Awareness One is the beginning of self-awareness: Steps #1 through #3 of the 11-step inner process. It’s where the journey starts—because your ability to recognize what you feel in the moment shapes what you say, what you do, and who you become.
The Issue
You are either:
- Emotionally healthy and in charge of your feelings, or
- Emotionally unhealthy, and your feelings are in control of you.
The Solutions (Steps 1–3)
- Identify your feelings before you say or do anything.
- As you name what you feel, you are automatically connected with your inner Self—your real Self—your loving, powerful, and sometimes vulnerable you.
- From that connection, you can appropriately deal with your feelings
The Benefits
- When you are emotionally healthy, you are usually acting upon your healthy character traits (the enneagram).
- When you are emotionally unhealthy, you are usually acting upon your unhealthy character traits (the enneagram).
- Awareness One is a crucial step in your path to emotional health.
A Note on the Enneagram
The enneagram identifies nine personality types. In Dr. Gockley’s book, the reader is encouraged to follow a step-by-step process (or through another enneagram resource) to identify their personality type and recognize behaviors when emotionally healthy vs. unhealthy.
The point is simple: the 11-step inner process guides you in becoming an emotionally healthy human being, and therefore being more likely to act upon your healthy, positive character traits.
Life Without Satisfying Awareness One
Without this awareness:
- Your feelings, to some degree, are in control of you. You live on automatic pilot without listening to that moral messenger—that positive, rational inner voice in your head.
- To some degree, you emotionally react without rational thought when under stress or when feeling anxious or depressed.
- You probably have acquired “triggers”—automatic, unhealthy emotional reactions to outside verbal responses and environmental factors.
- Without being aware, you, to some degree, have become a stranger to yourself.
- Without being aware, you, to some degree, suffer from a lack of emotional awareness: denial of obvious truth; defensive, self-protective, and sometimes aggressive behaviors; and delusional thinking.
- Without being aware, you, to some degree, may not be able to perceive unhealthy, undemocratic, immoral, and unethical behaviors in religious and political leaders—and in social media posts.
- Without self-awareness, you most likely emotionally act upon your unhealthy, negative character traits when under stress and when feeling anxious and depressed.
Takeaway
Start here: pause, identify your feeling, and let that awareness guide what you say and do next. This is the foundation for every step that follows.
Conclusion
Awareness One doesn’t ask you to be perfect—it asks you to be honest. The moment you can name what you’re feeling, you create space between emotion and action. That space is where emotional health begins—and where your inner Self becomes easier to recognize and trust.
