SELF-AWARENESS 101 #7: THE TWO MOST POWERFUL WORDS YOU WILL EVER SAY

Today, I’m going to explore the concept that says, the two most powerful words you will ever say. “I AM.”

Over the years I have learned a lot of things that have dramatically changed my life. And one of the things that shifted a paradigm in me, was when I learned that the most powerful statement that someone can make, the two most powerful words in human behavior, psychology and in metaphysics are “I am.”

When you say “I am”, followed by any statement, and especially when you add a level of certainty or emotion to it, that statement becomes your reality… in many cases, it becomes your identity. What has been proven time and time again is when you combine these two powerful words “I Am” with intensity and emotion, everything around you moves to support that statement.

I’ll give you an example. I’ve shared before that I drank from the time I was 13 to the time I was 24 and I drank heavily. I avoided any responsibility for years. I had a very strong Identity that defined me. For years I thought, “I am an evil person and I am being punished”. Because of that Identity, I took all the terrible things that were happening to me and placed the blame on God, The Universe and others because I believed everything that happened to me was happening because I was a bad person and being punished.

Then came a moment in my life, based on many experiences that opened me to new possibilities, that I created a new Identity. A point came where I had to say with certainty, “I am an alcoholic.” And when I said those words, things shifted, and on an unconscious level, I no longer was able to make excuses for why I was drinking. I now had the identity of being and “alcoholic”. By making the statement and claiming the identity that I was an alcoholic, everything I knew on an unconscious level came up to support me in that statement.

Now, let me explain conscious and unconscious for a moment. Your conscious mind acts as a filter. It filters things through your beliefs, through your rules, through your values. Your unconscious just absorbs everything like a sponge. Your unconscious is called to action by your conscious mind based on how you direct your focus.

For me, identifying myself as an alcoholic, and doing it with certainty, it called on my unconscious to bring up all these references and resources that said, “Okay, if you’re an alcoholic, here are the ways that you act. Here are the things alcoholics do”

By acknowledging these things, it gave me a starting point, to begin correcting my life. By announcing “I am an alcoholic”, I was no longer denying my involvement in how I’d messed up my life. In that moment, I had to accept responsibility and accountability. So I started taking actions that supported me in becoming a recovering alcoholic. The identity changed from, “I am an alcoholic” to “I’m recovering. I am no longer drinking.” With this shift of “I am” and adding the certainty to the new statement, my unconscious started pulling different references and resources to support this new Identity.

Every time you put something after the two most powerful words ” I am” and you say it with certainty, your unconscious will accept that as your Identity and do things, millions of things, within nanoseconds to support you in that moment.

Now, saying “I am an alcoholic” was a great step for me in adapting a new Identity and helping me create new choices for myself, it also became something later on that limited me. As I got farther into my development, I started recognizing that I reached what many people refer to as a glass ceiling. Even though I was working diligently on myself, I wasn’t growing the way that I wanted to grow. And soon I discovered the reason that I was having trouble progressing was because I continued to identify myself as an alcoholic. So even though I was working hard on my personal and spiritual development, each time I Identified myself as an alcoholic, my unconscious mind was supporting me in that Identity by pulling up all of these references that said, “Okay if you’re an alcoholic, you need to act, think and be like this _______.” So when I reached a certain point, an Identity that used to serve me, no longer did and began to limit me.

As I began to more deeply understand the power of “I am” and “Identity”, through studying human behavior and psychology, I decided that I needed to stop identifying myself as an “alcoholic”.

Now, I want to be very clear at this point. I believe that I needed to identify myself as an alcoholic, early on, to accept responsibility and to begin taking the steps toward recovery. I do not believe that I would have stopped the self-destructive path I was on if I had not claimed that Identity. And I got to a point, in my growth where I needed to change my identity to continue to grow.

Understand that we can change our identity at any point in time. Most people don’t even realize how they create identities for themselves and change them. People walk around all day long, making excuses and complaining saying, “I am lazy.” Or, “I’m a procrastinator.” They say things like, “I’m just fat, you know, that’s the way it is.” But the thing is, when we say those things with certainty, our unconscious mind does everything it needs to do to support us in that statement.

