Awareness is the capacity to notice experience: thoughts, feelings, sensations, images and what is happening around you.
You don’t have to make an experience disappear to notice that it is there.
You are having the thought. You are also noticing it.
"I’ve ruined everything" arrives after a mistake. For a moment, it seems to describe the whole situation.
Then you notice the sentence itself. There is the error, the feeling about it and this very large conclusion. You haven’t solved the problem. You have more of the experience available to examine.
Awareness can be ordinary. The first sip you actually taste. The tightening you notice before agreeing. The moment you realise you’ve stopped hearing the person you’re with because you’re preparing your reply.
Attention asks where your focus has gone. Decentering explores that useful bit of perspective between experiencing a thought and being completely absorbed in its claim.
The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health’s Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety introduces practices that work with attention and awareness. Its research overview also distinguishes what is known from what is still being studied.