Self-awareness is absolutely fundamental to a life that works. That said, there is a trick to becoming conscious of what’s going on behind the scenes in that Stone Age brain of ours, especially as it relates to our out-of-power behavior patterns of which we can be strikingly unaware.

The truth is we tip in and out of clarity and power on the fulcrum of our fear of the uncertain future. Here we encounter the anxious mind, that part of our psyches that lurks in the shadows of awareness where it cannot be seen directly.

Our conscious awareness doesn’t readily track what is happening in the anxious mind, and because of this, the anxious mind can have a devastating effect on our behavior and choices. What we are conscious of while this is happening may actually be a massive projection that we have confused with objective reality.

While the conscious mind may be completely unaware of how the anxious mind is distorting our reality in this way, our behavior will always track the anxious mind perfectly, even when the conscious mind does not track the anxious mind at all. So, by observing our behavior patterns and patterns of interpretation (the story-lines made up in the mind), we are then able to indirectly track, with great accuracy, what the anxious mind is really up to.

The Stone Age brain we all carry around in our heads has an extraordinary faculty for pattern-recognition. When we use it to see ourselves acting out an unconscious pattern of behavior, suddenly we have a manifold increase in our power to change that pattern, and thus transform our lives for the better.