I have a challenge for you a self-awareness, self-curiosity, self-love challenge and that
challenge is simple you ready? I challenge you to spend at least 10 minutes a day with
yourself discovering and uncovering parts of you that you've buried, shied away from,
something you've once explored but later lost sight of. Your superpower. That thing you didn't
realize you had in you. I challenge you and if you accept let's make it official. Comment below,
#IAcceptSelfAwarenessChallenge also I'll be sharing more value throughout the next month
on social media so we can keep each other accountable links to follow me are below.
Now before we dive into today's conversation I have to give a quick thanks to skillshare
for sponsoring this video, but more later on how and why their platform plays an important
role in our self-awareness, self-curiosity and self-love journeys. Alright now in order for this
conversation we're about to have to be as valuable as possible I have to quickly lay the foundation
first. See becoming self-aware is not something that happens in a single moment of inspiration.
It actually requires a continual objective reflection and experimentation in real life
right it's truly a journey but it's not one that takes a lifetime to accomplish.
Self-awareness, self-curiosity and self-love are well within reach and sometimes they're actually
sitting in the palms of our hands waiting for us to well be what this phrase says we are.
Now if you're not quite there yet I want to spend the next few minutes with you
highlighting some simple exercises that are meant to help you jump start your self-awareness,
self-curiosity and self-love and the first one is listen to your self-talk.
These are those internal conversations that we have with ourselves every single day and
these conversations believe it or not bring us closer to self-awareness and self-love
but only if we tune in and listen to them. I spent some time at the beginning of this year
digging through this concept of self-awareness. It's something that I want to explore further in
myself maybe dive into a few writing prompts as well and I remember stumbling across a
short paragraph that painted a picture of this idea of listening to your self-talk
in a way that really spoke to me, I mean the poet in me had to share this with you
and I quote: "Think of your thoughts as a river that you're swimming in. Every once in a while,
climb out of the river and sit on the riverbank. Then, observe the river. Listen to it."
Now after I read this I was snapping and clapping as if I was sitting at an open mic performance
because like I said this really spoke to me. See if we can spend a few minutes a few times
a day listening to and writing down what our self-talk sounds like then over time we'll
build up a small collection of notes that we can study and use to become more self-aware.
Number two is create a vision and write your mission. It's pretty common that
we don't always think about our lives from either of these two perspectives.
Yes we set goals and yes we build habits which is great but my question to you is have you
created a life vision for yourself? What about your life's mission? See a big part of becoming
self-aware is choosing to live life on purpose rather than just surviving to see another day
and the difference here is effort. Actually working to create the life you want for yourself,
your family, those closest to you and you do this by creating a vision in writing your mission.
Where are you headed in life? What are you striving to achieve long term?
How are you doing it? Who are you doing it for?
Just something to think about as you turn it to the next chapter in your life.
Number three is learn to unlearn. This idea of unlearning is about moving away from something,
letting go right and at its core it's about stopping patterns. Practices and
beliefs that we've grown accustomed to that would not be as valuable to us in the future
as we continue to grow and change and adapt. Actions that require awareness and curiosity.
In fact I came across this class in skillshare that like many of the classes I've tuned into
it's changing the game for me and impacting the way I think
but it was something I noticed right off the bat about this class that made it different
and that is that it wasn't a video instead it was something called skillshare audio.
Now really quick if you don't know what skillshare is they're an online learning community with
thousands of inspiring classes for both creative and curious people you can learn new things,
new skills, explore unique ideas and without a doubt travel down a self-awareness,
self-curiosity and self-love journey and personally I adjusted my own sails on this journey
when I tuned into a skillshare audio by Yasmin Cheyenne. Make self-Awareness Your Superpower.
It's so interesting how we can be living an entire life
that we believe we cultivated and created for ourselves but actually it's our parents,
it's society, it's all of these different societal dynamics that impact what we decide to do, what
we choose, why we choose it and there's nothing wrong with that but if you are not living fully in
your joy and if you are not living fully in your purpose and your happiness, it can begin to eat
away at you and you can begin to feel sometimes like you are impostering someone or that you are
living someone else's life other than your own. So with self-discovery you begin to ask yourself
powerful questions like: Do I really love the job that I have? What would I be doing if I
could do anything in the world? Why do I have the relationships that I'm in? Am I advocating
for myself? Am I saying what I need? Do I know what I need? So to be clear if we're not being
open and honest with ourselves then it's really hard to be open and honest with other people.
Now when I tell you that I listened to this back to back a handful of times and every time
there was a new piece that resonated with me, regardless if it was something that I
was already familiar with, for some reason it just hit differently and
I want to encourage you to check it out. Now Skillshare is very affordable
costing less than ten dollars a month and since Skillshare is sponsoring this video
the first 1000 people to click the link in the description will get a free trial of
Skillshare premium membership and as always I'll leave the title of this class below that link
so you can copy and paste it into the search bar and start tuning in without wasting any time.
Number four is question yourself often. In other words play devil's advocate with yourself and what
I mean by this is that it's okay to argue against yourself. It's okay to question your assumptions.
It's okay if your default beliefs and views aren't the most reasonable.
I've learned that a self-aware person is aware of cognitive distortions that they
tend to fall prey to meaning they're able to dispute irrational thinking and replace that
thought process with something that reflects reality a little more accurately for example,
"all or nothing thinking" believing that life is black or white and if my efforts aren't perfect
then I'm a total failure or this idea of "creating a mental filter" where we allow our minds to pick
out a certain negative failure or defeat that we've faced and dwell on it for days or weeks or
even months to the point that it has impacted our vision of reality. I mean overthinking could fall
into this category as well which is something that I've openly admitted to struggling with myself
through previous conversations that we've shared. I guess what I'm saying is that
you should question yourself, your thoughts, a little more often than you think you should.
Number five is seek feedback from someone you trust. I believe we all have blind spots in
our thinking patterns and behaviors we can always learn something from someone at any stage in life,
including ourselves, if we're willing to pay attention and sometimes straight up asking
for constructive feedback will highlight some of those blind spots we may not be aware of. Now the
key here is to be intentional and particular with who we choose to have this conversation
with. Personally this person for me would be a mentor or a spouse or partner. Someone I trust,
someone I respect, someone who understands just about every nuance of me who's going to tell me
what I need to hear not, what I want to hear. You know this reminds me of something my dad
would always tell my brother and I growing up and he still does today, he would tell us that
"opinions are like ears everyone has a couple" and to me I feel this falls in line perfectly
with this conversation because it reinforces why we need to be intentional and particular
with who we choose to have this conversation with because well everyone has an opinion.
Number six is self-evaluation and reflection this can take the form of journaling or meditation.
Now if you choose to journal use this as an opportunity to track your progress towards a goal
or to rate your level of self-awareness on any given day. Maybe at the end of the day
you journal how that day went and then you ask yourself how can I improve tomorrow.
Now on the other hand if you choose meditation find a quiet space to sit in silence and count
your breaths. Allow your mind to relax and when it starts to wonder pull it back. Take notes of those
moments and as you continue to practice you'll become more aware of how and why your mind wonders
as well as how to control and limit those distractions and again this is something
that I'm practicing personally from time to time with the help of the headspace app on my phone.
Well I hope I shared something in this video that spoke to you and resonated with you
and if I did give it a thumbs up for me. If you're new here consider hitting that
subscribe button down below so you can join this community and grow with all of us here.
Always remember to stay true to you and I'll see you the next one.
Peace!