Awareness | Jerry Shkavritko

Core Question

Who is actually in control of my life?

What This Stage Teaches

Personal responsibility
The power of thought
The difference between circumstances and responses
Conscious vs. unconscious living
The danger of drifting through life
The importance of having a philosophy to live by
How habitual thoughts shape behavior and results
The necessity of honest self-examination

Skill to Develop

Self-awareness, learning to ask: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Who decided this? What am I afraid of? What do I actually want? Where am I drifting?

The Biblical Framework

RECOGNIZE THE DRIFT

“For this cause the Lord of armies has said, Give thought to your ways. Much has been planted, but little got in; you take food, but have not enough... You were looking for much, and it came to little; and when you got it into your house, I took it away with a breath.”
Haggai 1:5-9
COME TO YOUR SENSES

“But when he came to his senses, he said, What numbers of my father's servants have bread enough, and more, while I am near to death here through need of food!”
Luke 15:17
EXAMINE YOURSELF HONESTLY

“Let us make search and put our ways to the test, turning again to the Lord.”
Lamentations 3:40
CHOOSE TO WAKE UP DAILY

“I have knowledge of your works, that you seem to be living but are dead. Be on the watch, and make strong the rest of the things which are near to death... Keep in mind the teaching which was given to you, and be ruled by it, and have a change of heart. If you do not keep watch, I will come like a thief, and you will have no knowledge of the hour when I will come on you.”
Revelation 3:1-3

Hill vs. Scripture

Hill

Stop drifting; take control of your thinking.

Scripture

Wake up and examine your life honestly. Awareness is the first step of repentance, the turning point before any real change.

The Hard Questions

What am I doing right now, and did I actually choose it?
What decisions have I been putting off making?
Whose voice am I actually living by: mine, or everyone else's?
If nothing changes, where will I be in 5, 10, 20 years?
What am I afraid to admit to myself?

Exercise

The Drift Letter

Write one honest paragraph answering: "If I continue living exactly as I am living today, where will I be in 5, 10, and 20 years?" Don't soften it.

AWARENESS: Stop drifting long enough to honestly see where your unexamined choices are actually taking you.

Stories for This Stage

From Scripture

In Jesus's parable, a younger son demands his inheritance early, leaves home, and wastes everything on reckless living in a distant country. When a famine hits and he is reduced to feeding pigs, envying the very pods he is feeding them, something shifts. He comes to himself, as it's often put: for the first time he sees his situation clearly instead of just living inside it. That moment of honest awareness, not the poverty itself, is what sends him back home. Everything that follows, his father running to meet him and restoring his place in the family, only happens because he woke up first. Luke 15:11-24.

My Story

Toward the end of my eight years at Xerox, the work had gone monotonous. Most of the jobs around me were being outsourced overseas, and even though I had a good setup, working from home, coordinating with a remote development team, flying out to Maryland and Philadelphia for team and customer meetings, I was just going through the motions. The spark was gone.

That's when it became clear to me: until I took my career into my own hands, I was going to keep meandering, comfortable but not really getting anywhere, because I had never actually defined where I wanted to go. Awareness didn't feel dramatic. It felt more like finally admitting something I'd been avoiding.

Around that time, my cousin invited me to dinner at a nice restaurant. Partway through the meal he asked what I thought about a CRM system he was considering for his roofing company. I'd spent years around technology and process at Xerox, and without really planning to, I found myself offering to help him streamline the business instead of just answering his question. That one conversation became the opening I didn't know I was looking for: a chance to put my career back in my own hands and find my own way in business at the same time.

That led me into Allstate Roofing & More, where I learned the trades contracting business from the inside, and eventually to starting Valverax in Charlotte in 2019. None of it happened because I had a five-year plan. It happened because I finally admitted I was drifting, and said yes to the first real opening that showed up.