Self-awareness is the key to living a mindful life where we stop living on autopilot!
The problem is that when we are on autopilot for long, we don’t even realize we’re on autopilot. Because when we’re not aware of our own habits, routines, impulses, and reactions, we no longer control them — they control us.
This affects everything in your life! How you process stress, what you can achieve, and your overall happiness & health levels.
As a Mindfulness Practitioner and Mindset Life Coach, I have discovered the 3 secret connections that affect our self-awareness in every way. Keep reading to discover these elements for yourself so you can begin to make a positive shift in your consciousness.
The Problem
Self-awareness is the building block needed to become emotionally intelligent.
Emotional intelligence or EQ gives you many gifts in life. It helps you manage your emotions, overcome adversity, and create more quality relationships in your life.
Many scientists, including Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, argue that a person’s EQ is even more important than their Intellectual intelligence, or IQ.
This is mainly because people who lack EQ or emotional intelligence suffer in ways that are much more impactful on their lives.
They tend to have low self-esteem and poor relationships and struggle with their mental health.
On the other hand, people who discover the 3 secret connections that develop self-awareness experience just the opposite!
- They understand themselves better, which leads to higher levels of self-esteem and self-love.
- They can self-regulate stress and emotions, which leads to better mental health.
- They create empathy for others, which leads to a higher level of quality relationships.
Overall, developing emotional intelligence leads to a higher level of happiness in all areas of their life. And it all starts with self-awareness.
But What Exactly Ιs Self-Awareness?
The Oxford Dictionary defines “Self-Awareness” as the conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.
It is your ability to become mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and actions so you can evaluate and manage yourself much better than one who lacks this quality.
Being self-aware is a major conscious shift in your life. It is a practice that helps you become more mindful of the way your mind works with your body so you can create optimal health and well-being.
Self-awareness lives at the core of who you are. It radiates an energy that lives on a cellular level in your body and affects everything about your life.
It is the connections that we create inside our bodies and the understanding of how they relate to each other.
In order to start this journey, you need to understand these 3 secret connections to developing self-awareness.
3 Connections Τhat Develop Self-Awareness
1. THE MIND/BODY CONNECTION
Your mind/body connection is the first real source of becoming self-aware.
This is where your emotions live.
This connection is important because it explains how your mind and body speak to each other. Basically, your mind creates thoughts, which lead to feelings. These, in turn, internalize in your mind through emotions. This emotional energy affects your health in every way.
Think of how your body is affected by stress. Constantly living in a state of anxiousness and stress can create headaches, muscle pain, stomach aches, and even bigger problems like high blood pressure.
Since it’s your mind that consumes and responds to stress, your mind influences your body’s wellbeing in every way.
The University of Michigan’s Health summarizes the mind-body connection like this:
“Your brain produces substances that can improve your health. These substances include endorphins, which are natural pain killers, and gamma globulin, which strengthens your immune system.”
Their research also shows that our brains produce these substances based in part on our thoughts, feelings, and expectations.
In other words, your positive attitude can lead to the release of healing properties much faster than those who believe they are sick and will never get better.
The first step to making a change in your mind-body connection is to become aware of this connection and take control over your thoughts and feelings.
To achieve this, you need to practice a mindful lifestyle every day and learn how to become emotionally resilient in the face of adversity. This mental strength will help you to overcome stress and tough life situations with ease.
But in order to truly experience this, you need to learn the second secret connection of self-awareness.
2. THE MIND/SPIRIT CONNECTION
The next connection you need to know about to become self-aware is the mind/spirit connection.
This is where your subconscious lives.
This connection illustrates beautifully how your mind and spirit affect each other. Our soul is known as the non-physical part of us. It’s our energetic piece in which consciousness lives. Your spirit is the energy that drives you!
Energy is everything in this world. And your internal energy is sourced from all things that have occurred in your life. All your beliefs, traumas, and memories that live in your subconscious mind affect your spiritual wellbeing.
Your spirituality can mean so many things! It can be your religious beliefs or your connectedness to any higher life form or source of energy. It can be the meaning or purpose you have placed in your life and will affect many key aspects of your health.
So, what influences this spiritual wellbeing? Your mind!
The mind/spirit connection in essence is how your mind, through thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, affects your spiritual wellbeing. Your thoughts and feelings are always talking to your subconscious mind… And your subconscious mind is always listening. It is waiting, listening to, and learning everything you think and feel.
The cells of your body are always responding to your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. They become trained by your emotional and mental thought patterns and thus can be trained to new patterns if you want them to.
These cellular memories within your subconscious form your beliefs and drive your emotions. And it’s through these emotions that your behaviors manifest.
Creating self-awareness of how your subconscious mind is being shaped every day gives you a huge advantage in life. It motivates you to stop living a life on autopilot and start living more intentionally.
If you do not, you will keep creating memories in your subconscious that do NOT support your spiritual wellbeing. But to truly become self-aware, you must become conscious of the last secret, the spirit/body connection.
3. THE SPIRIT/BODY CONNECTION
The last connection you need to create true self-awareness is your spirit/body connection.
This is where your Qi or Chi ENERGY (both terms are used), or universal life force, lives.
In traditional Chinese medicine, Chi is the energy current that lives inside the body. It’s known in many cultures as our life force that keeps our bodies balanced. Much like blood flowing through your veins, your chi energy is said to flow through your body on pathways called meridians.
Jason Wells, ND, LAc, a naturopathic physician and acupuncturist at Reconstructed Wellness in Portland, Oregon, explains the spirit/body connection like this:
“The proper movement of both qi and blood through the body creates health and harmony in the human being. The Chinese viewed qi as both an essential energy unit that could be obtained from food, but also a gas or pressure that promotes movement in the body.”
Basically, your chi energy not only supports your blood flow to your organs, supporting new cell development and self-healing, but it also helps your body operate at an optimal level.
When these pathways become blocked, your body experiences an imbalance. As a result, sickness can occur in the body.
This lifeforce energy is affected by the energy we store in our bodies. Both by food and drink, and by positive or negative energy you store on a cellular level in your body.
The way you feel inside creates the vibration or frequency in which your cells vibrate. There are high-frequency emotions, like gratitude, love, and joy that create a healthy frequency inside your body. When your spirit is flowing with positive energy, your chi energy flows more strongly, and your body is more balanced.
People who do not live a mindful life tend to vibrate at lower frequencies like anger, worry, and fear. This energy, which stems from emotional overload and stress, will be like an infection to your chi. This causes your cells to become energetically unbalanced, resulting in sickness and imbalance in your body.
Discovering Self-Awareness
Each of these 3 connections, mind/body, mind/spirit, and spirit/body, are 3 circles that overlap in the middle. Self-awareness is a sweet spot in the middle.
Living consciously of how the body, mind, and spirit work in harmony with one another is the first step in creating a positive shift in consciousness that you can live your life by.