So what I invite you to do is to become aware of how you label yourself.

Now I’ve had people come to me and say, “You know Will, I’ve been taught to do incantations and affirmations that say, I am thin, I am a non smoker, I am these things I want to be, and it never works.” The reason is that you’re saying these things on a conscious level and you’re filtering it, meaning that you’re not doing it with certainty. So you may be saying the words, “I am thin”, but you lack any sense of certainty, so the very next moment your conscious brain is saying, with certainty, “No I’m not. I am fat!”

So how can we address this when we are attempting to make a change? Begin with small adjustments. Begin making the statement, “I am taking steps to become thin.” Or, “I am deciding to make a change now and become healthier.” Find a statement that you can believe in, and adopt it as your Identity. Then as you progress, change the statement as you gain more certainty in your new Identity.

The things that get us into trouble and that we take for granted are the simple statements. We make a mistake and say, “I am a failure.” And we say it with completely certainty based on the mistake we made without even thinking about it. Many times we even joke about it and say it repeatedly. The more times you tell yourself something using words like these, the more certain you become in it being true . When you gain that level of certainty, it becomes your truth, it becomes your Identity.

So what I want you to invite you to do is for the next ten days, become hypersensitive to the powerful words, “I am ” and what you say after them.

Keep track, how many times do you say, “I am ____”, something that empowers you or how many times are you saying “I am _____”, something that is disempowering or tearing you down. Become aware. Awareness is the key. Then start changing how you address yourself. This is a very extensive subject, we’re not going to be able to cover all of it right here and right now. But a it is a great place to start. What I invite you to do at this moment is simply become aware of how you’re identifying yourself. A small change in your Identity can make a major shift in your reality.

SELF-AWARENESS 101 #5: KIND WORDS AND GOOD DEEDS ARE ETERNAL YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE THEIR INFLUENCE WILL END

Can you remember a time when the kind words, good deeds, or actions of a friend or even a stranger, dramatically, impacted your life?

We really never know how our actions or what we have done for someone, is going to affect that individual and even more, how the ripple effect caused by that act will impact others.

To give you a great example of how powerful good deeds, or a simple act kindness can be, I want to share with you how the kindness of a stranger saved my life, and I believe also, because of what has happened since, their action also led to saving the lives of many others.

I was about 20 years old and I had gotten into trouble with the law because I was drinking, using drugs and being totally irresponsible. As a result of a drunk driving arrest, I was sentenced by the courts to attend AA meetings in lieu of going to jail. I complied, but had no intention of attending these meetings to get sober or change my life. I was only going to avoid being put in jail.

There was one specific meeting I went to which was in Glen Burnie, Maryland, and I came to the meeting having already been drinking and with beer in my car with the intention that after the meeting I was going to go out and continue to party.

At the end of the meeting a stranger walked up to me and gave me a card with his first name and phone number on it. He said, ”If you ever decide that you TRULY want help, call me.”

Well, I didn’t want help, and I quickly forgot that he gave me his number. Fast forward to four years later; I had reached a serious low in my life, as some call it, I had “hit the bottom” and I was looking for some answer… for some kind of help, some way to stop the insanity I was living at that point. I was going through a box of that contained all of my court documents and I found the card he had given me.

Now, the story would be great, if I said I called that guy and he helped me change my life, but that’s not how the story unfolds.

This is why I’m saying we never know how our good deeds may impact somebody. This guy never heard back from me, I never saw him again, and our interaction lasted 1 minute at the very most. But the card that he gave me, when I was at my lowest point, gave me hope. His offer gave me a belief that there were people out there who genuinely cared, that there were people who were willing to help. And because of that glimmer of hope, that new belief that somewhere, there was one person who cared… and if there was one, maybe there were more. I began reaching out and found other people who were willing to offer their help in changing my life. And because of them supporting me, because of his initiating it, I rebuilt a devastated life, and have gone on and made it my mission to help other people change theirs.

We may never know the impact we have on others. It’s the ripple effect. When you drop the pebble in the pond and the ripples go out. Every action has a reaction-whether you are there to see it or not.

