The journey of a thousand miles begins - under one’s foot”
Awareness
What is Awareness and Why Does it Matter?
What is Awareness - or more specifically, self-awareness? The dictionary defines self-awareness as “knowledge and awareness of your own personality or character.” When you’re self-aware, you have an accurate and clear understanding of your personality, strengths, weaknesses, and beliefs. Awareness also includes an understanding of how others perceive you.
Part of self awareness is self acceptance. This involves developing a healthy self-concept, honoring and using your strengths, values and the capabilities and managing difficult thoughts and feelings more effectively, so they do not hold you back from your potential.
Lacking self-awareness can lead to conformity, pursuing the wrong goals, following the wrong path, which lead to disappointment, depression and loss of hope. Self-awareness is necessary for taking control of your life, since the direction of your life is determined by your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and reactions. Self-awareness is the principle way of understanding and influencing these things.
How Awareness Helps you on Your Journey
Avoid confusion and false starts on your journey
Improve your relationships, career, and happiness
Illuminate patterns within past failures and challenges
Perceive the situation, others, and yourself more accurately
Awareness begins with a daring, bold and action-oriented journey inward, that will later inform your every action that you take on your life’s journey. This introspective journey will result in a greater self-awareness, self-confidence, while discovering your inner strength and courage to create a life that is truly yours. But it is not just sitting around navel-gazing. Once you know your inner strengths, you can make powerful, creative, meaningful changes in your life.
Awareness is also a way to discover what you need or want in your life. Within your strengths and values is your inner compass, Once you start to identify your own inner strengths and qualities, this awareness becomes the intrinsic motivation you need to become the best version of yourself. The most powerful motivation and long lasting determination comes when you identify your inner compass, your True North, or Path. By discovering the sort of person you want to be, that you must be, you will have more clarity in your choices and a greater motivation. This intrinsic motivation helps you to achieve your personal goals, career ambitions, financial targets, relationship desires and even your personal development.
Awareness also includes visualization of what is possible, which helps you develop a positive outlook, and imagine a brighter future. Similar to the practice of gratitude, positive visualization can lead to immediate feelings of joy, well-being, peace, contentment, and a deeply satisfying sense that life is good. With visualization you can start defining your path, and the direction you want to go.
This process will empower you to realize your potential, by providing you tools, techniques, and strategies throughout to make your journey to make it a success. The course includes several lessons with a variety of reflections and activities to guide you through this exciting journey to authenticity. What you will discover is how to live your life as the real YOU. Tap into your true potential, so you can see it, believe it, and do it.
How Can Awareness Motivate me in Life?
Motivational Awareness is based on the premise that by understanding your values and character strengths you can enhance your efforts to achieve your goals, which will lead you on a life long path of happiness and well-being as you apply your unique strengths in daily activities. You don’t have to do that initially, but when you are ready, it will help you take your initial steps forward, out of your comfort zone and on a journey that is truly rewarding. True motivation comes from knowing the meaning and purpose underlying what you do and why you are making an effort. Knowing and acting on your “why” is critical to living each day with joy. Research has shown that purposeful people are happier, healthier, achieve more and live longer.
Each section contains key concepts and different exercises to help you identify your strengths and true self. The exercises introduced will not only help you know the true you, but will improve your your optimism, stress tolerance, flexibility, stress management, problem solving, reality testing, impulse control, decision making, independence, assertiveness, self-awareness and positive self-regard to name just a few. Since change does not happen overnight, the typical time commitment to complete this course is about two months. This is the minimum amount of time it takes to develop, reinforce, and solidify major changes in your life.
Creating a Plan for Awareness
Begin by setting a clear goal to find your What. It is critical to first spend the time and find out what in your life matters to you. Outlining some easy to understand short- and long-term goals gives us the feeling that something is possible. This part about “what is possible” is often outside of our comfort zone, but we must first see it in our mind to make it happen in reality. Otherwise it will just be someone else’s should ought or have to that fills the space.
Committing Time and Energy
Investing time, effort and interest in yourself is difficult if you are not used to prioritizing self care and self reflection.This may seem obvious but, everything important to us needs maintenance and attention, yet our inner self is often the last thing we invest strongly in. An example would be prioritizing maintenance and upgrades on your car, but never considering reviewing what would make your life run better.
Are you ready to know a better version of yourself?
Wanting some balance, direction and focus in your life?
Do you wish to be part of an inspirational, intentional community?
As we are creating more awareness, we are simply “deciding to know more.” What do you want more of in your life? What do you want less of? By establishing to know more, you gain clarity to decide the next steps, if any.
“What do you want, hope, imagine would be different?”
“What is possible? What can or could you do? What are you able to do?”
“Why would you make this change?
“What would be one specific benefit of making this change?”
”What risks or consequences would you like to decrease?”
“What currently impossible thing, if it were possible, might change everything?”
“Let’s imagine for a moment that you did set out in a particular direction - How would your life be different?”