Daniel Siegel's Aware (O5, O3)
Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist who studies the brain and the mind, wrote Aware to teach a practice he calls the Wheel of Awareness. He treats attention itself as a skill you can train, on its quotes page: "Having an awakened mind means using the mental processes of attention, awareness, and intention to activate new states of mind that, with repeated practice, can become intentionally sculpted traits in a person's life." His account of the mind draws on two Big Five facets.
Training attention and awareness is Intellect
The first is Intellect (O5), under Openness, your engagement with ideas and the inner workings of your own mind. Siegel's whole method is a fascination with how attention shapes experience, and how a trained mind can sculpt its own traits. A high scorer is drawn to that kind of introspective, conceptual work. A lower scorer prefers the concrete and outer, and may find the Wheel of Awareness abstract before it becomes useful.
Taking feelings seriously is Emotionality
The second is Emotionality (O3), under Openness, how much access and weight you give your own feelings. Siegel refuses to treat emotion as noise, on the same page: "Feelings are not a side component of a life well lived; they are essential ways we live as a whole, embodied being." A high scorer feels in high resolution and honors it. A lower scorer keeps feeling at arm's length, and Siegel argues that the felt life is central data.
Read your O5 and O3 to know how Aware lands. If your intellect runs high, Siegel gives your interest in the mind a practice and a map. If your emotionality runs high, he confirms that your feelings are essential rather than a distraction. Awareness, in his account, is attention trained on both thought and feeling. Aware works on the two together.
Read the book: Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence by Daniel Siegel.
See Where You Fall
Where do you actually fall? The 30-facet OCEAN personality test takes about 15 minutes and scores all five domains and the facets underneath them. Take the test
Research Citations
Siegel, D. J. (2018). Aware: The science and practice of presence. TarcherPerigee.
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822-848.
Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.