[Free Downloads: Therapeutic Journal + Guided Meditations]

Self-awareness is this month’s theme! To know thyself is hands-down the most effective way to navigate life. This month, I’m offering you tips and tools (Therapeutic Journal Download and Guided Meditation) to get the most out of your self-awareness journey!

Obviously, you aren’t the same person in 4th grade as you are after welcoming your first baby into the world or breaking up with a dysfunctional partner.

Both small and big life events can affect us in various ways. No two people respond the same to the same events. If we don’t practice self-awareness, we can find ourselves stuck with old habits and limited or outdated beliefs.

Then there’s tragedy, trauma, illness/injury, etc. – that we must adjust for. Periods of deeper self-exploration, inner work as well as everyday reflections, becomes necessary.

Another strong argument for self-awareness is understanding that how you relate to yourself, impacts how you’ll relate to others + your relationships. If we don’t understand ourselves, it will be difficult to understand and communicate with other people, raise healthy children, and have good relationships.

[Here’s a Link to my article on Self-Awareness in Relationships: Relationship Red Flag: Does Your Partner Lack Self-Awareness? ]

Self-awareness is a form of inner (Intrapersonal) communication, and when that channel is clear, Interpersonal communication involving others, becomes easier. Basically when we know ourselves, we navigate the world around us a little more optimally.

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In this Newsletter: 

• Therapeutic Journal- Download
• New Guided Meditation
• Self awareness Tips and Practices

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If you’re stuck or not getting the results you want, chances are there’s a part of the self-awareness process you’re missing.

3 step process for Self-Awareness: 

1. Discover: This step involves observation, noting, and detecting patterns. Noticing your reactions, actions, obstacles, thoughts, patterns, habits, and the outcomes or consequences of them. This step is the “what” stage. What are you doing, thinking, saying, feeling? You can be vigilant about this for a week, keep a journal, and discover a lot! 95% of our thoughts and actions are repeated day after day so it won’t be long before you pick up on some patterns.
2. Understand: This is the “why” stage, understanding why you do something is key. When you know what you do, next you’ll want to find out why. Sometimes this is asking yourself tough questions, getting help from a Coach or Therapist, perhaps reviewing when you first formed a bad habit or reactions and what was going on in your life, what event had an impact on you? Who was influencing you at the time? Tough questions help you  identify the root causes.
3. Choose: When we observe and discover things, then understand why we may be doing the things we do, it gives us the opportunity to choose what we do, say, think, feel, etc; to choose differently than what we’ve always done. Taking leadership of what we do, say, think, feel, gives us a sense of empowerment. When you feel like you’re making purposeful choices, you boost your sense of self-efficacy- belief in your personal power. You choose how you show up in life! Visualization can make future choices easier too. Imagine how you’ll respond, think, or behave, beforehand.

Self-Awareness Practices:

So what are some things you can do to increase self-awareness in a way that leads to positive change in your life?

Journaling is a great way to discover more about yourself, your triggers, your habits and what’s important to you.

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DOWNLOAD Your FREE Therapeutic Journal >>> Inspired Meditations Therapeutic Journal 2021

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There’s something about seeing it on paper that makes it more tangible.

I fought journaling for the longest time but a couple years ago I was doing a lot of purposeful generational healing and processing past trauma plus managing grief and journaling was my life-saver!

[ In this prior blog post, I go into journaling more: 6 Subconscious Journaling Techniques ]

Another aspect of journaling for self-awareness, is dream journaling. Dreams are the window into your subconscious. They speak to us through symbolism and synchronicities.

Recently I purchased a separate dream journal because it’s much easier to see patterns, themes, and symbols of my dreams when it’s all collected in one place rather than scattered throughout a regular journal.

On the front side of the page, I write my dream and any details I can remember. On the back, I write my own personal interpretation and notes on how I felt in the dream as well as what it means to me or any synchronicities that connect my dream to my waking life.

Let me tell you, I’ve had some pivotal aha’s!

I also discovered that keeping a dream journal led to having more dreams or remembering my dreams better. In a way, my subconscious now knows I’m listening so it’s more willing to give me messages.

[ Here’s a blog post about interpreting your dreams: The Subconscious Language of Dreams ]

Intuition is a form of self-awareness too.

Intuition involves more than critical thinking alone- it incorporates the feeling/sensing (mind-body connection). It’s like self-awareness that connects the mind and body. Additionally, if you have a higher self or higher power, you can complete the mind-body-spirit connection. There’s nothing more powerful than when you have all systems on board!

First, you need to know up front if you’ve been operating “all up in your head” a lot. Detachment from the mind-body connection is more common if:

• you have an illness or injury (“my body let me down”)
• trauma (“my body didn’t protect me”)
• you tend to be analytical (“my body doesn’t speak to me”).

