this is a great time to gain some greater self-awareness without greater self-awareness we aren't resilient we aren't authentically confident we aren't vibrant we aren't healthy we aren't able to deal with all of the chaos without conforming to everybody else the moment we lack self-awareness is when the impulse to conform to everybody else enters the moment we lack self-awareness we don't know how to ask for what we need in an argument with our partner or spouse the moment we lack self-awareness we make a bad decision that we knew wasn't right for us it's always the first
thing awareness the first big gate of personal development that i believe everybody goes through in their own journey to maturity happiness fulfillment aliveness connection with others ultimate life satisfaction that first gate of awareness is i'm so the first gate of personal change is awareness is awareness now i know some of you already know this but think about this in any given moment we can be aware of our feelings of our environment of how our emotions are affecting our minds of our decision-making of our surroundings of god of universe of connection to this very moment in
any given moment awareness can ebb and flow can't it and sometimes in your life i know some of you feel this way you're going so fast there's so much on your plate you're so busy at home and at work everything's going 90 miles an hour and it's like it feels like you're so torn from happiness or torn from the moment that you don't feel connected and that is when awareness is sort of out the door and that's why in the last decade the topic of mindfulness you know went from sort of a a a sort
of a subtle art to like a societal need and as all of the research has been showing in the mindfulness research of how that can make us feel more grateful happy appreciative loving connected and kind and resilient it's become more and more clear that people get this but you don't go through the gates of awareness all the time by choice sometimes it's pushed upon you um i know many of you have had that story just like i have in the past where you weren't ready for change you might have been resistant to change does anyone
have any family members team members people in your life who are resistance to change it's just like you're around people like why won't my husband change or why won't my child want to be better or why will my kid do better in high school or what it's like we all know somebody who just doesn't ever shift into that and what you need to know i'm going to make you sort of a casual coach today or an influencer or a leader today we'll use all that under the term of influence today if you want to influence
others you have to understand they're not going to start taking action to change until they've gone through the gate of awareness and sometimes that gate of awareness you can inspire it you can role model it and sometimes life just has to happen for them we all know people like that it's not a judgment sometimes you can't be responsible for everybody else in their lives you got to let life be their educator and uh i've said that in other i'd say more obnoxious ways in the past i've said hey you can't be responsible for the train
wrecks in everybody else's life but hopefully as we all mature and become more conscious we realize that everyone walks a tough path and as we become more aware of the difficulties others face we become more compassionate more kind more thoughtful but you and i both know where it begins don't we it begins within it begins with a consistent practice of gaining greater self-awareness gaining greater self-awareness to our real thoughts our real feelings our real desires our real needs a real understanding about where are we in our lives i know friends who this last year for
example they realized how incredibly unhealthy they were physically and they finally said you know what i got to get in shape i got to eat better i got to stop drinking so much i got to start taking better care of myself and they made major shifts why because maybe one day that moment awareness hit for them they looked in the mirror and they're like oh my gosh i hate what i see or they finally accepted how they felt or they listened to that message in their brain that says hey you can't keep doing this you
got to get healthier there was always that moment of awareness something happened there was a moment where it clicked what was that for you and your personal development journey if you think about the maybe the three biggest times of your life that you changed like those big what they often call in psychology those inflection points or those critical incidences what were the three times when just major shift happened in your life i promise there was a major gate to awareness opened up for you either it was an insight an aha maybe you're like eckhart tolle
you're just laying in bed and all of a sudden you know awareness and presence enters your life a new level of consciousness lands on wonderful maybe you had to go through something it was a divorce a business ending you got fired somebody said no you got in a health challenge an accident happened for me as you know an accident happened i got in a car wreck and it was the ultimate perspective check at that point in my life i thought i wanted to die at that point in my life i had been suicidal and depressed
at that point in my life i didn't see that my life could ever be abundant or happy or loving i i didn't get it and then that car accident bam and that was like a knock on the head literally that opened up my eyes and made me realize oh i don't want to die i want to live i just don't know how and that was my awareness it was i i want to live i don't know how but i've got the second chance and i understand i want to live i understand i want to love
i understand i want to matter but i don't know how and that began a lifelong journey in personal development and then psychology and then philosophy and then neuroscience and then high performance studies to try and just understand how do people change well maybe as you're listening to what what were those three big things for you maybe it was a health thing something happened with your family maybe you that was when you went off to school or when you had the birth of your first child or something happened and it shifted you into another level of
awareness that said i want to improve i want to get better i want to be healthier i want to be happier and if you haven't had that yet then let me knock on the door a little bit and say hey this is a great time to gain some greater self-awareness without greater self-awareness we aren't resilient we aren't authentically confident we aren't vibrant we aren't healthy we aren't able to deal with all of the chaos without conforming to everybody else the moment we lack self-awareness is when the impulse to conform to everybody else enters the moment
we lack self-awareness we don't know how to ask for what we need in an argument with our partner or spouse the moment we lack self-awareness we make a bad decision that we knew wasn't right for us it's always the first thing awareness you
