How to Improve Awareness
People with impaired attention may find it challenging to focus on conversations or process information, follow directions, and organize their thoughts. Socially, it is vital to attend to others, their emotions, perspective, how your actions affect them. Sometimes, people with impaired attention may act impulsively without awareness of how their actions affect others.
Does this need to be said ?
Does this need to be said by me ?
Does this need to be said by me now ?
By increasing your level of self-awareness, you can reduce the chances of miscommunication between you and your conversational partner by considering all the factors and making sure the message you send is appropriate and the interpretations you draw are well-informed.
Self-Reflection
Reflecting on our own actions is essential to increasing awareness. If you don't evaluate your own actions, you can't determine your strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, and find ways to continue what's working for you or change what isn't.
Videotaping Yourself
Video feedback in this form is often 'concrete' and difficult to deny. It is also easier to recognize your behaviors after the situation has finished than while participating because you can solely focus on observing.
Practicing Active Listening vs. Passive Hearing
Passive Hearing
Letting the words go by without engaging or attempting to understand the other person's point of view.
Forcing your viewpoint on someone else with no regard to their situation, perception, understanding, or cirucumstance.
Active Listening
Be aware of your perceptual filters, and the perceptual filters of others. These filters can be influenced by elements of your experience, including your culture, community, family values, or upbringing to influence how you see the world.
Engage actively with the verbal and non-verbal feedback of those you are communicating with.
Listen with all your senses, communication is not just words. It can include inflection, content of the message, timing, physical cues, situational cues, and past experiences.
Adjust your message to facilitate their understanding of your intended message
Take time to ensure your understanding as you try to be understood.
- Suggestion:
Say, "This is how I see the problem, but how do you see it?" - Don't assume that your perception is the objective truth. This kind of phrasing can help improve the shared dialogue you have with others to reach a common understanding.
Feedback From Others
Asking for feedback may be scary, and hearing honest feedback may be painful to hear. However, others often have a clearer view of our actions and behavior. Asking for clear, non-critical, constructive feedback can help you determine where your understanding and awareness might differ from the perspectives of those around you.