Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today's edition of 'Conscious living with Purnima’. I am excited to share today's post with you as it's on a very powerful framework that will add more ease into your life.
Let's get straight to it.
Unfuckwithable
(adj.) When you are truly at peace and in touch with yourself, and nothing anyone says or does bothers you, and no negativity or drama can touch you.
When ‘Conscious Parenting Coach’, Krishnaveni shared the 'Awareness Wheel' with me for our Sunday Series on ‘Building Emotional Intelligence’ that we run on Instagram, I felt it was too much for me to grasp. But when I began to dig deeper & apply it consciously into everyday life situations, I began to understand how powerful this framework is. And when I came across the term ‘unfuckwithable’, I knew I could embody that definition if I learnt to apply the ‘Awareness wheel’ more often into daily life. In today's post I am going to introduce this framework to you so you too can make the most of it.
The Problem we face & how the awareness wheel can solve that for us:
✨ Do you struggle to have difficult conversations? And so, avoid it?
✨ Do you react negatively to confrontations? Does your internal physiological process get disturbed by outside negativity?
✨ Do you find it difficult to articulate clearly what you are experiencing and what you want in terms of support from others?
✨ Do you find it difficult to talk about your boundaries without sounding belligerent?
Then the 'Awareness wheel' is for you. Interpersonal Communication Programs, Inc. (ICP) are the originators and registered copyright holders of the Awareness Wheel®, which is the structure of any issue or situation. The Wheel is the foundation for decision making, problem solving, and conflict resolution, as well as for clear talking skills. Learning to apply it effectively can help you maintain good relationships, function with greater clarity, control and remain peaceful.
Let's now learn the framework and its application.
The ‘Awareness wheel’ uses 5 different components: What you sense, what you think, what you feel, what you want, and what you do or your actions.
To Elaborate:
1. Sense:
When we are confronted with a situation, it is easy to lose ourselves in our thoughts or feelings and become reactive. What the 'sense' part of the wheel does is remind us to bring ourselves into the present moment. The best way to ground yourself into the moment is through bringing awareness to your senses - see what you are seeing, hear what you are hearing, smell what you are smelling, taste what you are tasting and notice the touch aspects.
2. Thoughts:
This part of the wheel reminds us to bring our awareness to our thoughts, essentially paying attention to the thoughts the mind starts to generate around the situation.
3. Feelings:
This part of the wheel is about feeling the emotions the situation brings. There are 5 big emotional states: Anger, happy, sad, afraid, guilty.
See if you can identify what you are feeling. The more accurate you are in labeling the emotion, the better. I will share a resource in the reference section of this article that you can check out to deepen your knowledge of ‘feeling words’.
4. Want:
This part of the wheel reminds us to reflect on what we want. Most often we want to solve a problem amicably, so all parties are at peace & harmony with each other. Isn't it? But do we really approach a situation with consideration to that want? Think about it. I feel that this is the most important piece of the framework that we tend to miss that exacerbates conflicts instead of resolving it.
5. Act/Ask:
Now, comes the response. How we wish to act or ask for what we want.
To use this Framework:
Use simple 'I statement' for each component of the wheel. Also please note that this wheel is not something that is a step-by-step process. Most of us will be adept at using certain parts of the wheel and will jump to it straight away while not using certain other parts or will use them later. Start noticing what your strong areas and weak areas are. For me the strong areas are feelings, followed by thoughts, senses, wants & actions. See what it is for you.
I will now share a recent life incident where I applied this framework:
The Situation:
My daughter goes for badminton coaching and given a choice will play badminton in all of her free time. It's like the latest bug that has bit her. So, one particular evening last week she requested us to allow her to play for some time post dinner. Our dinner is usually done by 8/8:15 pm. We told her she could play for sometime.
It was over an hour, and she was still not home. I was doing my prep work for the next day and now I had to stop all of that to go & look for her. Of course, I knew where I would find her (thank god for that) but still it was going to eat into my time unnecessarily.
How I used the wheel:
Feel:
I could immediately feel I was irritated and slowly getting angry. I could identify my feelings first.
Thought:
Next, I paid attention to the thoughts that arose. They were:
✨ How can she be so irresponsible?
✨ There is homework to do and school the next day, and she is happily playing.
Want:
Next, I contemplated what I wanted. I had to do this consciously and I feel it is using this part of the wheel that prevented me from becoming overly reactive about this situation. Clearly, I wanted her to understand that she should not be staying out for so long and was expected to be back home on time. I thought about how I should respond so as to achieve my 'want' and also not strain my relationship with my daughter.
Sense:
After I found her, I used the sense part of the wheel. What I saw was her playing with her friend on the court, I felt my own heart rate go up due to the anger and irritation. Just noticing these things helped me to not lose my cool. When I called her out, she casually said, “what?” She seemed oblivious of the time. I went up to her and made a clear "I statement": "Keya, it is 9:45 pm and I feel angry that you are not home yet." Her immediate reaction was: "Sorry Amma, I didn't realize it got so late." I could see she was genuinely feeling bad about spending more time out than she was allowed.
That's all it took for me to elicit the response I wanted. A simple "I feel" statement.
No - What the hell, do you have any idea what the time is, no more playtime after dinner for you blah blah.
And seriously, how could I blame the kid if she didn’t have a watch? So, I made a mental note to get her one. Problem solved.
This is just one example that I have shared with you. There are many more and every time there is an "Aha moment" making me realize that it's not so hard to communicate disagreements and get an amicable response. I am consciously using this framework in my daily life.
I would love to have you try it too. Do write to me on your own experiences. I would love to hear from you.
References:
https://dundeecounselling.com/awareness-wheel/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buNK7ZF14so
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