Tips for Enhancing Awareness and Developing Skills

I’ve noticed that almost all my conversations about improving an aspect of life, whether that’s your finances, health, or relationships, always revolve around the skill of awareness.

Note: This article is by Darius Foroux, who explains the importance of awareness and provides examples from his personal experience.

A few days ago, I talked to my friend about how I’ve been consistently earning money in the stock market for several years, while he lost a lot of money this year with crypto trading, which made him ask about my process. I talked about how I don’t do any of that stuff and only stick to stocks I know. I use a combination of passive investing with most of my money and a smaller amount to trade growth stocks. (I call that the 90/10 rule). My trading method is mainly based on Jesse Livermore’s system in How to Trade In Stocks. Using that method, I’ve consistently closed trades with profits ranging from 20% to 60%, and I haven’t closed a trade with more than a 10% loss in two years.

But reading that book alone will probably not make you money. As we were talking about the process of investing and trading, I constantly came back to the topic of awareness. For years, I’ve observed myself as I was investing, or at least as I was trying to invest. Without awareness, I wouldn’t learn as much as I did.

To develop your skills, observe yourself

Here’s my process for improving a skill or activity. I’ve applied this process to writing, investing, running, lifting weights, meditating, and dealing with anxiety. It includes six steps:

1. Identify your goal

I always start by thinking about what I’m trying to accomplish. I want to be as specific as I can. For example, I initially focused on writing better articles when I tried to improve my writing.

2. Determine the purpose of skill development

In my experience, any pursuit of excellence will fail without a good reason. In the writing example, I wanted to write better articles to make a living. I knew it would be extremely difficult to sell books without writing effective articles. So, I had enough incentive to work on my craft.

3. Find your best example

Once set on improving a particular skill or process, I look at a few examples of people I can study. I only look at the top because I want to learn from the best.

4. Identify which part of the process depends on talent and which requires skill

There’s one pitfall many people often forget when they study successful people. They assume that you can learn everything from others. That’s not true. We can’t learn talent. I can’t come up with the same stories as Stephen King, no matter how much I try.

Kyrie Irving and I are the same height, but I could never pass the basketball as he does. I lack the talent. My goal is to separate skill from talent and to identify things that I can do, like these successful people and those that I can’t master.

5. Focus on the principles adopted

I look at the techniques and processes top performers do. For writing articles, I learned the best writers are all true to their opinions and style, and they write as if it’s the absolute truth. I needed to focus on confidence over pure writing skills to write better articles. Regarding basketball, I’ve learned Irving's main principle is always to have a countermove. Instead of being persistent with his moves on the court, like Russell Westbrook, who just keeps doing the same thing until he succeeds, Kyrie quickly adjusts if he gets resistance. And he always has a backup move if something doesn’t work.

This is a principle you can learn by training more. You can use simple rules like resorting to an alternative plan if the basic plan is successful.

6. Apply the principle to yourself

I think about long-term sustainability. I want to make the principles I learn from others mine. So, I absorb a principle and then do it my own way. I always create my theories and frameworks. That’s how I put the stuff I learn into practice. Learning something from someone else is great. But it’s better to create your principles based on your learning. That way, you remember what you’ve learned better and apply it later.

The importance of awareness of behavior

I consistently practice awareness throughout this process to ensure I’m not wasting my time. I’m always observing my thoughts and behavior. Awareness aims to quickly step in when I’m deviating from the above process.

For example, I studied many different writers when I started improving my article-writing skills. I also looked at their social media profiles and how they utilized Twitter or Instagram. I also followed the ones who had YouTube channels and watched their videos.

Through awareness, I learned I was only getting confused, and I learned nothing. I saw conflicting principles and couldn’t see how I could use anything to improve. I also noticed I got distracted by secondary aspects like how many followers someone had and what they did on social media. This was a waste of time.

Through the skill of awareness, I adjusted my behaviour. I only looked at three writers. I only stuck to their articles, not their extracurricular activities. Once I was done, I stopped studying all the writers and focused on my own writing. I simply read articles instead of studying them. I focused on the craft by writing articles and getting feedback from readers, which I still do today.

The best way to improve awareness

If you want to improve your awareness, the best way is to start meditating more. I started meditating around the same time I started improving my skills, and it’s not a coincidence.

When you meditate, you practice a skill. You’re not necessarily becoming less stressed or anxious. Many companies and individuals have marketed meditation as a cure for stress in the West. But based on the books about meditation and mindfulness I’ve read, that’s not the purpose.

Gaining peace of mind and having less stress is a side-effect of meditation. The main effect is that you improve awareness. You become good at catching destructive thought patterns within your consciousness. It is said,  “You are your own worst enemy.” I agree. Most of us sabotage ourselves with negative thinking patterns. One of the most important things for skill development is persistence. Everyone knows you will never improve or achieve anything if you stop. Your mind often tells you to give up as soon as things get hard, and you wonder why you should put up with it.

An unaware person listens to those thoughts. An aware person realizes it’s just another thought to observe until it disappears.

Conclusion

Awareness is the most versatile skill I can think of. There’s nothing else I use so often in life. If you’re currently trying to improve any area of your life, try to mediate as well. Work on your awareness throughout the day. Try to catch negative thought patterns within yourself. The moment you do that regularly, you know you’re aware.