{Myth} Why Self-Awareness & Mindfulness AREN’T Woo-Woo Bull***, They’re Necessary

I have no idea how to start this blog today...

No witty remark - other than to say this…

For the last two years we’ve been dealing with something unprecedented…
Something that has been hugely uncertain to navigate…
& something that’s been exhausting as well!

Let’s be honest—the last two years have been a struggle. But, I think in a lot of ways, a lot of people are struggling now more than ever. Perhaps we’re at the end of our rope. Perhaps the uncertainty has been grating on us, but simultaneously, all of the changes—even those returning us to normal—have left many of us really, really struggling with how to deal. How to show up in their lives.

Do we show up in the same way?
Do we show up differently?
How do we move through things?
Do we move through things?

For those of us who are very high achieving—perfectionistic and validation-driven, from outside or we are validating ourselves—it can be a really, really trying time, and a really difficult time because, in so many ways, we don't know what's going to work.

I mean, shit, how many of us don’t even feel like we have a firm grasp on our social limitations anymore?! Hell, I have had to tell people “TBD” to plans because I just didn’t know if I would be “peopled out” in planning activities…

We're in a period of time right now where we just don’t know! We don’t know what's going to work because we don't know what it's going to make the difference.

So, this blog?

It’s not only about what self-awareness is…

It’s about why you need and it three very tangible ways to create more self-awareness in your life!

So let's start off with like the friggin dictionary definition of self-awareness—cuz I like definitions! 😉

Self Awareness: an awareness of one's own personality or individuality.

But I want to give you some very, very tangible perspectives on what I believe self-awareness to be some of and the ways it shows up in our lives.

To me self awareness is, for example, knowing that maybe a big heavy meal is going to feel good in your body. Or knowing that you're having a really off day, or spending a little time by yourself to learn why you are having an off day. It's knowing what things make you feel at your best, and what things make you feel at your worst. It's understanding your limits. And what that may be.

For example, if a movie night in is exactly what you need, as opposed to going out. Maybe self-awareness is putting down the phone, the glass of wine, not because anybody's telling you that you "should", but because you know, it's not serving you and being the kind of person you want to be.

Maybe self-awareness is listening to your body when it tells you it needs a rest day.

Or—one of my favorites—maybe self-awareness as the ability to reflect back on your week, your month, and the ability to say I could have been better, and to give yourself some tangible reasons how you could have been better or how you could have done differently.

Self Awareness is being able to have honest self-evaluation. And it's one of the hardest things for us to do. But it's also one of the most important things for us to do. Particularly for us as high achievers…

the impacts of self-awareness…

It impacts your energy and whether or not you're able to have consistent and sustained energy, what's serving your body and what isn't.

It's impacting your stress because if you have self-awareness, you can be proactive about managing your stress and managing the triggers and the things that tend to send you into overwhelm.

Self-awareness can help you manage your burnout. How? Because it helps you be proactive and know when to stop, when to take a break, when to rest and relax, and what the best form of resting and relaxing might take! I feel like lot of us have been in this perpetual state of exhaustion the last few years because our rest is, well, no longer restful! And that’s another place where self-awareness can help us! If every time we take time of we’re spending it in the exact same way, and that is not rejuvenating us, we need to know about it!

It also can really be helpful when it comes to your relationships. It shows you when you really need to invest in those relationships, because it is fueling you and it is adding to you or when you need some downtime.

Self-awareness is important for so many facets of our life to help us live in a way that makes us feel good.

One of my favorite things to do with clients is values…

When it comes to knowing yourself better and having self-awareness, being able to live according to your values is huge because living according to your values is ultimately what so many of us are after, even if we can’t articulate it that way. Self-awareness and cultivating that self-awareness really, really allows you to do that.

Knowing yourself and your values allows you to show up in your relationships, your business, your career, and all of these different things in a way that feels good, and feels like exactly what you always envisioned for yourself.

That's what self-awareness can give you. And that's ultimately really why you need it. And so many of us are lacking in it. So I want to give you three very, very tangible ways to create more self-awareness.

Tip #1: Thought Catching…

Thought-catching is the act of noticing and making note of your thoughts as they happen. It maybe be that you have some sort of little notebook you carry around or you write things down in app on your phone. As you think of things—recurring thought patterns, stories you tell yourself, self-talk, etc.—just jot those things down.

