Episode 26 - Seasons of Awareness
Episode 26 - Seasons of Awareness
Welcome to the Seasons of Joy Podcast. This is episode 26 - Seasons of Awareness.
I want to take a minute to invite you to my Facebook Live in my Seasons of Joy Community Group. I am going live on Thursday, September 8th at 12 pm. When you join this community, you get access to me live. I will be talking about the power of awareness as a follow up to this podcast. I will be answering questions and coaching live for anyone that is interested. To participate you just need to join my Seasons of Joy Community Facebook page. The link to join is in the show notes.
Also, just a reminder of my An Awakening Retreat this is going to be held October 6-8th in Garden City, Utah next to the beautiful Bear Lake. This is an opportunity for women of faith to gather together to refocus, reconnect and rejuvenate. We will take the tools and I teach and really dive in and apply them to your life. There is going to also be mindfulness meditation and yoga to strengthen your connection with yourself and God. I am so excited for this retreat. I have participated in many retreats and I have always wanted to host some myself. It is going to be amazing. It is not too late to sign up! Just go to the link in the show notes to learn more and to register.
Now to the Seasons of Awareness.
Applying the coaching tools I teach to yourself is one of the most challenging things that comes with self-coaching but by doing so you can create wanted change in your life. If you have listened to me, you know that I teach the model which was developed by Brooke Castillo at the Life Coach School. CTFAR - Circumstance, Thought, Feeling, Action and Result.
It begins with discovery and then leads to awareness. In episode 8 of my podcast, I talk about the Season of Discovery. This can include a tool I teach all my clients, the thought download. This allows you to get all of your thoughts out of your head and onto paper. This discovery process is so valuable because thoughts can be “slippery”. You may have thoughts like my daughter-in-law hates me,” but you may also have a thought like, “but she has some hard things going on right now.” So if you can put your thoughts on paper and not edit yourself or hide from the ones you really want to look at.
If you go to the link in the show notes you will find a freebie that I have put together to walk you through the Self-Coaching Process I use. There is a short video and a summary pdf for your reference as you begin this work. The goal is to pick one thing, discover one thing that you would like to gain some awareness around.
When I talk about awareness, this includes no judgment. This is when you are open and curious. It requires that you be neutral about all of it. We are just taking a look at what is going on for you. Again, without judgment. You have perfectly good reasons for everything you are thinking, feeling, and doing. When you can really look with curiosity and openness, you can actually decide with more authority if or when you want to create change in your life.
The purpose of the model is self-awareness. Awareness of things happening outside of us is actually pretty easy. We are aware of events that are going on around us or the way other people are behaving. It is so easy for us to see that what we believe should be different than it is. However, as humans, we are not very good at self-awareness. Slowing down and putting things into models gives us two types of self-awareness.
First, Internal Self-Awareness.
Internal self-awareness comes from our thoughts and feelings. This requires us to look at a specific situation or circumstance. It can be tempting to look at a broad situation or circumstance like “I have a sister.” But this doesn’t help you gain the level of self-awareness that you want. Instead choose something very narrow, such as “My sister said, ‘You make everything about you.’” Then as you fill in your model, your T & F lines will show you what was happening for you internally when this neutral C happened. You may have a thought like “I can’t believe she said that.” This thought may create an emotion of hurt. You are experiencing this internally.
Second, External Self-Awareness
External self-awareness comes from your actions and results, or the A and R lines. This is where you get curious and observe who you become, how you show up and what you are creating for yourself externally when you are operating from what you discovered was happening for you internally. In the sister example, you will look at what is happening for you when you are operating out of hurt. You may withdraw, over apologize, spin on the situation where she said this, you may judge her for what she said, or you may speak unkindly about her to your husband. You are actually making it about you. You are believing that you feel hurt because of your sister.
Many people are tempted to just focus on the C, T, and F lines of a model. This isn’t wrong and it can be a good place to start your awareness. Others jump to a new model so they can hurry and find a better-feeling thought. Again, this isn’t wrong but it is not as effective and doesn’t give you the awareness that will help you. It is robbing you of the experience of seeing all of the parts of yourself and really understanding the power of the actions and results they are creating in your life. By completing a full model, you can really observe the entire picture.
It is like climbing a mountain. As we get to the top of the mountain we can gain greater perspective. We get a vision of the bigger picture. This is what coaching can do for you.
In the example of the sister, you may look at this model and continue to believe that it is your sister's fault that you are feeling hurt. You can totally stay there, but is it creating what you really want in your life? If you stay there, you are losing an opportunity to gain more self-awareness and create change.
Spending time trying to understand your mind - looking at thoughts, seeing the feelings they create and the actions that you are taking because of those feelings - can be overwhelming and a little mind-blowing. You are now seeing the positive and negative results in your life because of what you are thinking.
However, what I see happen for people when they start using the model they can become critical of themselves. They are frustrated because they have so many negative thoughts. Seeing that they are creating their life experience as it is, can be discouraging.
In the example of the sister, you may understand that it isn’t your sister that is causing you to feel hurt. You intellectually understand that it is your thought that she shouldn’t have said that thing that is actually causing you to feel hurt. However, understanding this isn’t enough. Because, as humans, we like to find blame. If it isn’t your sister’s fault then it must be your fault. There must be something wrong with you and you are flawed in some way for her to do that. This isn’t giving you any self-awareness, just self-judgment.
