Awareness

November 15, 2022

Mid Q4 2022 Update: Awareness

One of my key goals for this quarter was to increase my self awareness on many fronts. It turns out that awareness plays a key role in our happiness, use of time, leadership potential, self efficacy, and so very much more.

This newsletter I focus more deeply on awareness and how we can raise our own self awareness to make sure that our lives don’t go un-lived.

Here’s to your transformation ahead!

Your Own Objective Awareness Raiser

I’ve read up quite a bit on coaching in the past year and one of the most striking findings was that you could take a professional ski coach and put them in as a professional tennis coach with no change in outcomes for the tennis players — in fact on some measures and occasions the ski coaches actually did better.*

It turns out that deep subject matter expertise on what is being coached is unnecessary for coaching to be helpful and in some cases may be harmful or result in lesser outcomes.

So what’s going?

It turns out that the role of expert coaches is to be a detached and objective awareness raiser for the coachee. The ski coaches could only ask the coachee questions on how things felt while providing objective observations on what was seen. Being more detached from the subject matter turned out to be a benefit and not a bug. Intuitively, this makes sense if you have ever had the chance to be coached in sports or other professional setting. The coach merely lets you know what he or she is observing and helps you build self awareness to change performance.

Building your self awareness, your self responsibility, and consequently your self-belief lays the foundation for great performance and great leadership.

Can you become your own coach? Absolutely. We can improve our own self awareness. If awareness is an input to our success and we improve the quality of that input, then we can then increase the quality of our output in life.

Increasing awareness leads to improved performance.

*From the book Coaching for Performance by Sir John Whitmore

Mantra For The Moment

I am able to control only that of which I am aware.

That of which I am unaware controls me.

Awareness empowers me.

Let’s Raise Your Awareness for . . .

Your Environments

Are you controlling the environment or is it controlling you?

The truth is that we control it and it controls us.

Knowing when you are being controlled by your environment is the key to get past the patterns of life that are holding us back and getting closer to where you want to go. The more we are aware the less control the environment has over us.

There are physical, social, and other environments to consider.

Your Healthy Deserve Level

“One day I experienced a breakthrough awareness that people's actions-and therefore their results--always march in exact lockstep with their beliefs about what they deserve.

“It's not true that in life, you get what you deserve.

“Instead, you get what you think you deserve. Nothing more, nothing less.

“If you truly think that you deserve a high income and a large net worth, that's what you will have. If you don't think you deserve those things, you can work just as hard or even ten times harder than the next person, and you'll still come up short.”

Excerpt from the book Raise Your Healthy Deserve Level by Gary Kadi

Your Strengths and Weakness

You’ve probably taken personality tests and come to understand your strengths, weakness, presets, and preferences. It maybe time to revisit those and find ways to lead with your strengths and act outside of your presets for personal growth. It maybe time to get uncomfortable.

Your Core Values

If you haven’t already done so it is important to know your core values, because they will serve as a filter to help you lead and live as your authentic self. Many of us are on auto-pilot and haven’t thought it through. I recently created an exercise to help you define your core values which you can download here.

Your Relationships

We’ve all heard that you are the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most. But how does that impact you? If the net worth of the 5 people you are hanging out with the most is higher than yours then your net worth will head in a positive direction — otherwise it will go negative. Health, happiness, and other important factors also move as a result of those around you. It may be time to re-evaluate the company you keep.

Your Body

Your body is a reflection of your beliefs about yourself. Bring awareness to your personal beliefs about who you are and where you are going. How’s your health? How’s your fitness? What are you wearing? Why? Change your beliefs and your body will change with those beliefs.

Your Future

“We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to lesser goals.”

—Robert Brault

But do you know which are the lesser goals? Do have you future goals written down?

It may be time to start or revisit your life plans. Here is my life planning template — my most request tool for personal growth.

Your Potential

It is important that we identify the potential that we see in ourselves. Any easy exercise to see that is to complete the sentence “If I had no fear . . .”

This is an easy way to uncover our wants and desires as well as to identify a path that we want to take in life and even helps us uncover what we think about ourselves.

Fill in the blank multiple times to uncover more about the potential you see in yourself.

Articles to Raise Your Awareness in Daily Life

Technology: This article speaks to our awareness of how technology is impacting our lives. “Technology is a condition. Like the weather, or the economy, or the pandemic, or traffic, or parenting.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/phone-call-greeting-smartphone-technological-error/671910/

Math: This article speaks to our awareness of how math changes views of infinite and finite games in life: “In a world that will only become more influenced by mathematical intelligence, can we ruin culture through our attempts to perfect it?” https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/sabermetrics-analytics-ruined-baseball-sports-music-film/671924/

Want Help in Awareness Raising?

Look for someone that you can trust who can be there with you as a sounding board and a detached awareness raiser. Find someone that will provide insights and outside information. Find someone to help you to remain resilient, remind you to be courageous, and help you through the huge changes ahead that you see for yourself and those you lead.

Professional coaches, accountability partners, mastermind groups, and even growth oriented friends can help you raise awareness in a safe and empowering manner.

If you want to chat about any of this, I’ve got my schedule here.