I first heard of this activity in the context of a group business coaching program I was doing. At the time, we were really really thinking about catching the disempowering thoughts I said to myself, and that is a very, very powerful practice when it comes to self-compassion. Additionally, it's a really powerful practice for helping you to show up in the mindset or mentality you want and to change to a mindset that is more empowering. However, it's also really really important and powerful for catching what we feel like we need in our lives.

For example, how many times have you thought something like this: "Oh my God, I wish I could just have a down night tonight. I wish I didn't have to do this thing for myself, my significant other, my parents or one of my friends I wish I could just chill."

How many times have you had a thought like that and just kind of buried it and pushed it aside? We do this because obligation trumps necessity, you know? In this situation, obligation trumped what you felt like you needed.

Those are all important things, but this activity and exercise isn't ultimately about that. It’s not about changing your mindset and making sure you prioritize yourself. Those are important but, ultimately, that’s not what the thought-catching is about.

Thought catching is just about jotting down the thing that you thought you needed. It's about catching that moment when you think of what you need—downtime, time with girlfriends, self-care, social time, etc. It is about just catching and jotting down those needs, becoming aware of when you say stuff like that to yourself, and jotting it down so that eventually you can take action on making sure you're making space in your life and giving yourself time to do that thing.

I always say awareness is the first step. And if we don't jot it down, we lose that awareness. So this is a very, very simple first step to catch those little things that you're thinking. Those little things that you're catching yourself saying "I need this". You can jot that down. And then next time you sit down with your calendar, and you're mapping out your week—which we'll talk about that a little bit later—you can start to prioritize and write into your calendar and your day.

You can give yourself time to do some of these things: take that bubble bath, watch that chick flick with a glass of wine or whatever. You can give yourself that opportunity to do that thing that you know you've said that you need just because you jotted it down in your little thought catcher.

I personally use Notion, when I'm doing my thought catcher. I love it because it syncs between all of my devices. So I can catch my thoughts on my computer and have it up on my computer. But I can also catch my thoughts on my phone when I'm out and about. So that is tip number one: use a thought catcher and—in this case—using your thought catcher to jot down the things you know you need.

Tip #2: Meditation

Yup—I’m going to go there!

Because ultimately, mindfulness (which is what meditation gives you) is like the woo-woo word for self-awareness. In my opinion, there is no better thing to help you be more self-aware and more mindful than meditation because this is what meditation does.

I always get pushback from high achievers in particular because—to them—meditation feels like a waste of time. They struggle to just push through the discomfort of sitting there and not doing anything. And I'm right there with you because this is where I was when I started.

But meditation is so powerful because, ultimately, it's not about not thinking. That's a big misconception people have about meditation. I can tell you right now, I suck at not thinking, too. Ultimately, what meditation does is it trains you to just observe your thoughts and to be very objective. Essentially, meditation trains you to just watch your thoughts. When you get practiced in it and experienced with it, you're just watching your thoughts drive by like you're watching a car pass by you on the highway. That's essentially what meditation is, once you get good at the practice.

And the reason why that is so powerful is, instead of reacting to each and every thought we have—which can be exhausting—you're able to just observe it. You're able to see those things go by, and be very, very aware of: "Okay, I do need this or it is really bothering me that my significant other isn't doing x." Or "this is something that I'm really passionate about and I want to do more of y". It brings those things to the surface that are usually so pushed down by all of the other demands and to dos of our days.

That's why mindfulness and meditation are such powerful practices when it comes to cultivating more self-awareness.

To get started, here are a couple tips:

• Start small. I see too many people when they start meditating try to dive in at like 10+ minutes of meditation. Then, when they struggle to sit for that full-time, they think they’re a failure. Don’t start at 10-minutes. I know that’s the MO of a lot of guided meditation, but if you start at 5 minutes…or one?! Who cares!

• Remember: it’s not about NOT thinking. Don't feel like you're failing at meditation if you're struggling to turn your brain off. That's not what it's about. It's about observing those thoughts like cars on a highway, not reacting to them being very, very objective. That's really the whole point.

