14 Reasons to Become More Conscious

What are the actual benefits of becoming more conscious?

Why would anyone care to do this? And what the heck does it
even mean to raise your consciousness anyway?

While raising your consciousness can certainly enhance your

spiritual development, this isn’t really a spiritual issue at its
core. It’s really about hardcore mental development.

What does it mean to become more conscious? I define it as

the progressive realization of conscious mastery over your
mind. This includes all of the following:

 making careful, intelligent, and deliberate decisions

 maintaining a positive emotional state regardless of
circumstances
 developing empowering beliefs while purging
disempowering ones
 understanding your own thought processes, emotions,
and behaviors
 staying focused on what’s most important while tuning
out distractions
 building an accurate and effective model of reality
All of these are skills that we develop across a wide spectrum.
Traditional education teaches us basic skills and basic
knowledge, but it does little to show us how to develop our
conscious minds. We aren’t taught how to intelligently make
the biggest decisions of our lives, how to cultivate a burning
desire for what we want, how to know if our beliefs are
inaccurate and need to be changed, how to concentrate, etc.
But over the course of your lifetime, these skills will prove far
more significant than anything you learned in school.

People whose conscious minds remain underdeveloped often

suffer from cluttered and unfocused thinking. Needless
worries, trivial distractions, inaccurate observations, false
beliefs, and negative emotions run rampant through their
thoughts, and most of the time they aren’t even aware of it.
It’s like being stuck in a mental fog. When you talk to such
people, you can sense they aren’t fully there. The lights are
on, but no one’s home. Ask them an important question like,
“What overall purpose have you chosen for your life?” and
you’ll likely get a blank stare in response. Because they don’t
really have control of their minds, they live reactively instead
of proactively. Such people are virtually powerless. They
essentially do what they’re told and try to stay out of trouble,
mistakenly assuming this condition is the best they can expect
of themselves.

In contrast highly conscious people own their minds. Their

thinking is clear and focused, and they select and direct their
thoughts deliberately. They retain conscious control over their
emotions, and they don’t easily succumb to distractions.
When you talk to such people, you can detect depth and
clarity. Ask them, “What’s the purpose of your life?” and
you’ll likely get an intelligent and thoughtful response. These
people live proactively and are emotionally resilient, rising
above their circumstances instead of being victimized by
them. They possess an inner strength that is undeniable. They
exhibit both courage and compassion, and they know that this
level of being is how humans were truly meant to live.

The difference between these two groups is that the first group
has settled for the default mental operating system installed by
their upbringing and social conditioning. Call it Human OS
1.0. They accepted whatever programming they initially
received. The second group, however, challenges themselves
to continuously improve upon that initial programming,
embarking on a lifelong quest to design a more intelligent
mental operating system. And they succeed. So while group
one is stuck with a shabby and outdated mental OS, group two
continues to upgrade its version, enjoying compounding
benefits year after year. It doesn’t matter whether they’re
currently using Human OS 1.1 or Human OS 7.0 — it’s the
process of frequent upgrading that matters most, not the
particular version number being used.

The main reason I devote so much verbiage to the idea of

raising your consciousness is that there are some serious
practical benefits to this pursuit. Specifically, here are 14
notable benefits of developing your conscious mind:

1. Increased Sensory Awareness

As you become more conscious, your perceptual awareness
expands. You start noticing things you never noticed before.
You’re more attuned to sights, sounds, smells, and other
input. It’s like getting a sensory bandwidth boost. Your
environment seems richer because you’re noticing more than
you used to. It’s not that your sensory hardware gets any
better — rather it’s that more useful data flows into your
conscious awareness. You just seem to have more mental
RAM available for consciously observing the information
coming from your senses. Being able to extract more useful
information from your sensory input is a huge benefit.
I’ve found this benefit most helpful when communicating
with people. For example, when I give a speech, I’m starting
to notice subtle body language from the audience that tells me
I should speed up, slow down, add more humor, or make other
on-the-fly adaptations. Even though I’m actively running
through my presentation, I’m still able to remain conscious of
what I’m observing in the room. Again, it’s as if there’s more
mental bandwidth and RAM available than there used to be.

