How to Cultivate Personal Awareness

1. Walking daily with the Lord. Creating an intentional space of quiet, openness and listening. Asking God questions including, “What am I not sensing or seeing about myself, this person, environment, or experience that you would like me to recognize and acknowledge?” This includes slowing down the speed of my life enough to have time to listen, meditate, and journal the impressions, words, and thoughts that come to my heart and mind.
2. Listening to my spiritual, emotional, and physiological experiences throughout each day and determining the source of their expressions. Example: “Am I trembling because I’m cold, hungry, fearful, angry, or something else and why?”
3. Daily life and regular, open conversations with my wife who, unsurprisingly, has a very different set of experiences, biases, personality, and style. The contrast of her perspective with mine provides a clear relief and often fosters awareness of my need for adjustment or simply appreciation and respect for alternate opinions. I’m not saying that when my wife speaks it’s actually the voice of God… or am I? (smile) As I honor and make room for her voice, I pray she feels similarly about mine.
4. Intentionality in pursuing personal growth resources. I am an avid reader, podcast listener, and conference attendee. The more relevant information I expose myself to, the more aware I can be of inter-relational and interdisciplinary best practices, my leadership style and that of others.
5. Regular counseling and therapy as a part of a comprehensive personal self-care regimen. I must do the work of expressing, externalizing, acknowledging and rendering / surrendering my emotional burdens and biases to God in a safe space where I can be dangerously vulnerable and uncomfortably transparent. This practice, for me, is the vaccine against accumulation of emotional burdens which can lead to depression, self harm, and as we’ve seen in some extreme cases, death. Also, actively externalizing my human experience with a faith-based professional and actively seeking input invites continuous improvement in self- and environmental awareness.
6. Engagement in local and faith community AND pursuing friendships with people from different generations, cultures, languages, and religious perspectives than my own. Homogeneity rarely fosters awareness. “Iron sharpens iron…” Proverbs 27:17
7. Engagement in multidisciplinary ministry within pluralistic environments. In other words, placing myself in ministry situations where I have to work with people I don’t necessarily agree with theologically. When I ask exploratory questions of a Catholic priest and colleague, I learn things about religious history that my faith tradition never taught me. When I ask a Muslim Imam about what he believes with genuine interest and sincerity in pursuing a relationship over winning a debate, I open the door for grace and reconciliation. I am not advocating for the abdication of my personal belief system. I am declaring confidence in the ability of God’s truth to stand up to the challenges of confrontation within the wrestling of my own soul. I believe that this exercise, when practiced in moderation, is healthy and not corrupting and continues to foster profound awareness in my experience.

Additionally:

From a professional perspective, looking to other industry best-practices to see where creative synergy can feed innovation. Example: Steve Jobs combined the fields of technology and art to revolutionize the computer industry. Some working environments encourage thinking outside the box. Others encourage reconstructing it altogether. Both innovative concepts can be effective.