Brutal Honesty => Self-Awareness => Mindfulness

       As you know spring has sprung, (she wrote… not knowing what would happen this weekend in Canada, but you know? If you live anywhere else, like say London, don’t let us stop you from living your best SPRING life!), so the plan for the blog is to talk you through a bit of spring cleaning. Basically, I will release two articles a week (Monday and Thursday) that help you de-clutter one aspect of your life. As this is the first article in this series, I am starting with you… and me, you and me both. I feel that in too many circles, mental health and wellness is brushed under the carpet and secretly prayed away. And trust me, I believe in prayer, I believe prayer is extremely powerful and has the ability to do incredible things. However, I also believe that there are things you can do to control the energies around you and steer your mind in the right direction. I believe that there are always things beyond our control, and some days where you are just going to feel shit, but there are ways to reduce anxiety and stress and foster overall better health, and I think this is worth a conversation.

Daniel Chidiac once said “Being self-aware is not the absence of mistakes, but the ability to learn and correct them.” Self-awareness is a conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Social media, Instagram especially, has made it way too easy to compare and measure your life based on someone else’s and convince yourself that you are the only on who struggles, and I mean… it is just not true. I could talk about “oh you should have more mind power and self-restraint,” but it is addictive, it is like picking a spot on your face. Literally everyone says “leave it alone, focus on something else” but no. Every chance you get, you go back to the same spot, no matter how sore it becomes, or how much it bleeds. You pick it. You pick it until it becomes this life-sucking entity, thriving and blossoming on your face, and then you slap an absurd amount of makeup on to cover it up because you know? you haven’t given it enough attention already. 

I am guilty of this and trust me when I say I excel at fabricating stories in my head that are 100% false, but I convince myself are true, and you know? somehow everyone except me, is just badass and kicking ass at life 100% of the time. It is just such trash, but it has the ability to ruin my mood for a good couple of days at least, because nothing I’m doing at that point feels as special or inspiring or impactful as what I see my friends doing and achieving on Instagram. Ok, but to the good part of the story. I am not better at leaving my spots alone but I am better at catching myself when I am going down the Instagram-comparison downward spiral and this is what self-awareness is. It is not becoming more perfect, not by a long shot, it is about knowing yourself better. It is about abandoning this notion of perfection that we are sold so frequently. It is paying attention to yourself and learning your patterns and knowing your triggers and understanding what brings you back to reality the quickest. For me, it is talking to the people around me, you know? REAL people, with scars and spots and  stretch marks and flabs and jiggles not the six-filter, $10,000 surgery versions of them on social media.

Billie Jean King, American former World number 1 professional tennis player once said “I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.” This struck me because I would expect someone like her to talk about mastering your opponent or training as hard and as often as you can, which I don’t doubt that these things are important, but she thinks self-awareness is the most important thing. Being a champion inherently means that you have failed, multiple times. Being a champion just means you have gotten up and learned from all the mistakes you have made. Winning is not the absence of losing or failure, it is the mastery of failure. Winning is failing better. Winning is failing as many times as you need to, to know a situation better, and better than that, know yourself a little better in that situation. The only way you can actually fail is to accept defeat in your mind because at that point there is no reason to put in any effort. The universe is going to conspire to give us what we put out, good or bad. You see? The mind is extremely powerful. Getting to where you want to be in any thing in life starts with your mind whether you know it or not. Once you conquer something in your mind, that’s at least half the work done.

De-cluttering your mind is such a powerful tool. While some people naturally have their shit all the way together 100% of the time and that’s lovely, I am not of those people, so yeah… I need the help, and it is totally fine if you do too. So like I say, self-awareness starts with being brutally honest with yourSELF. Be honest, be absolutely honest about where you are, and how your negative thoughts about yourself have maybe contributed to, and held you back from getting to where you want to be. Once you feel clear about the blocks, you can begin to clean them up to make space for positive manifestations to occur. Example. I have a really hard time believing I am an intelligent human being with lots to offer. I went to the University of Toronto and graduated with Honors, I have this blog that I have done almost consistently for four years, I write for Schick magazine (just to show that how you feel about yourself does not always have anything to do with your actual reality). I should be content and grateful because at the end of the day, I am quite lucky and so fortunate. I should. I should but many times I struggle to feel that way and find that place of gratitude. Gratitude is not natural. It has to be a conscious decision. But I have found that gratitude lasts longer when you work your way up to it. It doesn’t last that long when you abandon everything you are ACTUALLY feeling because you feel guilty and you feel you should be grateful. Instead of trying to feel how you think you should, admit your feelings in that moment, then take stock and adjust appropriately. Do this as many times as you need to in order to get to a place where it becomes easy and gratitude becomes the go to. 

So, it’s the beginning of spring and I think it is the perfect time to do a little spring cleaning and inventory. I guarantee you, that no matter who you are, there are a thousand things you have to be thankful for and there are thousand times your body and your mind have proved to you what you are capable of. It is just now left to you to remember those things when you feel overwhelmed or defeated. It is amazing to have the courage to be totally honest with yourself about where you are but it is more important to  take action and root for yourself when you figure who that is. Spring is the perfect time to clean out and ward off all the negative energy but it is also the perfect time to plant and put things in place in your life to bloom and manifest positive attributes.