2. Increased Self-Awareness
Your internal senses become more finely tuned as well. You
begin to see yourself more objectively. You become more
aware of your strengths and weaknesses. This enhanced self-
understanding makes it easier to understand other people as
well. Human behavior (your own as well as that of others)
begins to make more sense. You succeed more often in your
undertakings because you understand your capabilities more
accurately than ever before.

Becoming aware of your own blind spots is very important for

your personal growth. When you’re struggling and you don’t
even know why, you’re stuck. But when you become aware of
your weaknesses, you move from unconscious incompetence
to conscious incompetence. That’s a very key step on the way
to conscious competence. Sometimes you will choose to
overcome your weaknesses, while other times you may
simply accept and work around them. For example, I decided
to overcome my fear of public speaking, but I chose to accept
and work around my colorblindness. I think it’s more
important to be aware of your weaknesses, even if you choose
not to overcome them, than to pretend to be perfect. Highly
conscious people learn to accept their imperfections with no
loss of self-esteem.

3. Enhanced Mental Clarity

As you raise your consciousness, you’ll experience periods of
confusion as you take the next “quantum leap” in front of you,
followed by periods of deepening mental clarity. Another
term for these periods of confusion is the Dark Night of the
Soul. This is when your whole reality makes very little sense
to you, and you become uncertain of everything. It is a time of
massive cognitive restructuring. Your mind is refactoring its
code to complete the jump to the next level. It has to scramble
the old patterns in order to make room for the new.

However, once you complete one of these leaps, you enter a

period of incredible clarity. Everything in your life starts to
make sense on a whole new level. It’s like someone adjusted a
focusing dial on your mind. You’ll find a full article on this
process here: Raising Your Consciousness.

4. Enhanced Problem-Solving
Raising your consciousness is like getting a RAM upgrade for
your mind. It will feel like your conscious mind can hold
more content at once. This can make you significantly better
at problem solving, especially where there’s a large set of
relevant information to consider. Designing a complex
computer algorithm is a good example. The more conscious
you are, the better you can understand all the details of the
problem, and the more mental horsepower you can throw at
the problem.
For me the most important problems I was able to solve were
personal ones, like figuring out what kind of person I should
strive to become and what I should do with the rest of my life.
The challenge was finding an answer that made sense on all
four levels: physical, mental, social, and spiritual.

5. Emotional Mastery
Consciousness and emotional intelligence go hand-in-hand.
First, you gain a deeper understanding of your emotional
constitution. You begin to clearly understand why you feel the
way you do.

Secondly, you develop the ability to control your emotional

state. With practice you can learn to maintain a positive
emotional state regardless of external circumstances. By
feeling good and acting from within that framework, you’ll
gradually release the sources of negativity from your life and
replace them with positive ones. Not only will you feel great,
but you’ll start to generate positive results that resonate with
those feelings. Your life will be an expression of joy instead
of the pursuit of it.

Thirdly, you’ll develop empathy. By mastering your own

emotions, you’ll better more understand the emotions of
others.

6. Trustworthiness
You’ll find people opening up to you more and more. You
may even notice strangers trusting you with intimate details
about their lives during the first few minutes of conversation.
They’ll often say to you, “I don’t know why I’m telling you
this, but I just felt I could trust you.” It may initially surprise
you to notice people trusting you so openly, but this will
happen because you’ve become a person who will honor that
trust.

A good way to know whether or not you’re trustworthy is to

observe how well you trust yourself right now. What level of
responsibility are you comfortable with? Do you trust yourself
enough to tackle a grand purpose, or do you stick with menial
labor only? As your consciousness expands, you’ll begin to
trust yourself to handle more meaningful responsibilities. And
this in turn will build your trustworthiness and thereby attract
the trust of others.

A side effect of trustworthiness is the ability to influence

others, not because you hold a position of power over them
but because they know they can trust you. You’ll also feel
good about your power of influence because you know you’d
only use it for honorable purposes.

