The quality of your relationships depend on this …

In counseling settings, and even in the Couple Communication workshop I teach, I’ll ask people, “Have you ever been driving down a freeway and suddenly realize you don’t remember the last few miles?”

Most of us have experienced this, which is due to being absorbed with self-talk at an unconscious level.

We live a lot of life on automatic pilot, which means our self-awareness is often very lacking, and our “other awareness” even more so. That will cause us to wade into conversations, whether light-hearted or serious, very unprepared for our initial engagement. We’re lacking self-awareness and other awareness needed to think rationally or speak wisely.

The quality of our relationships depend on an adequate awareness of self, as well as others. Without it, we’ll quickly get ourselves into trouble, or miss opportunities to say things we’ll regret were left unsaid.

And that is a heavy burden!

Sharon Jayson of USA Today reported in 2010 about a new website for the remorseful and regretful called “The Things You Would Have Said.” It was launched earlier that year by Jackie Hooper, 24, a legal assistant in Portland, Oregon, and is a forum for belated, unspoken sentiments. People by the thousands are posting cathartic messages to deceased relatives, long lost loves, former friends and various significant others with whom they missed the chance to speak directly. The site, she says, is “less about confessions or unburdening yourself and more about those nagging feelings about what you wanted to say but didn’t.”

A lack of adequate self-awareness is like falling asleep at the wheel, or in the case of these reports provided by Barnett Gushin, asleep at the controls …

In February 2008, a Go! Airlines flight from Honolulu overshot its destination of Hilo, Hawaii, and found itself 30 miles out over the Pacific Ocean before turning back. The pilots originally claimed radar failures, but later admitted they had fallen asleep.

Last October (2009) the pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188 blamed a “loss of situational awareness” when their plane shot past its destination, Minneapolis, and continued flying for another 150 miles. The flight, with 149 people aboard, sped along, unaccounted for, for 78 minutes before a concerned flight attendant contacted the pilots via intercom. Turning around over Wisconsin, the aircraft finally landed safely at its original destination. While the pilots claim they were simply distracted, most authorities believe they fell asleep at the controls.

As terrible as these near catastrophes seem, they dim in comparison to the horror of the Continental Airlines flight that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February 2009, killing all 49 onboard and one person on the ground. It is speculated that fatigue is the most probable cause for this fatal accident. One of the two pilots is believed to have been awake all night before the flight and the other was known to commonly take cat naps to catch up on sleep just prior to a flight.

To be asleep at the wheel of our lives — meaning to lack self-awareness, and then other aweareness — will take us off the path to positive communication with others, create regrets in our relationships, and possibly even cause some relationships to tragically crash. There are few things more important in life than learning to be self-aware so you can be sober and alert to your own life, and ready to say and act in your relationships in ways that are beneficial to you and others.

Scotty