Because of that one person reaching out to me my mantra for life has become, (and I modified this slightly from something that was written on the card that the man I am speaking of handed me), “I am responsible, whenever anyone, anywhere, reaches out, I want them to have the same support that I had, and for that I am responsible.”

We’re talking about self awareness in this course, and one of the things that I think that you will begin to realize is that every interaction you have, happens for a reason. Every person that you meet and every communication you have is an opportunity. And it’s your choice as to how you’re going to leave that interaction. Are you going to plant a seed that’s going to help somebody? You know it can be so simple if we are conscious of our actions. Are you going to smile at somebody who is having a bad day? Are you going to help somebody with their groceries? You don’t know what long term effect that’s going to have. AND, that simple gesture could end up saving a life. I’m not trying to make it sound overly dramatic, but I really want you to think about it. I know for a fact that the simple gesture that man made to me in 1985 saved my life and as a result, other’s lives.

Think back in your own life. Can you think of three or four “small” good deeds that somebody has done for you? They could be things as simple as someone letting you go first in line at the grocery store. Maybe someone stopped to help you when your car was broken down. They could be small incidents, or major ones. Have you ever experienced a good deed when it has been done anonymously?

There’s a little gift that I would like to offer to you. I want to share a thing I like to do from time to time as a possibility of something you can do also and experience the joy I get when I do it.

Every once in a while, when I’m in a restaurant, I’ll connect with the waiter or the waitress that’s serving me. I’ll ask them to keep what I am about to do very quiet, and then ask them if any of their customers seem like someone who’s having a really, really bad day. Then I ask them to bring me that customer’s bill and I will pay for that person’s meal. Then I leave before they ever find out that It was me who did it. The deal I make with the server is that they are not allowed to tell customer who it was. All the server is supposed to tell them is that somebody wanted them to have a better day. The most it has ever cost me was $100 for a table of four, and often it costs less than $20. A small investment that is my little way of “paying it forward”.

I truly don’t know how this is going to affect the person receiving the gift. But my intention is that these “good deeds” give them hope when they’re having a bad day.

Again, what I’d like you to do is to take a moment and think of three to four times in your life where someone has done small deeds or shared some kind words that improved your day. Now, as you think of that experience notice if that had an impact on how you went about your day. When you become aware of how those little actions and a good deed have changed your life, you begin to become more aware of how you treat others.

The next thing I invite you to do is commit to doing two things in this next week out of a genuine desire to contribute to someone else. I also ask that you make one of these good deeds anonymous. Maybe you’re going to make a contribution to a stranger like giving a homeless person money. Or maybe you know somebody who is having a hard time financially, and you buy some food and leave it on their doorstep. There are so many things you can do. I suggest for this exercise that you do at least two things. One where you actually interact with the person. And the other where you do it anonymously.

I really look forward to hearing your feedback on how this exercise affects you or maybe how you notice your good deeds affect the other person.

SELF-AWARENESS 101 #4: THE ONLY MEANING ANYTHING HAS IS THE MEANING WE GIVE IT.

Today we’re going to take a look at a lesson from “A Course in Miracles ” and the lesson is, “The only meaning that anything has, is the meaning that WE give it.”

As I became more self-aware, one of the fascinating things I learned about human behavior and psychology, and one of the greatest gifts that ended up giving me a freedom I never before imagined, is that we are the ones that attach meaning to the experiences in our lives. More specifically, it’s not what happens to us, but it’s how we view it, how we perceive it and ultimately, the meaning we attach to it. We’re going to explore this topic today, and if you feel inspired to get into the subject at length, I suggest reading the book A Course In Miracles.

As an example, you may be aware from other articles that I lost my leg when I was eight years old to bone cancer. Being a young child and having a very limited perception of the world, I attached a very specific meaning to that experience. The meaning was partially self-generated, but as is often the case, it was majorly influenced by other people’s “meaning”. I was influenced by the beliefs and perceptions that other people had so it wasn’t even my meaning that I attached to the experience.

