The main aim of my weekly vlogs and blogs is to pass on tips I have personally learned to make YOUR life easier.
Why you might ask? well to be honest, if I would have learned and practised some of the suggestions I have given over the years, I could have saved myself a lifetime riddled with anxiety, stress, worry fear doubt and insecurity.
I guess the bottom line is my life would not have been stress free, but I would have felt more resilient and more in control, enabling me to deal with the ups and downs of life in a happier and calmer way.
So how can self-awareness help? By understanding how I respond to situations and how they make me feel, I can more easily adapt my reactions and learn to respond in a healthier and more beneficial way.
By beneficial I mean reducing, or even avoiding the detrimental affects of high levels of stress in my body which are experienced as restlessness, anxiety, lack of concentration, mood swings, erratic sleeping patterns, raised blood pressure, fatigue and often addictive behaviours, shopping, eating alcohol consumption etc.
How can we start to become more self-aware? Start by being an observer of your body and hew it responds to difficult situations, this means we need to practice more presence in the moment.
Building a higher level of self-awareness and presence elevates us from reactive behaviours to responsive one meaning we get to CHOOSE how we respond.
This is the most empowering thing I have ever experienced, the power to choose how I will respond, and it takes dedication, patience and practice but I personally want to be able to live my life in a more serene calmer way.
Research suggest when we can master our emotions we can not only change negative situations into more positive ones but we can increase our levels of self-confidence and self-respect, this changed behaviour can massively improve how we handle life’s challenges.
And finally as Pythagoras once said ( the Greek philosopher) ‘No man is free if he cannot control himself’