My goal in working with anyone is to help them learn to empower themselves. Being empowered means being in full control of your life, and that means knowing and accepting every aspect of yourself. The first essential step in this process of empowerment is awareness: awareness of your thoughts and emotions, and most critically awareness of your feelings.

By ‘feelings’ I mean your sensations – a gripping tightness in the stomach, a flushing of the face, a tightening in the shoulders, a sudden headache, an urge to shake some part of the body, hair pulling … it can be anything and whatever it is, it’s unique to each of us.

Those feelings of yours betray your real assessment of what’s happening. For instance, walking into a meeting and feeling a sudden sinking in your stomach when you notice that one person on your team who is able to back you isn’t there. Or, walking into a basement parking lot late at night and feeling your chest tighten as you realize you are completely alone.

If you push those feelings away, you leave yourself open to some possible danger. If you pay attention to them, you can then make a choice based on what is available to you – like determining what can be said without that needed support, or taking an uber home, retrieving your car the next day.

So often, we don’t pay attention to those feelings, possibly because they aren’t in line with what we want the situation to be – we want to impress the boss, even if we aren’t prepared without support; or we want to get home, even if we feel we’re putting ourselves in possible danger.

When we do that, we are ignoring a part of ourselves, and that means we become less empowered in that moment.

Living fully means living free, and living free begins with awareness.

Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix

Quote of the Week

“Awareness is all about restoring your freedom to choose what you want instead of what your past imposes on you.”
– Deepak Chopra

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Maryanne