The meaning that I attached to losing my leg was that I was being punished, that there was something wrong with me. Based on the religion that I grew up in as well as the community, that was the answer a child was given. When bad things happened to people, they were being punished. Attaching that meaning to losing my leg affected and directed every aspect of my life for years. I abandoned the religious beliefs that I had been brought up with, I actually rebelled against them. I turned to alcohol. I turned to drugs. Along with the meaning I attached of being punished, I also thatched a meaning that I was not worthy of any of the good things in life. Based on this meaning, I embarked on a very self destructive path for many years.

I came to a point when I was 24, much later in life, where I was offered this amazing concept that said, “You know Willard, you are able to look at any experience, and you are able to make it mean what you want it to mean. You can “choose” what it means to you.” The mentor said, “Why not choose what’s going to best serve you in that situation?” Initially, it was a hard concept for me to accept. But when I did look back at the experience, I looked and saw there were other options, other possibilities, rather than perceiving it as being punished… there was a possibility that there was another meaning. At the first, the opportunity of a new possibility was intriguing. One of the first possibilities I explored was that maybe losing my leg was about leading me on a path that would give me experiences that I never would had otherwise .

And if there was one possibility, then there surely could be others. I asked, “What could another meaning be?” Another possible meaning was… maybe this was for me to teach. Maybe it was for me to be able to stop other people from following the same path I had taken. All of a sudden, I came up with numerous possibilities of what that one experience could mean.

Everything that happens in your life, you ultimately choose what meaning you want to attach to it. Why not choose the one that serves you best? There is no “right or wrong” meaning. Only right or wrong based on whether it serves you.

Take a look right now, at some area of your life where you have attached meaning to something that is not serving you. Maybe something that you’ve attached a meaning to, that doesn’t support you and who you choose to be. Then ask yourself, what would another possibility be? What else could this mean? How could I look at this experience in a different way?

All it takes is a small shift, and it can dramatically… dramatically change your life. Again we choose the meaning that we attach and it’s up to you.

Today I want to explore the quote, “I realized to soar, I needed to let go of the past. You can’t fly when you’re holding on to all that baggage.”

One of the beautiful things about the journey to self awareness is that it is a journey, it is not a destination. Over the years, one of the things that I’ve noticed from many people who are on this journey, myself included, is the amount of frustration that happens along the way. What I mean is that we work so hard on improving ourselves, we work so hard on clearing away the past, we work so hard on learning new skills and new strategies to help us become better people. And when we think we have it all figured out, then we hit these new stumbling blocks that stop us in our tracks.

I know for me personally, about 20 years ago, I had really done a lot of work on myself, and I reached a place in my life where I just felt like I was spinning my wheels. It just seemed like I could not get ahead. I felt like the sky should be the limit for me, but I also felt like I was held to the ground by chains and I couldn’t figure out why. I remember it was December of 1998. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I laid there tossing and turning trying to figure out why I felt so stuck. I said, “You know, something is not cleared up, there’s something…. and I haven’t finished with it yet.” I decided I needed to go back one more time, I went out to my living room, sat down at the computer and I started to write. But I wasn’t just writing about my past, my history. I was using a process where I would write to learn about myself, about things I had not seen before.

I didn’t intend on it becoming a book, but it did. The point of what I was doing was in essence, a journaling exercise. I made the decision that I was going to sit down and write to learn about my life, from as early as I could remember until that current moment. But I wasn’t going to just tell my experiences, I wasn’t going to sit there spew out “war stories”, like… I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this.

The idea was to look at the experience, with the intention that I would write to learn new perspectives from an observer’s point of view, rather than from my original perception. To be able to look at the experiences that happened in my life; to be able to analyze them; to look at what happened to me mentally, emotionally, spiritually in those moments. I would look at some of the traumatic moments in my life, in an effort to understand what happened on all those levels.

But it wasn’t[ about simply looking at what “happened” and how it affected me, but I wanted to learn what were the strengths I gained that came from going through that experience? Or, what were some of the resources that were available to me, that I didn’t use? So I was going back and not just reliving the experience, but I was going back kind of like I was walking through it, but this time with my best friend. I was being my own best friend and saying, “Hey, did you notice when this happened, or did you notice, you could have done this?”

It was a wonderful experience and it really freed me. It has allowed me to forgive myself, because there was a lot of areas where I was carrying guilt and anger. By looking at everything as an observer, I was able to recognize resources I never realized that I had. It showed me strengths I never realized that I had and it showed me options, I never knew were available.

