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Self-Awareness Is Just The Door · Fierce Encouragement

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, this is Mark.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is Fierce Encouragement.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you being here.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, just a quick lead-in.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I created this podcast for myself and for the people I was working with because I noticed a lot of people kind of underneath the surface or underneath the appearances, they really struggle with a difficult or sour self-talk.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is to remind us, hey, you're not alone.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And second, to know that there's a way through it.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can use tools, we can use mindset, and we can really encourage ourselves in a fierce way to snap out of it and to step towards that best part of ourselves.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being here.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you to all of those that have been longtime listeners.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: This thing that I wanted to talk about, well, I guess how can I phrase it?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think self-awareness gets sold as a destination.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it isn't.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that front door.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a wonderful coffee chat with somebody this week.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're a local founder, starting their own business and at the same time really serving a team that they've been working with for quite a while.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we got into a great talk around awareness, as it's been on my mind the last many years.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: What is awareness?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean to you?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is a healthy awareness?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's something in this idea of self-awareness that we kind of miss or kind of gets washed out, maybe in some programs or some books.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Self-awareness is this thing that everyone really wants, or maybe they aren't even aware enough to know how they can be more observant of themselves.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is good.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it isn't to say that self-awareness isn't something we should avoid or not something worth going after.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when we want it, why is that?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where's that kind of calling come from?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's put simply, it's this we become more aware of what we're thinking and what we're feeling.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: That only comes to the surface when we start to feel disconnected in our lives.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: When we start to feel pushed away, maybe by the work or by some of our relationships.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And especially we can feel that disconnection in our body.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes some people get disconnected from their body and kind of live in the head.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this disconnection can happen in mind or body or in our environment and kind of in our journey through life.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So why does this matter?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why does self-awareness matter?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why is awareness of this disconnection important?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as a parent, as a creator or a leader, or even that person that's finding your own way through life, and it can be up and down, as we've all experienced, if we don't slow down or at least become conscious of what is occurring occurring in our life or what we're experiencing, I believe that we can kind of live the same year over and over and over again.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe we start calling that our habits or our fate.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in so many ways, we start to give up.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a great quote from Don Miguel Ruiz from The Four Agreements, where he says, Death is not the biggest fear we have.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: The risk to be alive and express what we really are.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is in that risk.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a risk in becoming aware because we might not like what we notice.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when we limit ourselves and we don't play a little bigger, I think we can decrease the palette of colors we have to paint our life with.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of having hundreds of colors to use and mix, we start getting really focused maybe on black and white, maybe adding in a yellow little yellow, fewer colors to paint with, or fewer levels of awareness in your life, limits the picture that we can create.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really the turn or the view or the mindset, I guess you could say, that no book or course or even kind of learning path makes.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, our self-awareness is not the end.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Again, sometimes we just see that idea of being more aware is really powerful, but I want to go a layer deeper.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think self-awareness is the start of the next version of you becoming or being born.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because past just honest self-awareness and inhabiting our bodies and inhabiting our emotions and knowing them, there's a real deep, powerful invitation kind of calling out from within.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's acceptance.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is presence.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is a sense of deep worthiness that sits with us.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's even that sense that you just belong where you're at.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we can name it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a wonderful practice that comes from the Stoics.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes from a lot of other ancient, even faith traditions.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it is this a mor fati, loving your fate.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to be resigned or to let our emotions overcome us and kind of give up, maybe fall into sadness.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you're not alone.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've found myself there many times, whether becoming an entrepreneur, starting my own business, or standing on stage and talking to hundreds of people, working on those talks, working on the articles, working on this podcast.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is a deep sense of accepting who I am, trusting that I have a presence for myself and for my audience.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, back to that sense that this is a worthy cause.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to be resigned to those emotions that might overtake us kind of like a wave.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we can get maybe a life raft to hold on to.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's this is just loving your fate, whatever is going on.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Can we get a little excited about where we're actually standing in our lives?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: How could you invite that love of your fate, that love of the moment where you're at, and work in that with a little more dedication and a little more awareness today and this week?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So again, my story, you know, I I've said it a couple of times on this podcast, but I was laid off from my work in my late 40s.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember that day pretty vividly as the computer shut down because they had control over it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I was remote, I just remember that screen going dark and the computer shutting off after the meeting with HR and my managers.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this big kind of lump of fear took over, almost sat in my throat.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was like, I felt my head on fire with anger and frustration.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just felt like accusations like fire out like lightning bolts.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: There was a deep sense of betrayal by the people I was working with that I felt like I was shut out from the tribe, even by that small group, by the work, by the time and sweat and tears I put into that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it almost felt like my power was taken from me.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt like too much in that moment.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a loop here, at least in my mind.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got really good at attacking myself and then feeling bad for numbing out or giving up.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe the next morning, starting back with that anger and impatience, and then attacking others, and then feeling bad and numbing out.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, this created more problems in my life.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, if I was just to address that lack of dis that disconnection I had with myself, this led to money problems.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: This led to relationship issues.