How to increase your Self-Awareness

Here's the problem, you've been reading all the self-help books or going to therapy and you're just not sure how to put your theoretical knowledge into embodied action. 

Through your current inner work, you've learnt for example that some of your wounds in adult relationships stem from difficult times in childhood or strained relationships with your parents...

Great, it's good to know this and get clarity, but you think... wellll, what next? How do I begin to heal these wounds?

The next step is to increase your self-awareness. 

With self-awareness;

1. You increase your capacity to notice when your childhood wounds are being triggered. 

2. Then, you catch the moment where you can implement some of the self-soothing or nervous system regulation tools you've been taught.

3. That leads you to be able to change your response in the moment. 

This is a 10 second process broken down into three steps. 

Normally, it's such a quick process that most of us just go from trigger to reaction having no idea what happened in between.

Self-awareness grants you the moment and the chance to implement what you've learnt in therapy and reading.

You need to grant yourself that opportunity to practice the knowledge.

Just knowing it and not acting on it won't help much.

When you increase your self-awareness you gift yourself power and control over your responses and the chance to practice what you've learnt on your healing journey.

You get to CHOOSE and make significant changes in your life.

To integrate and implement what you've learnt in therapy or through self-healing or study, you need to put the lessons to practice- over and over again.

Self-awareness gives you the chance to practice.

So how to increase self-awareness......

• Journal - when you journal and keep record of triggers, life events, progress, changes etc. you are naturally building your awareness of these. 

• Therapy - similar to journaling, talking out your challenges helps you see different perspectives and bring things to your awareness that were absent before.

• Introspection questions - these questions are geared towards helping you get to know yourself better thus, directly helping you grow in self-knowledge and awareness.

  • Get this introspection guide of mine - free

• Practice mindfulness - mindfulness is being aware in the present moment. This is a key ingredient in self-awareness because if you aren't present in those moments, you won't be aware of what's happening or have the control to make changes.

• Self-development programs - similar to therapy, self-development programs help you uncover things about yourself that you may not have been aware of before. On top of that, most self-development programs offer more direct psychoeducation to teach you tools and skills to help you implement the changes you want to see. 

Click the links above to get resources to help with each one of these steps and begin increasing your self-awareness today.

If you're interested in a self-development program, I invite you to check out my 8 week, online, group transformation program - The Alchemical Passage.

In it, I draw on the tools and teachings of mindfulness, psychotherapy, spirituality, Cognitive Behavioral therapy, self-compassion and more to guide you towards the changes you want to see in your life. 

LEARN MORE

In this 8 week, online course we cover 6 of the most common themes that arise in therapy: 

1. Emotional intelligence and resilience.

2. Old, limiting and false beliefs.

3. Relational, childhood wounds.

4. The inner critic and self-compassion

5. True Self alignment and worth

6. Personal growth, manifestation and self-care goals. 

I integrate mindfulness specifically, to help us build self-awareness.

Plus, all the lessons and practices will help you to integrate these therapeutic themes into your day to day life.

If you're feeling lost as to how to integrate the self-help learnings you've already got, this is for you! 

Take a look.