Understand that as you go along this journey, you’re going to hit plateaus. You’re going to even backslide at times. And what I suggest that you do at those times is journal. Get a book, specifically for journaling, and when you feel yourself stuck, when you feel yourself spinning your wheels or backsliding, sit down and allow yourself to benefit from the experience as you write and learn everything you can about yourself through the eyes of an observer. Just write it all down and give yourself the gift of separating yourself from the experience. Become your own coach where you can look at it from an objective position. Then ask yourself these questions:

What were some of the strengths that this gave me?

What were some of the new directions this moved me in?

What could I have done differently?

What were some of the “gifts” that came later in life from this experience happening?

When you come at this with the intention that you will write to learn from those experiences, trust your instincts. If there is something “nagging at you”, continue writing about it until you feel it is complete. You will learn so much about yourself by sitting down, being objective, and journaling.

Take a moment right now and look at some of the biggest moments in your life; some of the greatest triumphs, or the hardest trials. And, just as an exercise, start to write and expect to learn about everything you can remember regarding that experience. As you are writing about it, look over the whole experience, and be a coach to yourself, be an observer and make the observations you may not have noticed before. Ask yourself, “What were the gifts? What were the lessons? What were the resources I tapped into? What were the strengths or the characteristics I used to get through that experience?

I know you’ll learn amazing things about yourself.

Again, this is the journey of self-awareness and as you allow yourself to become aware of these things, you can carry these tools, and these skills with you as you move forward. I look forward to hearing what you uncover about yourself.

SELF-AWARENESS 101 #2: THE ONLY WAY WE TRULY LEARN IS WE LEARN FROM MISTAKES… WE LEARN BY FAILING

Have you ever avoided even attempting to do something you really wanted to do… something you were passionate about… just because you were concerned you would make a mistake? You thought you would fail? Or maybe you thought you would just look silly? Did you even wonder what you could learn from all of those mistakes you made?

Our culture has conditioned us to have this idea of perfection in everything we do. We believe that we must be perfect, whether it’s the perfect look, the perfect hair, the perfect speech, the perfect presentation. And we end up using the excuse that we aren’t perfect to prevent us from even attempting to do it. We’re so afraid of failing, that we just make excuses of how we don’t have the skill, the time, the money and then accept our “lot in life”.

Think about it. How many people do you know that stay in relationships, in jobs, in situations that are not healthy for them, because they fear making a bigger mistake?

The reality is that the only way we ever truly learn something is to learn from mistakes. No one does something “perfectly” the first time they attempt it. Not even the most gifted person in the world. Failing, making mistakes, and taking the opportunity to learn from mistakes, gives us the opportunity to uncover areas we can work on improving that we never even knew existed before we failed.

I’ll give you an example for me personally. In 1998, I left a very well paid position as a DJ in NYC to start a new career as a professional speaker and a coach. I had no experience in this kind of business. I didn’t know how to market correctly; I didn’t know how to find clients. I didn’t know how to do the finances for a business like this. It was totally new opportunity, something I had never done before, but I was so excited about it that I went out and just “did it”. I jumped in with both feet… and I failed miserably. Within 2 years, I was considering leaving the coaching and consulting industry. I ended up in debt, I lost my apartment, I sold pretty much everything I owned just to survive. This happened because of making bad decisions in regards to partnerships, mistakes in how I marketed myself or more to the point mistakes in the lack of marketing and just bad decisions financially over all that led my early attempts at developing a coaching and consulting business to failure. It completely put me in a bad place financially for a very long time. And even more it really did damage to my confidence level. But it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life as I look back, because the only way that we truly learn, is to learn from our mistakes.

You can read every book in the world that you want about how to build a business or about how to skydive or about how to do anything that you want to do, but it’s not until you actually step into the experience, until you actually apply yourself, until you actually make mistakes then learn from those mistakes that you made that your behavior changes and you implement what you have learned. You can’t learn how to course correct, how to adjust, and how to succeed at whatever it is you are choosing to do, until you make mistakes first.