Erin is an absolute master at this. People are frequently drawn

to tell her their deepest secrets even if they’ve only known her
for a few minutes. Often such people don’t even understand
why they’re doing it — they can’t seem to help it. But I think
it’s because people really crave deep, soulful connections with
each other, and trust is the enabler that makes it safe to
proceed.

7. Better Relationships
As a result of your enhanced perception, self-knowledge,
empathy, and trustworthiness, you’ll become better at relating
to other people. This can have a dramatic effect on the quality
of your relationships. Instead of feeling you must comprehend
a baffling set of complex social dynamics, you’ll begin
communicating naturally and effortlessly, whether with
strangers or old friends. People will seem less threatening and
will want to connect with you. Human interaction will just
seem to make a lot more sense. Your deeper understanding of
people will boost your confidence in social situations as well.

I used to be very introverted, but I gradually became more

extroverted as I worked on my conscious development. On the
Myers-Briggs test, I actually shifted from an INTJ (I =
introvert) to an ENTJ (E = extrovert). Old family and friends
have a hard time believing some of the things I’ve done, such
as performing in a couple comedy improv shows — these
actions are totally incongruent with my old introverted
personality. But now I feel like I’m an extroverted introvert. I
can draw energy from spending time alone or with others;
neither activity drains me.

8. Self-Discipline
The ability to consciously control your thoughts is the ability
to discipline your mind. Many problems that seem very
challenging can be easily overcome with sufficient self
discipline. Can you get yourself out of bed each morning at a
time of your choosing? Can you keep your physical
environment in good order? Can you get yourself to do what
needs to be done without procrastinating? For the disciplined
mind, these problems are almost trivially easy to solve. But
without sufficient self-discipline, frustration and failure is the
more likely outcome.

If you’re interested in developing your self-discipline, you

may enjoy reading the six-part Self-Discipline Series.
9. Better Health and Fitness
After improving your awareness, problem-solving, and self-
discipline, you may turn your attention to your physical body
and decide to take better care of it. You’ll develop more
conscious eating, exercise, and health habits, experimenting to
discover what works best for you rather than mindlessly
accepting the advice of overweight doctors (especially those
who write diet books, cough cough). You may not wish to
become an Olympic athlete, but you’ll find an equilibrium
that feels right for you.

It’s important to accept that you aren’t just a disembodied

consciousness floating through the ether. You do in fact have
a physical body, and its health will have a significant impact
on your life. So accept that fact, and take good care of it.

10. Financial Abundance

If you so desire, you can apply your consciousness to the
creation and enjoyment of financial abundance. By keeping
your thoughts focused on what you want and by conditioning
empowering financial beliefs, you can attract more money
into your life. Nearly all of the benefits of expanding your
consciousness can become powerful assets in the business
world. They’ll enhance your ability to create value for others,
which is the core of business success.

One of the key financial goals was to put myself in a position

where I wouldn’t have to do any work I didn’t enjoy just to
make money. It took many years to reach this point, but I’m
able to do what I love and enjoy abundant income (more than
double my expenses). The great challenge here was
unlearning all the crippling financial beliefs that were socially
installed. I had to learn that I don’t need a job, I don’t need a
boss, I don’t need an office, etc. All I really needed was a
computer, my mind, and $9 to buy a domain name.

11. Heart-Centered Power

As your consciousness expands, you’ll strengthen and balance
your courage and your compassion. You won’t become
a wimpus maximus who always runs away from conflict (too
yin), nor will you become a jerkus obnoxio who runs
roughshod over others for personal gain (too yang).

Building your courage will help you to avoid living like a

wimpy coward. Insults will bounce off you like bullets off
Superman’s eyeball. You’ll be drawn to do things you
previously feared. First, you’ll develop the courage to
gradually face your fears, and eventually you’ll reach the level
of fearlessness where courage is no longer required. For
example, you may move from being afraid of communicating
with the opposite sex, to courageously summoning the nerve
to do it, to doing it comfortably with no nervousness.

Building your compassion means you’ll avoid living like an

insensitive jerk. You’ll have a clear conscience and a genuine
concern for the well-being of others. You’ll start treating
people the way they should be treated. As your consciousness
continues to expand, you may begin to feel compassion for
animals and the environment as well. You care about things
you previously dismissed as “someone else’s problem.”
You’ll become a true citizen of the world.

