, or someone else will. Claim your life, or it will pass you by.
Overwhelm
Whether it’s the list of all the things you need to do, or the constant in your face of all the bad things in the world. Sometimes, we start to wake up, and it’s just too much. So, we go back to sleep. Binge watching desperate housewives is way easier than watching the news after all.
I’m not saying you need to watch the news. In fact don’t watch the news, except when necessary. Seriously, it’s garbage. If overwhelm is a problem for you, turn the news off.
The easiest way to get past the overwhelm of the negative of the world is too filter it. Set aside time to look at what’s going right and what’s going wrong and make decisions on how you can have an impact. Other than that specific time….. leave it alone. You can’t solve every problem, all the time. You have enough problems in your own world. Spend some time chipping at the worlds problems and let that be enough, focus on your own the rest.
The easiest way to get past the overwhelm of a to-do list. Fold that to do list up into tiny pieces until it’s so small you can only see one item. Do the one item. All you have to do is the one item. Then tear it off and you can chose to do the next. But, when you’re doing the one, forget about the next. Live moment to moment. You could die, or the world could end before you get to the next task. All you need to worry about is the next right thing. Doing one thing? Easy.
Bad Habits
When you work through the others. This is the one that will get you. Because, bad habits are sneaky. You’ll think you’ve beat them, but then two weeks in you’ll go mindless and find yourself repeating those old patterns.
Bad habits are like:
Grabbing that fastfood on the way home. The carb/grease heavy food does wonders and shutting you down. But you don’t want to shut down.
Hitting the snooze button over and over…. And eventually you get to the point you waste an hour or two every day. Not sleeping, because the noise keeps going off, but not accomplishing, or enjoying anything either.
Scrolling social media when you’re waiting for something… But then you get sucked in and keep scrolling when your done waiting. Shut down. Time Gone. Once the time is gone, you can never get it back.
Chamelon Syndromme
We tend to become like those we spend time with. So if you hang out with a lot of zombies (people who are not awake) You will likely become one yourself. Everyone knows the zombie virus is contagious.
Sometimes it’s a conscious thing because we want to fit in…. Othertimes we subconsciously shift and it takes us months to realize we’ve changed. Be careful who you spend your time with.
Steps to Wake Up:
1. Become Aware
Notice, and track, your actions, thoughts, and feelings. Discover patterns. Analyze them to discover if you spend most of your time conscious or unconscious.
2. Swap Some Habits
It only takes one or two at a time. Swap out social media scrolling with a craft. Swap out hitting the snooze button, with jumping into a nice relaxing, awakening shower. Swap out watching the news with volunteering somewhere
3. Repeat steps One and Two.
Inspiring Words on Character Skill
“I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before. Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.” -Walt Whitman
“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” -Carl Jung
“The madman is a dreamer awake.” -Sigmund Freud
“I awoke, only to see that the rest of the world is still asleep.” -Leonardo da Vinci
Where to Learn More About Character Skill
- How To Quickly Feel More Awake in the Morning – This Brilliant Day On literally being awake. She says things like Use movement, sunshine, and cold water to wake up in the morning.
- The Art of Being Yourself- How to Live Authentically – THIRTEEN THOUGHTS On being authentic. She introduces tools of meditation, and journaling, and talks about being fearless.
- 4 Ways to Live a Heart Centered Life Starting Now – Jen Picicci On Connecting with your heart. She talks about intuition and meditation
- Untamed – Glennon Doyle. A book about breaking out of the cage that societal expectations, religion, and subconscious programing can put you into. About finding and becoming yourself.
- Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself -Dr. Joe Dispenza. A Book about overcoming who you’ve habitual become, and using the power of your mind to become who you really want to be. (Review)