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, maybe the most subtle and difficult part of it, it led to like a quiet betrayal of the awareness that I was training for years.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It almost felt like I had to, what's the monopoly?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: You go to jail, go directly to jail, don't pass go, don't collect$200.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like there was a jail sentence and there was no get out of jail free card.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lens that we can kind of look through that might sharpen this for us, or might at least we can pull back from it and look at it with clarity and awareness and mindfulness.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so many of us, and maybe I'm wrong, let me know, but I think a lot of us walk around with this open wound.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You could even say a mark.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: It might be we speak to ourselves in those absolutes, like, I always do this, I always fall into that bad habit.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mine was anger.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I got really good at scolding myself for being angry and then feeling depressed about that and getting into that loop.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what actually helped, as I zoom back to where I'm at now, and as I've written many pieces about this and talked to you about it through the past two or three years, there's three things that specifically helped that I wrote down that I wanted to share with you.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first was my tribe.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was a small group of people and even a larger group of people around me that were with me.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were ride and die kind of friends.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: They actually took the time, and again, I get kind of a little emotional thinking about that, they took the time to reach out and celebrate the good things that I was doing, even the things that they were seeing or the feeling from what was happening.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them even said, you know what, your courage and bravery in that moment to reach out for help inspired me to do a little bit better.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, my first thing that actually helped was that tribe of people.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second was a practice for me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was training the body and lifting weights, getting out and walking, and also training the mind, making time for my formal meditation practice, but also making sure I sat down and studied my texts and kind of absorbed and integrated some of those practices into my moment-to-moment day.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, my practice.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing that really helped me in that moment was self-image work.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: What I talk a lot about in fierce encouragement.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Accepting my flaws, maybe even seeing the flaws clearly, maybe even being thankful for them in a more fati kind of a way.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that sadness.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the anger.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It helps wake me up.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath all the habits and the instincts or the things that take over that we might have in those moments, we are worthy.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You are worthy.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the mechanism at work here is that we get really fixated on the circumstances.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: We can even catastrophize reflexively and honestly, it's understandable.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on our training and our nervous system training, how we react.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also about being misaligned or kind of disconnected from who we really are.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot always change those outer circumstances, at least not right away.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: But if we start to understand that there's a space, that there's a pause or a blip or a gap between the thing that happened to us, the emotions that we felt in our body instinctively, and the reaction we choose, or maybe the reflex that popped up.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: There is a place that we can train to make that gap, that pause, that space a little bigger.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a tool I wanted to share with you as we get towards the end of this episode.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a good one to maybe write down and think about and choose as you go into the next 24 hours or the next week.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is just find the most painful point in your day.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what frustrates you the most.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the dishes, maybe it's the heavy traffic, maybe it's the anger that comes up, that sense of giving up, maybe it's reaching for that thing that numbs you out.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: So find that painful point.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when that comes online, don't react right away.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Set a timer for one or two minutes, even.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love for you to stay with that feeling.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Feel it in your body, feel that sadness or that anger.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: But try this, watch it from the outside.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Watch it the way a third person would, or a wise adult would, or maybe even a saint or a sage.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: How would they view that?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And literally set a timer.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that timer goes off, go ahead, react however you want.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You still built that habit of pausing and giving yourself a gap.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, this is the rep.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is the tool in motion.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is you training your presence, and this is you training your ability to hold when you find yourself triggered off or off balance.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really it.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is how we can land in the practice when we practice and when we know that the emotion that we have is literally that energy in motion in our body.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So find that painful point.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes online, set that timer, feel it, but watch it from a third-person wise way, and then go ahead and do what you normally would.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious what comes up for you as you practice with this tool going into the next week or the next couple days.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So to finish up, I wanted to bring to light one book that I read about three years ago from the book is from 2022, and it's by Daniel Goldman and Sokny Rinpoche.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called Why We Meditate.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the basic sentiment that I think ties to what we've been talking about today is this that I got from the book, and that I'm looking at my notes.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's this idea that the condition patterns that we have and that we kind of carry with us every day, and a baseline sense of being okay or worthy that sits underneath this, these kind of map on to our idea of having these open, exposed parts of us that feel uncertain.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Again, self-awareness can feel like an open wound.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath that wound and underneath the exterior is a deeper, unshakable sense of worthiness.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And how can you tap into that?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Go past those condition patterns, train in that gap that we talked about for a minute or two with that painful point, and know that those open wounds and even that self-awareness can be a little wobbly sometimes.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Come back to your deep sense of worthiness.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you tuning in.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you got a lot out of this episode.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And just to encourage you, take these things and practice them.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's easy just to have more information coming in, but I really encourage you to get the fuel and the energy and the juice out of this.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sit down, take a few moments, put these into play this week, and let me know how they change your day or your life or your moment.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is really important because pausing and making this the advantage in our life, this is the reason why it exists is for me as a coach and a creator.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Awareness is something that's not just a personality trait, it's something we can train.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I invite you to train it.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening in today.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is Mark Walker.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Fierce Encouragement.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you have a great day or a great evening wherever you're at.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you next time on Fierce Encouragement.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.