Authentic empowerment step one: personal awareness

Hello everyone! This is a big subject so look for a series of blog posts coming in the next few weeks on authenticity and empowerment, and how this can help you connect with others, become a positive role model, and live your true purpose.

Personal Awareness

You may have heard it 100 times before “the answer is within”, easy right? Now that you know the secret you should have no problem living your life authentically and being empowered right? Well, for most of us it is not that easy.

The best way I can describe acting from a place of self awareness is to mention it’s opposite- reactionary. Have you ever had the feeling that you were not yourself, that you reacted to something and regretted it? Do you find yourself having to lecture and explain yourself instead of just speaking your truth without blame or judgment in a confident and concise way?

Why is it that when we are seeking to be empowered and authentic, the skills that we are attempting to learn and use abandon us when we need them the most?

How many times have you left a situation that you know you did not follow your instincts- “I should have said this” or “I shouldn’t have agreed to do  ____” fill in the blank…

Why does this happen? The main reason is lack of self awareness at the time of the event. Some people refer to this as a ‘dear in the headlights’  moment or a reactionary moment. Instead of coming from a confident ‘knowing’ place we are simply re-playing old destructive patterns that do not work for us or bring us closer to being authentic. We lack the tools to respond because we are not in touch with our intentions, emotions, and/or our core beliefs and interpretations.

We all begin this life expressing our needs without a problem. Babies do not explain themselves, if they need something they let us know in no uncertain terms- they cry when they need to be fed or changed, and they don’t ask permission or make apologies.

The other day my four year old daughter Ella made me so proud I cried. To give a little background, up until a few months ago Ella was communicating mainly by sign language. She just began answering yes and no questions, as well as speaking in conversational sentences a few months ago.

Someone (I won’t mention names due to privacy reasons) said  to her “well you don’t have a choice” Ella’s reply was “yes, I do have a choice”. WOW! She did not need me to dive in and rescue her, that was the best response I have ever heard! Ella has not been conditioned to please others yet, she is coming from a place of 100% integrity (oh to be able to start out fresh at four years old!).

At some point from when we are a baby to when we are adults we learn to manipulate, distort, deny, repress, and lie to others and ourselves about our true selves and our true feelings, and slowly we loose our true selves in the process. We are conditioned to do this by society, our family, and others. We follow along to simply survive.

By the time it is our turn to be parents we can completely forget who we truly are, we have spent so much time pleasing and conforming in order to survive or fit in we lost our true selves somewhere along the way.

Most of us know what we don’t want, but how many of us, without a doubt, know what we DO truly want? If we begin to get a feeling for what we want (or the direction we want to go to follow our true purpose), our first reaction may be to ask our peers what they think, or do research.

Here is the problem, even though you may find no shortage of ‘good’ or ‘right’ advice from others (this includes books, the net, and seminars)- they really can’t truly know what is best for you! Only you know your true purpose and the only way your are going to find it is by true self awareness. Sure you can use tools to help you get there, but in the end it is up to you to follow your inner voice.

Thales of Milet, a philosopher in the sixth century B.C was asked ” What is the most difficult of all things?” he replied “To know yourself” when asked “What is the easiest in life?” his response was “Giving others good advice.”

Back to choice: The fact is we do have a choice weather or not we act from a place of self awareness or not. Some of the things that get in the way of this are:

1. Societies values: For the most part our society is about spending and consuming- this does not encourage self awareness.

2. Time: It seems that here in the USA many of us fill our schedule and don’t make enough time for self growth. We are burned out. We continue to live life on auto pilot.

3. Approval seeking: Instead of acting from a place of authenticity, we wish to seek approval from others (this is mainly ego/ fear driven).

In the next post I will talk more about self awareness as well as give you some tools you can use to incorporate living from a place of self awareness in your everyday life (even when your buttons are pushed!).

These tools will help you to communicate with others better, and you will discover your true values and priorities so you can move toward the direction of living your true purpose. If you are reacting out of anger or fear and this is having a negative impact on your life, we will discuss how you can recognize your needs as well as learn to recognize and transform destructive patterns so you can come from a place of authenticity and empowerment.

In the meantime I want to mention this is not about being perfect! Everyone is reactionary from time to time, this is truly a process. In fact when you truly know yourself and your intentions you are a lot more likely to let go of control and be much more compassionate with yourself and others.

You learn to trust yourself and with trust comes understanding. The first step is awareness – you can recognize you ‘blew it’ and learn from it so you can hopefully do better next time around. Slowly but surely you can start to become more present, and choose your responses to others based on your TRUE feelings not old dysfunctional patterns you have been repeating.  There is no such thing as failure – only learning.

Where are you at when it comes to self awareness? I honor your responses/ comments and would love to hear from you!

Courage allows the successful woman to fail-
and learn powerful lessons-
from the failure-
so that in the end,
she didn’t fail at all.
– Maya Angelou

Resource: High-Impact communication skills with Susan Baile Volume 1 1992

Related articles

• Authenticity (psychologytoday.com)
• Mike Robbins: Seeing Adversity As Happening for Us, Not to Us (huffingtonpost.com)
• Integrity Right to the Core (LearnThis.ca)
• Self Confidence – 10 Simple Things You Can Do Now to Become More Empowered Tomorrow (socyberty.com)

Tags: angie goodloe, apreciation, aspirations, Authentic, authentic happiness, authentic self, authentically, authenticity, balance, calling, center for nonviolent communication, communicate, communication connection, community, companionship, compassion, confidence, conscious mothering, conscious parenting, conversation, embarrassment, extreme reactions, false belief, family, family members, intuition, present moment, time, voice