Imagine with me.
Imagine you are on a boat for the first time out at sea.
You find yourself holding onto the nearest railing for a journey.
You're deep sea fishing, with good friends, on a boat big enough to hold 20 people.
You feel the brisk ocean wind in your hair and on your face.
Your nose begins to become cold.
You can smell the fresh ocean water as the mist dances on your face.
You hear the waves crashing and the low humming from the boat's engine.
As you focus on the inner surroundings of the boat, you find yourself captivated by the construction.
You find yourself noticing the small details.
The way the windows are built. The texture on the floors to avoid slipping. The aged wood used as a bench.
Then, you feel something in your stomach quickly approaching.
Suddenly, you start to feel seasickness.
One of your friends looks at you and quickly catches on.
Promptly, you are advised to concentrate on the horizon.
"The horizon will steady you," your friend says, loud enough for you to hear over the talkative waves.
What happened here?
What you experienced is rather common.
Seasickness, or motion sickness, occurs when the brain receives conflicting signals. As you were looking at the insides of the boat, which was relatively still, your body was sending signals of movement. This disagreement between what you're seeing and what you're feeling causes the body to go into a state of alarm. This state stops one of the most complex systems in the body, the digestion process.
The solution, looking at the horizon, allows the body and mind to synchronize. The point of reference changes from the inside of the boat to the fixed position of the earth.
This fixed reference grounds you.
How does this relate to self-awareness?
When our experience of life does not match our expected experience, a gap is created.
Within this gap can live our pain and suffering.
We can experience pain because we're not self-aware to see the gap we're creating for ourselves.
As an example, I'm reminded by a common entrepreneurial story I hear. An expectation that entrepreneurship is the answer to freedom. That entrepreneurship is the path that is desired. But when an entrepreneur gets set in motion, a gap is created between the way they thought it would be versus the way it is. In this gap is the pain and suffering and difficulty that most entrepreneurs speak of.
But let's be clear, difficulty is not the truth I speak of.
The truth I speak of involves a foundation. It involves grounding.
The same disagreement between what is seen and felt, which causes seasickness, is the same "suffering" and "difficulty" that I hear most entrepreneurs speak of.
Listen, I'm not saying entrepreneurship is easy. What I am saying is there are powerful ways to experience entrepreneurship.
The answer lives in the sum of strong constructs and self-awareness.
That's all.
I see often, with entrepreneurs and creatives, a lack of grounding. This is often what initially supports an entrepreneur in their business. Internal disagreement supports the quest of uncertainty. It works, until we get in our own way. I've seen this pattern played out often. This is why self-awareness is powerful.
I'm not saying this to be critical or judgmental. I'm saying this to share my truth. I write these words not from afar, but because of what I have learned to see in myself.
Use self-awareness to create who you are
When you can ground your experience of life on who you are, you can create the strong foundation that supports you.
I didn’t understand this concept of “who I am” prior to creating myself.
The more I slowed down to define my values, my beliefs, my purpose, and who I am, the more I am able to find grounding in who I am.
Prior to this process, I lacked the self-awareness to fully understand this concept. I even avoided it because I didn’t understand it. Maybe it was uncomfortable.
I continue to invest in myself because I realize I can only take my clients as far as I’ve taken myself.
One question I like to ask myself is, “What do I get from this?”
This can be a number of things.
For me, in the past, the questions look like this:
What do I get out of posting a status update on Facebook?
What do I get out of thinking so much?
What do I get out of being an entrepreneur?
What do I get out of indecision?
What do I get out of being “busy”?
What do I get out of avoiding certain areas of my life?
What do I get out of not listening to the voice within?
What do I get out of perfectionism?
What do I get out of certainty?
I can go on, and on, and on, with these questions.
These questions connect me to the power that fuels me.
Be aware, this is not the same as asking ourselves “why” questions.
“Why do I do this?”
Why takes us into the past. When I asked myself “why” too often, that kept me in the past, not in possibility for the future.
“What do I get from this” connects me to what is. It connects me to what is real in the present moment.
This question we can ask ourselves is as profound as we make it.
For example, this question: “What do I get out of perfectionism?”
I can answer, “Because I want to do great work.”
The end.
No further clarity.
No further insight, or inner sight.
Or, I can slow down, pause, and powerfully reflect on such a question.
What else?
My answer could be, “I want to be perfect because I want to be identified with perfect.”
And then?
Well, I can answer, “Because when I am perfect, I am worthy of connection with others.”
This is an answer that has been true for me in my life.
And that’s HX Works at work. I believe the human experience (HX) is about connection.
When I dig on these questions, both with myself and my clients on powerful introspective calls, the answers are always similar.
Avoidance of discomfort.
Fear of not being enough.
Fear of threatening identity.
It is possible to reconstruct our life in a way that gives us power and stabilizes us.
These are all constructs that we've labeled as our reality.
As bricks can be used in the construction of a home, so can strong constructs for our mental home.
The question is, will you have the courage to create the profound answers that can support you best?
I guess only you can answer that.
Want to dive deeper into self-awareness? Read this.
