3 Routes to Enhancing Self Awareness

Posted on February 25, 2018

Enhancing Self Awareness

Self awareness acts like the key to the door of our own destructive thinking. We can only work on enhancing self awareness by inviting change into our lives and making ourselves consciously aware of everything that we often deny and refute. Our mind in its ego-based and highly reactive state traps us by thinking we have something to lose when we admit our own faults and comforting lies, and yet the intelligence of our mental processes seeks to break down those lies, limits and denials in order to find truth and what is real. Our ego is our survival instinct and serves to protect us from danger, and so we need that initial fight or flight reaction for our ultimate physical survival; however, it poses a threat to our higher intelligence and intuition when we allow it to run wild within us.

Self awareness helps us to uncover our drivers, triggers and motives so that we gain meaning and momentum through life.

Here are 3 ways to enhance self awareness.

1. Don’t deny your thoughts and feelings- use them.

We live in a diluted state when we don’t look at the broader picture of who we are.

Imagine a painting that is only half complete, with a base of only one or two colours, and brush strokes that do not intertwine or melt into each other. That picture loses all substance, attraction, integrity and commitment to the art at hand. It is not an honest reflection of what is. This is the picture that we paint when we mute or silence what is passing through our head space, heart or soul. Don’t get stuck in the paradigm of positive and negative thinking. Anxieties and fears direct us toward our insecurities and so they are valuable to us when we perceive them differently. All thoughts are just thoughts, all feelings are just feelings. They are not fixed and we have the innate power to reconcile, reframe, and channel them to create a more self aware platform to push forward from.

Change your perception on what positivity means. Think of it as removing the labels and limits and exposing yourself to the truest parts of you and what surrounds you.

“Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad”- Debbie Ford

2. Ground yourself and Reflect

We are inherently creatures of comfort. At the base level of human nature sits a need to feel safe and protected. When something triggers a sense of unfamiliarity or insecurity within, our mind kicks into overdrive with anxiety, worry, and fear based thoughts. The mental and emotional defences that we build stand like guards at the door of our heart and dissipate the sound of our soulful intelligence and intuitive thinking. When we take some time to ground ourselves, we can patiently sift through our mind patterns and discern what is real and what is a reactive mind construct. We are not ruled by the compass of one singular voice. It is up to us to understand ourselves better, reflect with compassion and non-judgement so we can live our lives from the inside to out rather than outside to in.

We cannot powerfully affect or change something that we do not first take time to truly understand. Ground yourself by taking a walk through nature, meditation, listening to music you love or spending time doing something that puts you at ease.

“Look at the evidence and be willing to question your own truths, and be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be”- Jason Silva

3. Empower yourself

If we don’t think we can change something then we will suffer by our own head, heart, and hand. When you notice and acknowledge the things that make you afraid or cause you anxiety, you also empower yourself to transition or transform that energy into something more meaningful for you. We empower ourselves through honesty, openness and our integral dimensions of wisdom. We are so scared to fail that we fail to try, we are so fearful of being seen that we hide our heart behind a fake smile, we are so anxious of change that we close the door to it…and yet all these thoughts and emotions can be used as tools to reinforce our strength and individual impact upon the world. As human beings, we move toward an enlightened way of being when we guide ourselves from a place of lack toward a place of fullness.

Energy is neither bad nor good, it is simply energy. It is where we choose to direct that energy that makes all the difference on how we empower ourselves to live according to our truth, values, and purpose.

“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye”- Helen Keller

We think we need to be ‘positive’ all the time and so we numb down the thoughts and feelings that are deemed ‘negative’ by our external conditioning. It is scary to strip ourselves back and tear down the walls of lies, lack and limits we built our adult lives upon. Yet it is only by courageously searching through the dungeons of our elemental darkness that we can find our supreme light.

Enhancing self awareness becomes like a freedom-finding torch toward our soul signature and deeper strength for clarity and progression.