The Power Within: Enhancing Self-Awareness, Authenticity, and Fulfillment

Bobbi: Welcome to UnYielded Thriving No Matter What. I’m your host, Bobbi Kahler. I’ve coached more than 3000 people in my career and I started this podcast to give you the tools to discover new possibilities, move past limiting beliefs, fears and self doubt, build your confidence, master your mindset, and create the life that you love to live every day.

Bobbi: You what if there was a mechanism that would enhance your self awareness and your authenticity, increase your happiness and fulfillment, fuel your resilience your creativity, innovation and improve your relationships?

Well, there is, and we’re going to cover that today. And I will also share three activities to help you.

Before getting to that though, let’s start with the backstory. Way back in 2002, I was at an entrepreneurial conference in Los Angeles. On the closing night, a young 17 year old girl who wanted to become a country singer was invited on stage with a country singer. He had heard of her dream and he gave her the chance to share the stage with him. And I was sitting in the audience and I was absolutely awestruck at this young girl’s courage.

And I thought to myself, wow, I wish I had had that sort of courage when I was 17. And then I remembered, wait a minute, I did have that kind of courage when I was 17. I went after my dreams when I was 17. The problem was that at times over the years I’d forgotten that.

Has that ever happened to you? Where you get that wistful feeling along the lines of I wish that I was as courageous as when I was younger, as spunky as when I was younger, as daring and bold as when I was younger.

I have at different times over the years, and I know that my clients have as I’ve heard them say it to me many times over the years.

And that makes me wonder, okay, what’s going on? As I’ve pondered this and researched it, I saw a convergence of influences.

And that led me to this conclusion somewhere along the lines, we’ve lost touch with our inner spirit and our inner knowing. I believe that we were all created as uniquely special, and we were created with unique gifts. We were each created and born to fulfill a purpose in this life. When we were younger, we lived more in that spirit.

Life hadn’t yet taught us to censor ourselves, to curb our enthusiasm, or to be stressed out about any number of things.

As we get older, it’s like daily life becomes a fog that settles over us and we lose sight of our inner spirit.

In the book Positive Intelligence, the author Shirzad Shamin shares how as young children, we start learning to judge ourselves as a survival mechanism, and that judgment becomes harsher and harsher as we grow older. Now, the great news is that you can learn to stop and reverse that damage also because we are judging ourselves so relentlessly as a form of self protection. We begin to judge others and even our circumstances. This becomes a negative cycle that blights our enthusiasm and our zest for living. I took Shirzad’s coaching program, so I’ve been immersed in it for a while, and I’ve come to see how undermining this judging can be for myself and for clients. It wears away at our true spirit, and it makes us act in more fear based ways. It leads us to doubt ourselves and our own capabilities, and it can keep us rooted where we are, even if we are not happy with where we are.

Another layer of understanding was added for me when I started reading Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, the inspired life. He writes that the inspired life means to live in spirit, and by that he means in our spirit who we were born to be. Dyer shares that when we are living in spirit, we are living from a love based mindset. This is when much of the friction of life falls away. We aren’t worried about all the what ifs and all the things that could go wrong when we are living in spirit, we trust ourselves, our inner knowing, and our wisdom and our own resourcefulness. And that is a beautiful thing. And by the way, that’s also one of the key tenets in coaching. The client is whole, the client is resourceful, and it’s time that we apply that to ourselves as well.

So here are three activities to help you get back to your true spirit activity.

Number one, Eckhart Tolle speaks about this, and he says that it can be as simple as noticing when we are not in spirit and then intentionally shifting. And this is very, very similar to what Dyer talks about in his books and speeches. Here’s how I’ve used it for myself. When I notice friction or struggle in my day, that has become a signal to me that I’m probably not in spirit. When I notice that I take two to three minutes to walk away from whatever it was I was doing, I look out the window or I step outside or something along that lines, and I take just a few deep breaths. This calms my mind, and it relieves the stress of the moment. And two things here, because it’s important, the two to three minutes of deep breathing, that has been proven by neuroscience to work to alleviate the stress and return us to calm, clear headed thinking. The second thing I want to mention is, I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I first heard that, oh, take two to three minutes of deep breathing, I’m like, okay, what difference is that going to make? And I’m here to tell you, it’s been just a game changer for me.

It continues to amaze me that I can be so I’m working up so much frustration about something, and frankly, it’s usually about the computer. But then I step away, calm my mind. I come back and it’s like the answer is just waiting for me. So this works.

Activity number two. Tune in to how much mind chatter is going on for you. Mind chatter keeps us out of being in spirit. For more on this, check out the book Positive Intelligence for a comprehensive look at the science and to gain a deeper understanding of how this might be affecting you. The book also lays out a great structure for working on quieting the mind chatter and bringing forth your inner wisdom. There’s also a free assessment that you can take to help you know how much of this internal judging might be affecting you. It only takes three to five minutes, three to five, and it’s a very helpful tool. And I’ll put the link in the show notes. In addition, in the past, I’ve done Rise and Thrive episodes on this, and Each of them range from five to seven minutes. So they’re all very short. And there are four of those. And I will also put those in the show notes in case you haven’t heard those or you want to check those out. Okay?

So finally, activity number three. This approach is something that is talked about both in Positive Intelligence and in Dr. Dyer’s work. I’ve coached people using this approach, and I’ve used it for myself, and Rick has used it. And when executed correctly, it’s incredibly powerful. Here’s how it works. Step one find a childhood picture of yourself. Ideally a picture from when you were fairly young. I used one from when I was about five years old. Step two take at least three to five minutes to quiet your mind. You could take a brief walk outside or just take a few minutes and do some deep breathing exercises. Step three really look at your childhood picture. Don’t judge yourself your hairstyle, your clothes, whatever, right? I mean, mine I think I was wearing plaid pants, for crying out loud. So just really look at who you are in the picture, right? Really see, notice your eyes, your smile, your spirit, and really look at it to see your essence, who you really are. And then think of and write down some I am statements. For example, when I looked at my picture, the I am statements that came to mind for me were things like I am bold, I am courageous, I’m confident, I’m playful. Step four put that picture somewhere where you can see it every day. You might even put your I am statements there with it. I put mine right next to the mirror in the bathroom. Now, I know that this might seem like a silly exercise.  I thought it was silly when I did it for the first time, too. But I promise you, when you execute it well, when you really go in all in on it, it will change things for you in powerful ways.

 I once had a client who did this, and he was a very high performing senior manager.  And I was so worried when I introduced the exercise. I’m like, he’s going to think this is so stupid.

But luckily, he embraced the activity and he immediately sent me feedback. He’s like, that really changed things for me. He said it really helped him reconnect to that kid inside of him and it brought him more empathy towards himself, which then he said he could have more empathy with others, and it also helped him reconnect to the joy in life.

Now, any of these approaches will help you find and trust your inner spirit that served you so well back in the day.

And you probably remember the one, the one that wasn’t afraid to conquer new worlds, who found joy in the adventure and didn’t worry about falling short or failing because that was all part of the fun.

So I hope that you’ll give one of these three activities a try. Or better yet, use them all. They work perfectly together.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop me a note. I’m always happy to answer your questions anytime. So with that, I hope you have a terrific week and that you continue to rise and thrive.