"What do I have to do, be or have in order to keep growing?"
I don't know that I have the answer to this question that many people ask when they feel stuck .Still; I promote 10 things that count towards a life of continuous growth. Upon reflection, people who are feeling stuck find that they are struggling in one or more of these areas.
Take ZE, for example. She wanted to redefine herself after years of lying and stealing led to a 'bad' reputation. She was struggling to shed this image, having determined to follow a more edifying path.
As a teenager ZE lied often, about many things, and was not averse to hawking household goods for who-knows-what. This got her into trouble with the law, family and friends. As she grew older, these over incidences of dishonesty reduced, but she was still unreliable and found herself to paying for this through broken relationships. Eventually she sought help to deal with this in order to pursue a more satisfying path.
She committed to conducting a mini survey among significant others to find out if people really saw her the way she thought they did.
This exercise showed her that people who mistrusted her also saw her as creative, enterprising and hardworking. This apposition of 'good' and 'bad' qualities helped ZE become conscious that there was possibly a different way to define herself, and consequently , led to her finding a new way of looking at herself. This enhanced self-awareness helped her prepare an action plan to redeem her reputation, improve self-confidence and repair relationships.
Self-awareness is a key ingredient for continuous personal growth and development.
Awareness is our capacity to notice things, and self-awareness describes a situation where the light of awareness is turned onto us. While awareness is our ability to take note; self-awareness is our ability to take note of ourselves.
When we turn our awareness to shine on ourselves, we become conscious of a great deal of internal activity. We may notice specific thoughts or thought patterns. We may notice particular emotions or flows of energy. We may awaken to physiological processes happening in our body such as heartbeat, heat, sweating. We may notice intuitions or gut feelings.
The motivation for breaking bad habits, for example, comes from an awareness of the detrimental effects the bad habit is having in our lives. The self-motivation to change also comes from a vivid awareness of what we want for ourselves and our future, and a lucid recognition that we simply won't be able to have it if we don't leave our bad habits behind.
This is what ZE was awakening to, in her quest to develop greater self-awareness.
In subsequent issues I will talk about believing in a higher purpose, forgiving, boundaries, asking for what you need , loving , gratitude, action, giving and delivering your promises.