I’ll give you an example, walking. Pretty much everybody that you know, unless limited by some disability, walks. And I’m willing to bet that pretty much everybody that you know did not succeed the first time they tried to walk. Most people were barely able to get off their butt the first time before they fell down. And then they had to adjust, internally they had to think, “What was wrong? Why did I fall? What happened with my balance? What do I need to change? What can I learn from mistakes that I just made?” They do this unconsciously… and then they make the adjustments and get up a little farther before they fall again. And they repeat the internal process, failing, evaluating, and adjusting. And then finally after three or four tries (many more for most of us), they finally got to point where they were able to stand… for 2 seconds… and then they fall.

Can you even begin to count how many times a baby falls before it actually takes its first step? There is no fear of failing. It’s all about how they learn from the mistakes they made, and then making adjustments based on what they learned that allows them to actually achieve the outcome.

Over time, we’ve become conditioned to fear failing. Whether it’s from school, whether it’s from well meaning adults, or from friends who just enjoyed laughing at us, we get scared to even try something, because we don’t want to look silly. We don’t want to make a mistake because we’ve been taught that making a mistake makes us “less than”.

Or again, because our culture conditions us to believe that we must be perfect. We see so much on TV, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect body style, the perfect words being spoken at the perfect moment… we think that is the way we have to be… perfect, the first time, and no mistakes. A person watching a movie doesn’t see how many times they had to shoot this little 4 minute scene to get it right. And it’s still not “perfect”.

What if we were conditioned in a new way? Instead of getting the red mark on our paper, whenever we did it wrong. Or what if instead of when we got the laughter, the embarrassments, what if we decided to learn from that mistake and we instead used the experience to condition ourselves for success? Knowing that mistakes are going to happen, that failures are going to happen, and rather than looking at the downside, we ask ourselves, “What did I learn? What did I do right? What can I do better next time?”

That experience of failing in business put me in really bad shape financially, mentally and emotionally. AND it also opened up the opportunity for me to study with some of the great leaders in business. It forced me to learn how to market myself more effectively, how to manage my finances better as well as made me grow overall as a person. I wouldn’t be who I am; I wouldn’t do things the way that I do now, if I wouldn’t have made those mistakes. I chose to learn from my mistakes to achieve this.

So I invite you to think back in your past. What’s something that you are very accomplished at now, that the first time that you tried, you failed miserably? Give yourself the gift of coming up with a couple of ideas, a couple of experiences because this will give your unconscious mind references that you can use in the future.

The next thing I want you to think about is, what’s something you’ve been avoiding doing, because you’ve feared making a mistake or failing, or just that you will look silly? Make a list of two or three of those big and small things you may have been avoiding.

And finally, what is ONE STEP that you can take, right now, towards achieving one of these things you’ve been putting off?

I can pretty much guarantee you that you are going to make mistakes. And when you do, pick up that earlier list I asked you to make, of the things you are accomplished at now, that you failed at when you first began, and use that as a resource to push you past the fear. It’s simply about remembering how we succeeded in the past. Fail, learn from those mistakes that led to failing, make the adjustments from what you learned and move forward… that’s truly the only way we ever achieve the outcome we are ultimately shooting for.

So again, I wish you the very best, make sure to write in your journal, or leave some comments here. And feel free to share these ideas with other people.

90% of the population will complain about how their life is, but… they won’t take responsibility for their lives being that way.

That means a very small percentage actually takes control, and designs the life that they truly desire. So what is the difference between these two groups of people?

I believe that for many what makes the difference is the realization that things do not happen to them, but rather they make things happen. And when someone recognizes this, I believe that is the beginning of the journey of developing self awareness… They begin to explore what drives them, and what they are constantly attempting to avoid.

Self-Awareness is many things and as you continue the process of developing self-awareness that definition may change depending on where you are in your life.

It can be a journey of understanding what your belief systems are. Learning about beliefs that empower you and beliefs that prevent you from achieving what you desire.

Self-awareness can be about understanding what you value most. Learning about what is most important to you and why it’s important to you.

There are also numerous sets of rules that direct how you live your life. Things that you will and will not do. Things that you will or will not allow. Whether you are consciously aware of these things or not, these beliefs, these rules, these values, they determine every action that you take.

