Mapmaking Tools

Awareness is the greatest agent for change. —E.Tolle

You can’t draw a map if you don’t know where you’re starting from, so the first tool you will need in order to chart your course is a sharpened sense of self-awareness. Self-awareness is our ability to tune into our thoughts, feelings and actions. Many of us have a pretty good awareness of our thoughts and actions, but what we tend to lack is a clear awareness of our emotions and the physical sensations that accompany them. Our reactions to these uncomfortable states oftentimes can propel us into unhelpful action. Even when we think we might have a sense of our emotions, we can have the tendency to run from them because they scare the hell out of us. We avoid them and stuff them down, and as a result we get caught up in a swirling vortex of automatic reactions and elaborate inner stories. 

Pattern interrupts

But we don’t always need to be afraid of our day to day emotions. Our ancestors’ emotional awareness and automatic reactions to dangerous situations is the reason we’re even here. In our current landscape, free from sabertooth tigers, emotions are full of information that we can use to help us create our maps. Developing self-awareness takes practice, but through practice, we can begin to uncover our patterns, and what emotions and distracting behaviors accompany them. We can discover the limiting beliefs that are getting in the way of the changes we want to make, and what is keeping us from having positive exchanges and experiences with the people in our lives and our communities. 

Curiosity, not criticism

It is important to note that as we develop and strengthen our self-awareness, we also have to strengthen self-compassion, for ourselves and others, and not fall into self-judgment and blame. The patterns we discover from developing our self-awareness should be met with curiosity, not criticism. It is from a place of curiosity that we can start to actually ENJOY creating this new map for ourselves.