The Power of Self Awareness

I once read this funny…”I want greater self-awareness, but can I continue to be unaware of my bad qualities?”

Isn’t that the truth, or not? My relationship with self awareness has been an off and on kind of romance. At times, very connected to who I am and how I am relating with myself and others. At others times, a very distant, combative approach. Many times spent trying to resist the bad qualities in order to survive in my existing ways.  

For most of my life I have been driven by this inquisitive curiosity of understanding myself and others, our psychology, our spirituality, our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, patterns, and overall existence at a deeper and more profound level. 

Over the past decade, this inquisitiveness has turned into a full time study program as I took a deep dive into understanding the many facets of the mind that increase overall self awareness…psychology, interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, life coaching and human potential to name a few.  

Now I’m like a giddy school girl….
Born again
lit up
on fire
ready to take on the world with this amazing understanding of what self awareness is and can do for the overall passion and purpose of our lives. 

According to google, “Self Awareness is the knowledge of one’e own character, feelings, motive and desires. It is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, and emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards.” 

I think it’s this interesting dichotomy. We don’t realize we are not self aware until we are self aware. Then we realize that more often than not, we have been moving through life on auto pilot. We have lived on auto, rinse and repeat. Repeating old programs learned from childhood that have developed into pattern after pattern. We have unintentionally lived out others desires and expectations without an idea that anything would be different. And maybe for some of us, this is how we live our entire lives here on earth. However, for others there is this “one day”. This one day where we start to question life. 

Maybe we
-are at a crossroads? 
-feel this strange tug?
-feel this strong yearning for something more? 
-Have this realization that we’ve been living our lives for someone or something other than ourselves and it’s not working for us anymore?

This crossroads, this tug, this yearning creates an opportunity for change. It’s this deep desire to understand our passions, urges and desires in order to connect to our fullest potential. 

It creates an opportunity to choose again. An opportunity to deep dive into learning who we really are and what we really believe.

This deep dive into self awareness allows us to begin taking notice of our minds, thoughts, feelings, actions and desires in life. We begin to intentionally manage our minds in order to create this new desired path. And with this new path of awareness, we begin to own our story. It seems less threatening to want to avoid our bad qualities and instead we are eager to face them head on in order to create a life with more meaning and substance. One that lights a fire in our hearts, minds and souls. 

With greater self awareness we start showing up more fully to not only ourselves, but with any one who crosses our path. With greater self awareness we are able to access that inner light and connect more with it, in order to shine from the inside out.

Self awareness has been one of my greatest teachers in life. My hope is that this creates a desire to spark that inner light within each of you to live your fullest potential and greatest life.

XO

Kristine