Hi Friends,
Lexi Hernandez here 🙂
As we transition from February’s series – “Building Self Awareness”, to March’s series – “Slackin’? Creating Work/Life Balance”, we wanted to  provide a clear layout of why we explored this topic, helpful tips to take away, and other content we learned during our time of Building Self Awareness. We had so much fun exploring this life skill with you all! Let’s take a look at the material we covered this past month:
*At the end of this blog, there is a section for our friends who are interested in the spiritual exploration, which we call “Infusion” of Self Awareness*
Why Is This Important?
Self Awareness is important because it helps us become better decision-makers and gives us more self-confidence — as a result, we communicate with clarity and intention. It allows us to understand things from multiple perspectives and it frees us from our assumptions and biases. In our second year of life, we (as humans) become reflectively self-aware. Self-awareness is closely related to self-acceptance and emotional intelligence. Therefore, increasing your self-awareness will improve your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence helps us navigate difficult circumstances in our lives and persist despite frustrations. We become better at regulating our emotions and tend to judge ourselves (and others) less harshly. As a result, our self-esteem will improve.
We need to consider self awareness as a journey, not a destination.
Useful Tips:
Here’s a Parable For You:
A monk slowly walks along a road when he hears the sound of a galloping horse. He turns around to see a man riding a horse moving swiftly towards his direction. When the man reaches closer, the monk asks, “Where are you going?”. To which the man replies, “I don’t know, ask the horse” and rides away.
Parable Explained:
The horse in the story represents your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind runs on past conditioning. It’s nothing but a computer program. If you’re lost in the program, the program controls you and leads you wherever it feels like. Instead, when you become self aware, you start to become aware of your programs and start looking at them objectively. Once you become aware of the program, you start to control the program and not the other way round.
Gatherings:Â
During our online gathering, we bonded over sharing stories of the meanest (intentional) thing we’ve done, and the nastiest thing that we’ve done or has been done to us. Please keep your mind out of the gutter. Haha! Although this seems unusual, it was a fun conversation that allowed us to connect on a deeper level while displaying some things about ourselves that we may not be proud of…which is the NOT so fun part of Self Awareness.
 
During our in person gathering, we enjoyed a “Build Your Own Taco Bar”, built the most durable and creative structures in groups out of random building materials (Oreos as spare tires, Wafers as 2x4s, Pretzel Sticks as nails, Icing as cement, and Lays Wavy Chips as wood chips), and then played a HILARIOUS card game that assigned some NOT so great qualities to other people. Like in our online gathering, these were ways to see how we interact with others when we have to present some qualities about ourselves that we may not be proud of, or eager to share with others.
Spiritual Exploration of Self Awareness:Â
Here is what Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test.”  (2 Corinthians 5.16-17)
Self-awareness is hard work. Very hard work. It is not something that happens automatically because you are a Jesus follower.  Knowledge of ourselves, our place in the world, and our relationship with others can help us become the person God intended us to be. Self-awareness can help us avoid judging ourselves too harshly while simultaneously helping us build loving relationships with ourselves, those around us, and God. Self-awareness—and the various techniques we use to cultivate it—should reveal how our fears, insecurities, anger, envy, apathy, self-righteousness, and other struggles keep us from loving like Jesus and loving others with freedom and fullness. As we strive to understand ourselves, we must be guided by love.
It was a pleasure to explore this topic with you over the last month and I can’t wait to see what “Slackin’? Creating Work/Life Balance” has in store for us!
If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us 🙂
Email: lexi@thegrowthco.org |Â Text: 704-476-1050 |Â Or slide in the DMs on Instagram: @thegrowthcolife
Lexi Hernandez
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