These are all forms of self-betrayal. I understand this all too well!

Also, it’s easy to get stuck in your head and distracted by busy-ness and all the external stimulation around us nowadays. Decisions from a place of inner knowing are more difficult than ever. We are bombarded with messages and stimulation all around us.

Making the intuitive process, a practice:

• you can involve guides, God, universe, and/or higher self, through energy, prayer, and meditation. What would your higher self do?
• checking in with yourself consistently throughout the day:

What am I feeling right now?

What do I want to do right now, and how do I know?

• identifying and honoring how you’re feeling in any given moment. Listen to yourself!
• get curious about how emotions show up in your body. Next time you’re emotional, sense how it affects your body. What are your physical sensations in certain situations? Around certain people?

Mostly it’s about whatever helps you listen to yourself despite the noise from the external world around you. In my FREE Therapeutic Journal Download, there’s a prompt for understanding what your internal “yes” and “no” is.

The more you listen + respond to this inner wisdom, the more it will speak through you.

Start with noticing how small decisions and reactions affect your body then build up to enhance your intuition. Intuition will feel expansive while the analytical ego mind will feel constrictive. Or if you catch yourself overthinking, close your eyes and go within to check in with your body and other sensations.

Meditation and Mindfulness is the art of creating a relationship with yourself. This is a great practice for self-awareness!

Meditation and mindfulness, I like to say, are the anecdote to the effects of a busy/rushed/hectic lifestyle. These are practices that help you slow down and simply pay attention to yourself in relation to everything else going on. We take in a lot throughout our day, but how much of it do we actually process? This lack of “processing” leads to stress, distraction, and burn out.

Meditation increases your ability to perceive your inner world, and yourself, in a more healthy way, like holding space for yourself. When I first began, it was an act of care and a way that I proved to myself that I will always show up for myself! If others let me down, I vow not to let myself down.

Mindfulness (paying attention on purpose to the present moment), decreases activation in the brain where rumination occurs. Mindfulness can take you out of that loop.

If you’re purposefully practicing self awareness, a mindfulness practice like loving-kindness can help you view yourself in a non-judgmental way. This way you don’t get stuck in a rumination cycle of “why me…why did I do that…why did they do that…”?

You can use Guided Imagery for self-discoveries, like this month’s free meditation, below.

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New FREE Guided Meditation >>> The Carousel of Life: Identify and Heal What You Need to

(A Guided Journey that identifies, within your subconscious, a point in time that you still need some healing to take place so that you can move forward.)

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Related Meditations for Self-Awareness + Healing: 

Higher Self

Past Life Regression Meditation

Healing the past

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Beliefs are also keys to your inner world. You may be aware of some of your beliefs such as your religious beliefs or cultural and societal beliefs, but other personal beliefs about relationships, money, jobs, etc. reside within your subconscious, maybe unknowingly.

So how do you become more aware of your beliefs and the role they play in your life?

Your beliefs show up in your life as your expectations. How you expect certain things to turn out, tells a lot about your beliefs about those things.

There was a show I used to watch, The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. He trained troubled dogs that seemed like impossible cases, sometimes dangerous.

In one episode it was mentioned that statistically speaking, he should’ve been bit a lot more than he has. He explained that the difference between being bit by a dog or not, was all in how he expected the situation to go.

Expectation of how the situation will go before it occurs is the key to what kind of beliefs you have, and these beliefs often alter outcomes too.

If your morning begins with spilled coffee and a stubbed toe, do you expect the rest of your day to be similar? Or despite your bad morning, do you have a good outlook on the rest of the day? This is an example of your beliefs about how much control you have over your life (internal versus external locus of control).

Everything we do, we have some sort of expectation beforehand and that reflects your beliefs. Beliefs influence > our expectations and our expectations influence > outcomes.

Awareness of your expectations about something can help you discover what your subconscious beliefs are, for every area of your life.

Then ask yourself, why you expect something to go a certain way (good or bad?)? When did this belief first show up in your life? Who taught you/told you this?

If you answer: ‘Because it’s always been this way...’ Nope! Everything has a beginning. Ask again, why you expect something to turn out a certain way.

Expectations are conscious expressions of your subconscious beliefs. And beliefs are powerful indicators of how you navigate your life. Understand your beliefs and you have deep awareness about yourself plus an element of control over outcomes.

A deeper awareness can often be enough to resolve an inner conflict and move beyond it.

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DOWNLOAD your FREE Therapeutic Journal

NEW MEDITATION: Carousel of Life (Self-Healing)

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🍂🍁🍂 Have a beautiful October! 🍂🍁🍂

Peace and Be Well,

Laura