Actfullness means act with full awareness. At its centre is The Decision Maker, the internal mechanism that converts our thoughts and feelings into behaviour. The Warrior protects, The Willing connects, and The Wise integrates them both.
Understanding that mechanism is one thing. Recognising it in the moments that actually matter is another.
Do you recognise any of these?
Some of us cut people off quickly when they break our values or hurt us, in other words rejection as protection before we’ve fully processed what happened. Some of us connect and fall in love very quickly, give too much, and end up hurt, burnt out or resentful. Being late irritates some of us — we take it as disrespect, a signal that we don’t matter. Others invest too hard in training or work and lose relationships, or themselves, in the process.
These aren’t character flaws. They’re The Warrior and The Willing doing what they do — protecting, connecting, responding to what they sense. The difficulty is that they move fast, and they don’t always wait for The Wise.
These are real life situations where that happens. Where one of the forces takes the wheel before our conscious force (The Wise) has had a chance to catch up. And where using The Wise to listen first, then choose a response, leads to more deliberate behaviour and a life that feels like yours.
When the need to be better than everyone is exhausting
There’s a pattern that turns up more often than we like to admit, where the need to feel better than everyone is followed by guilt about having needed it, sometimes after we’ve already hurt someone in the process. The Warrior is reaching for worth through being better. The Willing arrives after with the guilt of how it landed. Both are real, and neither cancels the other out.
Read moreYou feel anxious about what others think of your work
The moment I started writing personal stories about The Decision Maker, my Willing started worrying. People will recognise themselves. Someone will call me two faced for not showing all my emotions in the moment. I argued back that the truth is most of us feel these things anyway, but the anxiety didn’t go anywhere. Here’s what acting with full awareness looked like from there.
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