How to Build Self Awareness

Let's talk about the benefits of mindfulness and self-awareness. And right now, one of the things that I'm doing is reading Rick Rubin's latest book on creativity. And it is a 15 out of 10. And I'm going to be deep diving a lot more about that in future episodes. But there's one little nugget that I read yesterday that really resonated with me that will help you understand the benefits of mindfulness and self-awareness. And what he says is, for the mind to draw inspiration, it wants space to welcome the new. And for me, the key word in all of this is the word space.

And the reason this is so important is because when you create space in your mind, in your being, in your life, you create the opportunity for something new to be put in there. And we live in a world that is designed to capture and steal your attention. The second you wake up, the majority of people turning on the news, social media, Netflix, Slack, email, Twitter, you name it. The world says, hey, look at what I'm doing over here. I want you to look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. And it's nonstop. And the algorithms are designed to keep you living in their world.

And because of that, we live in a culture that has an absence of space where the few people who are about mindfulness and self-awareness, they're seen as sort of on the fringe, the outliers, the woo-woo people of the world. Because it's way easier to do what everybody else is doing and continue to stay on that hamster wheel of a lack of awareness and just consume, consume, consume, consume. But guess what? Those of us who are about that life for mindfulness and self-awareness, we know this is the greatest gift of all.

And what I want to do is help frame this for you in the most simple way possible. Because guess what? I was not always this person. 10 years ago, I was not this person whatsoever. I had no habits. I had no routines. And my mindset was nothing like it is right now. And one of the things that I say often is success leaves breadcrumbs. So it's a decade ago. I just quit my corporate job. And I'm now a full-time entrepreneur and creator making zero dollars. So I audit the success habits of the most successful people in the world to say, hey, what are the things that they're doing?

And one thing keeps coming up over and over and over again, meditation, meditation, meditation. And I'm like, not for me, not for me, not for me. That's woo-woo. I'm not about that life. I'm not one of those people. But finally, after hearing it, I don't know, 50, maybe 100 times. And there's no hyperbole. It is literally I heard it that many times where I said, all right, world, I am open at least to the possibility of trying this and seeing what's up. So at the time, I downloaded and subscribed to the Headspace app, which was a simple app that I could use as a first timer that would help me with guided meditation.

And at the beginning of any mindfulness journey, you're going to learn and feel the same resistances that everybody does. I'm not good at this. My mind keeps on talking. I don't slow down. This doesn't work. It's not for me. These are all the things that we say to ourselves when we're beginning a mindfulness journey, as if somehow we're all so busy or we're all so wired in such a way that this doesn't work for us. That's what we say. Oh, no, it works for them, but I can't sit still for two minutes. And that's a story that we tell ourselves and we believe for why it won't work for us.

I would like for you just to throw that in the trash for a second and say, you know what? I'm open to the possibility of creating more space in my head. Cool. That's all we got. So for me, at the beginning of this, mindfulness and meditation is more about shutting off the world where you say, listen, for five minutes a day, maybe it's 10 minutes, whatever number that you want. You just say, if nothing else, I'm just not consuming for five or 10 minutes. You can just close your eyes and you can let your mental chatter go do whatever it does.

But I promise you, when you make this a consistent practice, a habit, a routine, a way of being for yourself, you will slowly notice yourself getting better because the thing that you would not do is say, all right, I'm going to commit to this, but I have no desire to actually get better at this. No, you say, if I'm open to this, I'm at least open to the possibility that there are some things that I can learn that I can teach myself by sitting with this practice because Rob and so many others in the world say there's benefits from this. And I would love to at least see how I can experience those benefits.

And so many people will go do this for two or three days and say, it doesn't work for me. And it's like, yeah, I get it. You gave something 15 total minutes for your entire life and said, this isn't working for me. How about you give yourself a month or two to say, listen, like coconut chili, it's going to slowly marinate where all of a sudden you're going to start learning about yourself because that's what a lot of mindfulness is, is your ability to be centered in who you are and your chatter and your breath. And you learn about yourself by quieting yourself down.

So you sit there and you say, okay, and eventually you will get to the point where there's going to be an absence of space in your mind. And it's a great thing where you just sit there five minutes a day and you're just quiet. Just think about that. For many people right now, that quiet that I just gave you is the only quiet in their entire life in this day. That is bananas. And for many of us, you may have been thinking, why isn't Rob talking? What's happening? Did the podcast just stop? No, that's a beautiful gift of space and quiet.

