I am grateful I get to travel a lot.
I've designed my life this way.
I have had many moments with many types of people around the world.
Be it in speaking, or working with entrepreneurs, or even mountain biking a new trail with strangers.
One of my favorite moments include walking into a business and experiencing it.
I am not talking about "getting a burger."
I am talking about experiencing the personality of the host who seats me.
I am talking about the design of the space.
The gastropub vibe. The energy. The clean lines. The facial expressions of those in the room.
The movement of the staff, the restaurant guests, the cooks in the kitchen, and those waiting to be seated.
Every business creates an experience.
My strength is in how I experience such moments in time.
Behind a business is an entrepreneur. The visionary.
The one who saw what now exists.
The one who created the vision from within.
This vision that is born of self is rooted in a combination of experiences, values, and desires.
Maybe it's a restaurant. Or a tech company. Or a marketing agency. Or another expression surfaced from the mind of the creator.
This visual is a felt visual by the creator.
Sometimes put into words, sometimes not.
Some are attracted by it, some are repelled by it.
It, this vision, business, company, or entity that grows up itself, expands and shrinks based on the entrepreneur's awareness of self.
How?
Well, what we cannot see in ourselves, we cannot see in others.
Or.
What we know how to see in ourselves, we know how to see in others.
When we are aware of this often misunderstood dynamic, we build a stronger vision, empowered by our clarity of sight.
To see how we allow, or don't allow, our character and personality within the business.
To see how we operate within the vision, and how we allow it to grow at the hands of others, or not.
To see how we show up with others, how that serves or doesn't serve, the execution of our life's work.
Self-awareness is our awareness of self, our awareness of self in relation to others, and our awareness of self in relation to this thing we call "life."
You can call it the entrepreneurial psychology.
Or, wait – how about mindset.
It is more than a combination of beliefs.
It is one's psychographic.
Whatever name it is given, what I have found to be true is that when this is understood, we humans become powerful.
We become powerful because we begin to see how we create every piece of who we are, our business, and our team culture.
When we see the connections, we can scale it.
We can make sure that our attention to detail exists beyond who we are because our teams are aligned with the vision.
We can make sure this is communicated to others not by force, but via sustainable inspiration.
Because leaders of tomorrow are building something outside of them that is born within.
And that game is best played when self-awareness exists at a powerful state and is constantly evolving.
So, how does self-awareness impact the entrepreneur?
It impacts, quite literally, everything the human experiences.
Self-awareness impacts how the entrepreneur responds, in calm and turbulent times.
Self-awareness impacts every relationship, because every relationship is rooted in our relationship with self.
Self-awareness impacts the sustainability of the vision because we are able to see how we feed or starve our creations.
Self-awareness impacts every decision, because we have clarity of intentions and are not misguided by the blind spots.
Self-awareness impacts financial success, or lack thereof, because we understand the relationship self has with money, and how that serves us or doesn't.
Self-awareness impacts how others see us, because we know what we teach others about who we are.
Self-awareness impacts our energy, and execution, because we understand how to create our energy and how that affects our execution.
Self-awareness impacts how we communicate, being clear in our intention, which is both seen and heard.
The question we are eventually left with, in seeing the surface of this idea, becomes not about "having self-awareness."
It becomes a question of whether or not we choose to look inward or whether we choose to look outward.
Despite circumstances, despite outside forces, despite the most uncomfortable or troubling of times.
The entrepreneurs with a powerful amount of self-awareness knows which ways of looking serve them.
You know it when you see it.
The freedom they live with and the impact of their being are noticed.
