Self-awareness means knowing who you are and what you want and need out of life. Creating a practice of tuning into ourselves to explore these fluid aspects is necessary towards the ongoing goal of self-mastery. Despite the complications of this idea projected by the world, it actually is possible to be more or less skilled at self-mastery. Self-mastery skills are cumulative and improve with practice.

What is self awareness?

According to Psychology today “Self-awareness involves monitoring our stress, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. It is important, because it’s a major mechanism influencing personal development.”

• Tune into our body
• Process oriented vs. outcome oriented
• Confidence to be yourself
• Assessing your unique qualities
• Self-acceptance

Tune into the body

I believe in a practice of getting to know ourselves better by tuning into the body.  Our bodies create many different types of physical sensations through our emotions and senses.  We can explore our reality and observe the feelings in our bodies to recognize and become closer to managing ourselves.  This is the method in which I have been navigating my path since 2008, at some times I have been closer to these signals and I have been pulled away from them at times as well.  I believe it’s a relationship of the combination of our heart, our intuition, our inner vision and our souls. The goal is to become better at these skills, and become more familiar with ourselves so that we stay connected to this gift and stray off course less often!

• Process oriented vs. outcome oriented

In order to develop self-awareness, one needs to adopt a mindset of being process oriented as opposed to outcome oriented.  This type of approach allows us to be present in the moment, instead of waiting for some anticipated result before we allow ourselves to feel something.  We must observe ourselves along the way to our goals and also be open to the result taking different forms. We become more familiar with the feelings we have within us and use those to gauge whether we are on track to living a life which aligns with our soul.

As we practice knowing ourselves, we dive deeper into our existence and focus on what’s happening in the present instead of where we believe we want to end up.  I believe our society has been conditioned to create unrealistic expectations around outcomes- Ex: I will be happy when this or that happens and then suffering an over reaction of emotional fall out when their expectations aren’t met.  We need to have a mindset adjustment where the process is spread out and more emphasis is placed upon the process of “smaller” achievements along to way to the end goal.

Improving our emotional health

Knowing thyself is an essential piece of being able to work on ourselves so we can be in the process of constantly improving to become more emotionally healthy. Being self-aware means knowing who we are and what we want. These ingredients help us live more confidently and with purpose, which makes it much easier to access joy in our daily lives. To learn more about emotional health, click here

To successfully pilot our lives successfully we need make wise choices , be congruent and aligned, master self management and mastery.

We are each unique in our own ways

Knowing thyself- what is there to know?

• likes/dislikes
• Feelings/ emotions/ energy in motion
• What makes me feel “good”/ What makes me feel “bad”
• What’s important to me?
• What are my goals and motivations
• What brings me joy?
• What are my fears?
• What are my values?

Self- acceptance

Self-acceptance: Stop judging ourselves so harshly and taking things personally.  While getting to know ourselves we learn the we didn’t consciously choose everything about ourselves.  We must become observers in order to be able to learn who we are.  It’s about loving ourselves for who we are. And we must also ask these questions to discover these things,  Some things we don’t like about ourselves we have the power to change and some things we can’t.  Whether we do or we don’t, we must make the reoccurring decision to love ourselves in this moment right now just as we are.

Focus on self awareness

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