All of a sudden, when I stopped talking and it went quiet, there was the opportunity for something new. And maybe we were quick to jump in with our own chatter. But imagine evolving to the next level where you say, oh, this quiet space just got created. You know what? Maybe I'm just going to enjoy this space for a second. Sort of like when you're in nature and you're going for a walk and there's nobody else around you. And maybe you just hear the stream of a brook or you just hear some birds chirping. And you're like, man, I can feel the breeze outside.

And hopefully you can envision this energy, this way of being with me when you're outside. Like, feels like the world has stopped. And that's what we're creating with mindfulness. It feels like the world has stopped. And when the world stops, you sit there and you get the opportunity to reflect for a second. And when you're done and you go back to the world, you're like, wow, what did that absence of the world create in me? And now you start to ask yourself different questions. You're like, oh, what about this? What about that?

Wow. I kind of really liked being with myself for five minutes without the incessant chatter of the world and the ping, ping, ping of notifications. Wow. Now we're on a journey of self-awareness and self-discovery. And that's the beauty of mindfulness. And here's the other key to all of this. There are no rules to this game. There is no like, are you doing this right or wrong? No, you do it. And then every single time you do, it will be a new journey. And at the beginning, it's going to be a little bit different than if you're like me, who's been doing this for more than a decade.

You will certainly mature because I'm now to the point where I have, I have to get my driver's license updated and they're like, it's going to take 17 minutes. Boom. I'm like, great. Good opportunity for me to get in a 10 minute meditation session while at the DMV. You're like, what? Yeah. I'm to the point where I can meditate in public because I'm just in my own world because that's my opportunity for space and quiet instead of just jumping on my phone and being on Instagram and just scrolling the whole time. There's levels to all of these games.

And one other thing that I'll share around this in terms of mindfulness and self-awareness is creating a journaling practice. And if you have not yet read this and you're creative, read Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. And one of the things that she talks about is morning pages, AKA journaling. And what it is, it's a practice that you do every single day where the only goal is to get what's in your head out of your head on a piece of paper. You can do it for one minute. You can do it for an hour. You can do it for 20 minutes.

It doesn't have to be about anything because the goal is to create space in your head by getting everything that's in your head out of your head and onto paper. And this is something that becomes very therapeutic and helps with your self-awareness. Why? Because it's your opportunity to write down your thoughts, your awareness of what's going on in your head. And once again, think about this. The majority of the world is walking around every single day with their head completely full of everything.

The majority of it being things that don't serve them, aren't aligned to their goals, aren't aligned to being their ideal self or creating their best year ever. It's somebody else's agenda. It's fear, it's self-limiting beliefs, it's comparison, everything in between. So that's how most people operate. And every single day they wake up, there's just more and more that gets thrown into their head. Wow. I used to live that way and it actually embarrasses me. And I never use the word embarrassment, but it embarrasses me to think that I used to live that way and be one of those people.

So instead now, boom, I've created this practice of journaling every single morning. And I sit there and I use Evernote and I've got a blank screen and I started out the same way. Happy Monday or whatever day of the week it is, today's going to be a great day. And then I just let flow whatever is flowing. And sometimes, man, when I get on something, it's good. Other times I just check in to say, hey man, just wanted to get some of this out of my head onto the piece of paper. I'm committed to this practice. It's going to be a great day.

And I would actually say the overwhelming majority of my journaling entries are positive. I'm excited because I'm about that life and I create my best year ever. So, so often, boom, I'm shooting my energy into that page and it actually creates more space and opportunity in my head because I've actually removed the excited, creative, happy thoughts that are in my head. Put it onto paper. The energy lives in me, but I'm not thinking about that. I'm going to execute on some other things.

On occasion though, I know that if a challenge comes up for me where I'm feeling like the victim, my bitch voice is loud, boom, I know that that's what my journaling is there for. Where I'll say to myself, all right, here's what's going on. I'm very candid, very honest about this. And then I'll say, I'm releasing this thought from my head. This does not serve me. It is not staying with me. Boom. It is gone. Moving on. And just like that, I liberated myself from that story that I was telling myself. And this is something, the more you do it, the more you can create yourself that way.

Because I truly believe and know via the tools that I've created for my mind, my heart, the way that I operate my life, pretty much the entire way my coaching business is built is these tools for creation to help us create more of what we want in our life. Well, part of that is how are you creating with the things that aren't serving you, that are slowing you down and having you not being the best version of yourself every single day? Oh, well, I can just write it down and release it and go, boom, I'm out. Moving on to something else. Pretty simple, easy practice.

So I'm sharing with you my own journey of mindfulness and self-awareness. It's just two very easy practices, meditation and journaling. And I just wanted to share this with you because that's what I do on my journey. I take what I've learned. I look at the bad, how I overcame it, how you can do it yourself and how we can do it and make it fun, easy, creative and everything in between.

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