How do you transform yourself and your life?
The answer is simple. My belief is that self awareness + self appreciation = transformation. This is the exact model I use to help clients achieve meaningful change in their lives.
So what does this mean? Let’s break it down.
Self – awareness is the awareness and knowledge of who we are, what we want, and what beliefs, motives, fears, etc. influence our behaviors and decisions. Self – awareness is the first step to transformation because it enables us to pinpoint those aspects of ourselves that are causing the thing we want to change. Now, there’s this whole other part of us that is outside of our conscious awareness that also influences our behaviors and decisions. That’s why it is so critical to enhance our self – awareness and bring new knowledge about ourselves to the forefront. It is also common that who we think we are and what we think we want is misaligned with our true selves. I often say that life has conditioned us from the time we are young children to suppress our true selves. As a result, as we get older we don’t know who we really are. To that end, self – awareness isn’t just understanding who we are on the surface. It’s digging deeper to reach into the real us and the subconscious aspects of ourselves that need to shift into our conscious awareness. It is then that we are able to position ourselves for a breakthrough transformation.
The second part of this equation is self appreciation. This is where we accept who we are even though we have goals to transform certain aspects of our lives. This is also where confidence and esteem come into play. We can have a really solid understanding of who we are but without acceptance and confidence we won’t implement any changes. If you know where you want to go, but you don’t believe you can make it there your feet won’t move. This reminds me of a time I was driving down a flooded street. I knew I had to get off the road, but I was so unsure of what side street to take to get me home safely. I ended up pulling off to the side of the road. Of course, in this case it’s better safe that sorry, but without self appreciation and confidence you end up like I did on that day. On the side of the road. Waiting. You can’t reach a transformation just waiting around.
There you have it. Self – awareness and self appreciation are the key ingredients to transformation. Where do you need a little enhancement? Do you need to improve your self – awareness? Or does your self appreciation need enhancement? What are you willing to do to get there?