Tip #3: Journaling.

And when I say journaling, honest to God, it can be anything.

I personally believe any journaling is going to help you increase your self-awareness. It can be stream of consciousness journaling, for example. Like when I don't have anything to write about when I journal, I literally just sit down and like: "Well, yesterday was a shit day” or “I have no idea what to write about this morning. But I really like my coffee mug. It's super cute. I got it from this person." Like I just ramble until meaningful shit starts to come out...

But there's nothing wrong with starting that way. Because, eventually, you will get to the meaningful shit. It's amazing how quickly a seemingly random start to a journal entry can actually lead to something meaningful. But if doing a stream of consciousness journaling just does not work for you. I've got some ideas for places for you to start.

Firstly, you can use journal prompts! I’ve got a number of journal prompts here. Some additional journal prompts are:

• What do I need right now?

• What’s missing that I want right now? What can I do to fix that?

• What do I typically do that feels really good and energizing that I can keep doing?

• What do I typically do that feels really fulfilling or makes me feel connected to the people around me?

• How do I typically get ((insert thing you want)) or what do I typically do that feels good in ((insert area of your life you want to improve))?

  • What can I tweak or do differently in this part of my life? What’s something else I can try?

• What's something else that I can try to get more connection, more movement, more adventure, more spontaneity, more health, more fulfillment, etc.?

You'd be amazed at the things that can come up. And the reason why this is such a good activity from the perspective of self-awareness is that it helps give you a starting point of things that have worked in the past. And maybe—just maybe—these are going to be the best things for you to get back to!

So again, awareness is the first step, you've got to think of what these things are that you could potentially try to ultimately give you that benefit of finding what's going to serve you best, you know.

Bonus Tip: Check in with yourself

Because I believe this is so damn important for freakin anything in your life!

Do a review.

You guys have heard me talk about a weekly review before. Typically, I'm a goal achievement, productivity, or time management perspective. But it's not just for productivity. Doing a check-in with yourself and doing a weekly review can be incredibly powerful for any aspect of your life that you're trying to review. Because ultimately, doing a weekly review is responding to changes and assessing how the things that you're doing are actually working vs. how they’re not.

Maybe the ways in which you're managing your energy or the ways in which you're trying to find connection, community, and support are not working. But if you never sit down, and consciously and intentionally ask yourself, “hey, is what I'm doing working?” then you'll never be able to change it, right? You will never have that awareness to realize, "Oh, my God, it's not working. I need to do something different."

So you can sit down and do a weekly review and ask yourself. Again, it doesn't matter what question you ask, but ask that question.

And if the answer's no, don't beat yourself up for it. Just use that as a data point.

This is where we get to act a little like scientists. Use that as a data point to tell you "Okay, what can I do differently?" It kind of comes back to that brainstorm we just talked about a second ago: what can I tweak or do differently? What something I haven't tried yet. And then once you come up with some new ideas, make a game plan for implementing those so that you can give yourself what you need.

Ultimately, so many of the practices I do are around cultivating intuition and self-awareness, because—not gonna lie—this is something I’ve sincerely sucked at in this past.

I used to be the person who said, “I have zero intuition. I have zero sense of self-awareness. I have no concept of how to trust my gut."

I used to be that person. And then I started doing these things. And it's given me such an insane amount of connection and awareness of what I need, what I want, who I am, etc. It's allowed me to respond to changing situations and changes in what I need. It's allowed me to respond to those things in real-time. And holy shit, do we need that! We’ve need that the last two years and what we’ve gone through recently and the changes that so many communities are going through right now in their return to “normal” will continue to grate on is.

So much has been different and even in the return to “normalcy,” so much will continue to be different. The ways in which you probably showed up before may not be working. It is going to take insane amounts of self-awareness to realize what isn't working, what things you can change, and what ways in which you can change them to do differently to support yourself.

So that's why self-awareness is so powerful...

That's why you need it—and why you might need it now more than ever!

I hope some of these ways to create it really resonated with you. If you don't do all of them, just pick one. If none of them resonated with you, please reach out to me @coachellyn on Instagram and let me help you out. Let me hook you up because this is going to be such an important thing, and I want to give you something that you can take away to create more self-awareness in your life.