my take on self awareness.

“Taking action in the face of discomfort”

is one of the mission statements at the school I work at.

I had understood it to mean “challenge yourself” or “step out of your comfort zone”. However, recently, I was invited to observe a program by Architects of Diversity for students to explore diversity and I finally feel I understand what this phrase truly means - or, I have created my own understanding of it.

In this program, the facilitators led the students through activities designed to intentionally make them feel uncomfortable. Students were put into situations of inequality and exclusion, allowing them to not only learn about the realities but also experience them, leading them to feel discomfort. The facilitators would say “Let’s sit with that discomfort”, leading us to ask ourselves why we might feel this way and ultimately, why it matters.

That’s when it made me realize the mission statement isn’t about challenging yourself. It actually about being present and attentive to the various feeling you feel in different situations, and to understand the reason for these feelings to grasp the underlying value of what is important to you. This awareness encourages us to take truly meaningful actions, letting us become change makers!

As we get older, we are expected to live and act in a certain way. We act in socially acceptable ways, which tends to make us ignore the uncomfortable moments. For example, say we are with a group of people and someone says something that doesn’t feel right. Instead of speaking up, we might change the subject to avoid conflict, or play along to make sure we don’t ruin the mood. But if you took the moment to tune into the discomfort, you might discover that those feeling are because it impacts something deeper within you, such as a value you hold. Being able to identify and understand that can help you feel more confident in making a choice to take action.

As I spend more time with students, I’ve begun to notice that many are unsure of themselves. We now live in a society where the internet has made it easier for us to see and obtain so many opportunities, providing us with so many more options. We now can see and do almost anything with the help of the Internet and AI! Don’t get me wrong, it is amazing that we have all these options because it gives us more freedom as our choices are less limited. But with freedom comes the pressure to make decisions, and to make a choice, thus take action. We increasingly compare ourselves to others, we feel pressure to choose the decision that would make others happy, or we feel the fear of missing out if the option we don’t choose might be the better opportunity.

But what if we were given the opportunity to sit with our feelings, question it, and truly understood what was important to us? Maybe it would be easier to make choices that is meaningful to ourselves and help us make choices that feel right.

So, how do I help my students understand this?

I hope to bring my understanding of this statement into the short courses I run. But it’s taken me years to really understand what this mission statement meant. I thought I got it, but I hadn’t been truly aware of my own feelings or discomforts, because it’s difficult to do when you don’t know what you are trying to tune into, especially when you are told to ‘be present’ when you don’t feel any kind of discomfort.

I hope I can create activities to put the students in situations where they can tune into their feelings in various situations. Create a moment and allow them to take the time to focus on how they feel in the present when they feel triggered or uncomfortable.

I am not sure what those activities look like now, but I hope I can share my ideas soon :)