Instead of finding blame for either party, what if you could get curious and question everything that is not a circumstance. Questioning your thoughts is so powerful. This invites curiosity and compassion. Questions like:
What if I am wrong about all of it?
What would it be like to not think about this?
What would I be thinking if this was not a problem?
How might the opposite be true?
What else do I believe?
How do I want to feel about this?
What do I want my actions to look like?
What result do I want to create?
What will be different about me when I solve this problem?
What would my future self tell me?
What feels most like love? For everyone in the story.
As you begin your self-awareness journey, as you go through the process of unlayering your mind, you may find things you don’t like, things in your brain that you don’t enjoy. And that is okay. This is not a bad thing. You are not bad or wrong because of them. You are human. What I want to suggest to you is to just be curious and compassionate in your season of awareness. When you start understanding your mind, you may not like what is happening there, but it is a beautiful thing. It means that there is so much potential for you to change your feelings, change what you are doing in your life, and change your results. It can actually be exciting!
Change is created by you and it is created with love, not judgment.
I want to share 3 tips with you to help you as you practice curious and compassionate self-awareness.
Slow down. Don't be in a hurry to change what is going on for you. Until you can identify patterns, understand why you are doing what you are doing, understand the thoughts you are choosing in a deep, compassionate, and observing way, it doesn’t usually help to think a new happy thought all of a sudden. Pause, get curious, and observe. Notice. Ask questions. So often we want to be in a hurry. I have talked about this before but this comes from fear. Fear is always in a hurry. We are afraid something is wrong with us or with our lives. We want to hurry and change it so we can feel better. But I invite you to slow down and learn about you.
Embrace your humanness. I am not suggesting that you find excuses and just say well that is just how I am and throw all progress out the window. I mean that understanding and expecting that you will be human will allow for greater awareness instead of judgment. I had one coach describe it this way. Think of a GPS. When you are trying to find how to get where you want to go, you have to know where you are. Sometimes, on the journey we take a wrong turn and the GPS has to recalibrate. Becoming more self-aware allows you to see where you are so that you can make adjustments to your route to where you want to go. Also, part of being human means you are going to face opposition and contrast to life. This is part of life. Nothing has gone wrong. Accepting the 50/50 of life actually allows you to live your life to the fullest. Understanding that sometimes things don’t work out like you thought they would or that you don’t always show up as the person you want to be. Again, we just recalibrate and take the next best step.
Practice giving yourself grace. I have a tool I like to use as I work on giving myself more grace. It helps me progress towards growth and change from a place of love and acceptance. There are 3 levels.
The first level is stating what I did that I don’t like and then adding and that’s okay. For example, let’s use overeating as an example. I could have eaten more than I wanted the day before. Without showing myself grace, I may say something like “I can’t believe I overate yesterday, I am so stupid. I will never lose weight.” My guess is that you have had a thought like this. Know that there is nothing wrong with you. It is normal. Our brain is looking for what is wrong. However, as you work towards inviting more grace into your life, you may say, “I can’t believe I over ate yesterday and that’s okay.” It really is okay. You notice and observe and then accept what is in order to do something different. This is where you can get curious and ask questions. Why did you overeat? What was going on for you? What were you feeling? Knowing that nothing hasn’t gone wrong and not beating yourself up will help you recalibrate and get back on track to where you want to go.
The second level is stating what I did that I don’t like and then adding I love me anyway. “I overate yesterday and I love me anyway.” Again, acceptance but also adding love. I have said this many times. You can’t hate yourself enough to change. Love is always the answer and motivator. Even though I overate I still love and accept myself.
And the third level, is to just drop the anyway. This may seem like just a little adjustment but it is so powerful. We don’t have to love ourselves despite the things we do that we want to change. Just drop the anyway. “I overate and I love myself.” It isn’t one or the other. It isn’t one in spite of the other. “I overate AND I love myself.” I am lovable. I am worthy and valuable. The end. I do things I want to change but my love of self is not contingent on whether I make those changes or not. You may be thinking, then what is the point of changing? It is because we can! We were designed to but that does not affect our worth or lovability.
So I invite you to consider the following questions as you are on your journey of self-awareness.
What if you are right on track?
Is it possible you are right where you need to be in order to create something beautiful with your life?
What if the better you get at becoming more self-aware the better you get at accessing God’s grace?
What if your increased self-awareness allows you to find healing in your stories?
What would your life be like if you could be more curious and compassionate with yourself through your self-awareness?
The problems and burdens that you have been carrying do not have to be yours alone. My belief is that as we become more self-aware the better able we are to give our burdens to the Lord, enabling us to find solutions and to live life to the fullest. Allowing us to create joyful connections with ourselves and our loved ones.
If you want to learn more about self-awareness, I invite you to join my Seasons of Joy Community Facebook Group. I am actually going live this Thursday at 12 pm. MDT. The link to join is in my show notes.
Have a joyful week!!
Click on the link below to learn more about Seasons Coaching, Seasons of Joy Community Facebook Group as well as the An Awakening Retreat coming up in October.