Courage and compassion must develop synergistically. You

cannot maximize one without the other. If you only develop
your compassion, you’ll begin notice a lot of things you could
do to improve the world, but you’ll be too much of a wuss to
do anything about it. This in turn will make you want to tone
down your compassion to avoid feeling so powerless.

On the other hand, if you only develop your courage, you’ll

behave like a self-centered dufus most of the time, and your
relationships will become shallow and competitive. You’ll
lose the support of others, which can drive you towards
loneliness and hardness (which will only lower your
consciousness).

However, the combo of courage and compassion, working

together harmoniously, means that your conscience will show
you what needs to be done, and you’ll have the inner strength
to do something about it. Because your heart’s in the right
place and you’re bold enough to take action, others will be
drawn to help and support you. The courage-compassion
balance is the essence of true leadership.

Erin and I have helped each other tremendously in this area.

When we first met, I was all courage, and she was all
compassion. Over the past 12 years of our relationship, we’ve
both become much more balanced.

12. Inner Peace

A feeling of centeredness is a natural byproduct of raising
your consciousness. You’ll feel well-grounded and
comfortable with the realities of your life situation.
Meditation can help you achieve this state temporarily at first,
but eventually it will become your natural state of being.

13. Psychic Development

As your basic five-sensory awareness improves, your sixth
sense will begin to develop as well. Initially this may take the
form of enhanced intuition. You’ll start noticing that your gut
feeling is becoming more accurate, which will encourage you
to pay more attention to it.

As you continue on this path, you may experience occasional

flickers of your latent psychic abilities. Perhaps you have a
premonition about the future that turns out to be accurate… or
you have an irreconcilable explosion of highly improbably
synchronicities one day… or you experience your first
(probably terrifying) astral projection. Things start happening
that lie well outside your normal everyday experience —
things your previous framework of reality cannot adequately
explain. This is your mind’s way of letting you know that
your consciousness has expanded to the point where you now
have access to new abilities. From this point on, it’s up to you
to decide whether or not you wish to develop them.

Many people try to deny these experiences, but I think that’s a

mistake that will only lower your consciousness. I recommend
you seek guidance and advice from others who’ve already
gone down this path. You may be shocked but then comforted
to meet others who consider your unexplainable experiences
routine. But old friends who haven’t yet reached this point
will be of little or no help to you. They just won’t be able to
relate to what you’re going through. They may become
excessively demanding that you prove your experiences to
them. But how do you prove to a deaf person that you can
hear, especially when you can’t hear that well yet?

Depending on your previous beliefs, you may need to do

some soul-searching to decide whether you want to cling to
your old beliefs or update them to be able to take fuller
advantage of your new abilities. If you wish to progress in this
area, be open-minded in your explorations, but don’t be so
gullible as to blindly swallow others’ ideas without careful
consideration.

14. Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming is when you have a dream and become
conscious and aware that you’re dreaming. You know who
you are and that your physical body is asleep on your bed.
This awareness gives you the ability to do anything you want
in the dream world, including flying, psychokinesis, walking
through walls, summoning dream characters, etc.

Lucid dreaming is a skill that can take many years to develop,

but it’s one of the most enjoyable benefits of developing your
consciousness. Nighttime becomes a fantasy playground for
your mind. When you’re fully lucid, your dream world will
seem just as real as your waking world, except that you’ll
know it’s a dream and that you can control all of it with your
thoughts.

If you want to learn lucid dreaming for yourself, listen

to Podcast #010 – Lucid Dreaming, which will provide you
with a 12-minute overview on how to get started.

This is a pretty serious benefits package, wouldn’t you say?

None of these benefits are binary either — they all develop
gradually across a wide spectrum. Every step makes a
difference.

Now you may be wondering… OK, these are great benefits,

but HOW do I become more conscious? Stay tuned, and I’ll
write about that soon enough…. But just as a teaser, the first
thing you can do is to intend to become more conscious and
aware. Just decide to upgrade, and your subconscious will
begin the process for you. This decision is the key that opens
the door.