As you progress on this journey of developing self-awareness, you will find that it is like peeling layers off of an onion. Each layer that you peel off will reveal more of who you truly are. And as that happens, you may find that you develop a deeper connection with yourself and with other people.

Developing self-awareness can be a very spiritual journey. It connects you to yourself, to your family, to your community, to the world.

For me, what started this exploration into developing self-awareness is that I found myself in a place that I didn’t like being. My life had become a mess and was nothing like what I had envisioned for myself when I was growing up. And in a “moment of clarity”, I realized that every decision I had made up to that point, had brought me to that specific place.

Until that moment in my life, most of my decisions were based on trying to avoid things, trying to avoid the truth, trying to avoid responsibility, trying to avoid even looking at myself because I didn’t like what I saw. And this led me to a place of total “in-authenticity” where I had no connection to myself, or to anyone else. I was running on a self-destructive “auto-pilot” and had no idea why I was having such a miserable life.

Developing self-awareness puts you back in the driver’s seat, you get to decide where it is you are going to go, and you have more control of your life and your circumstances.

To do that, takes a lot of honesty, open mindedness, and vulnerability. At times, it’s not an easy journey, but it’s definitely worthwhile.

So, I invite you to join me on this journey. I’m going to do my best to give you ideas, to help spark your thought process, and also build a community around you. My intention is that this community will be a place for you to support each other, offering ideas, feedback and helping you find way to become even more aware, and ultimately finding ways to make the choices that help you become the person that you desire to be.

So what I ‘d like to ask you to do right now, is grab a pen and a paper, or do it on your computer, and take a moment to just capture what some of your beliefs, just the surface level, that first layer of the onion.

Some questions that will help you are…

1) What do you believe about yourself?

2) What beliefs about yourself do you have that empower you or dis-empower you? You are good at X; you are not good at Y.

3) What are your beliefs about other people? People are… and then fill in the blank. People are… good, compassionate, untrustworthy, greedy? What is it that you honestly believe about other people?

4) What are your beliefs on a global level… The world is messed up? The world is a great place? The world is in trouble? The world is on a new course? Your choice.

Ask yourself…

1) What’s important in your life? Family? Friends? Finances? Health? Power? Fame?

2) Why, is that important to you?

And now the tougher questions are…

1) Who do you desire to be?

2) How do you need to begin living, right now… to become that person.

Write them all down because over the following weeks I’ll be offering ideas to help you discover answers to these questions and more.

Welcome to your process of developing self-awareness.

February 9, 2019

Hello. My name is Willard Barth, and I want to welcome you to a series of articles I will be referring to as “Self-Awareness 101”.

After having spent the past 30 years focusing on my own journey of self-awareness, speaking to audiences big and small, consulting with businesses around the world, working with individuals to help them make tremendous transformations in their lives and now teaching others how to do the same, I’ve decided to “pay it forward”. If you are not familiar with the term, it comes from a movie by the same name. In the movie Pay It Forward, a teacher asks his students to “Think of an idea to change our world – and put it into action.” In the movie a young boy puts into action an idea called “Pay It Forward”. The idea is about doing something to help others without asking for something in return for yourself. What he did ask, was that the person receiving the help then “pay it forward” by helping 3 others and asking them to do the same. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it.

This series of articles is a part of my attempt to Pay It Forward. Over the next several months, I’m going to be releasing short article designed to help you on your personal development journey, and on your journey to self-awareness. Now, some of these are going to be ideas and lessons that have been shared by some of the greatest teachers in the areas of psychology, spirituality, finance, relationships, personal transformation and health. Others are going to be skills and strategies that I have personally used to help me overcome challenges or create specific outcomes in my own life and that my clients have used to do the same in theirs. Ultimately, the intention of this series is to open your mind to new possibilities, to give you ideas, skills and resources that you can apply in your own journey, and to give you a forum where if you choose, you can also pay it forward by sharing your experiences with others looking for direction.

Albert Einstein once said, “A problem cannot be solved with the same mind that created it.” When you open your mind to new possibilities, anything becomes possible.

Right now people are asking all sorts of questions. From issues they are facing within their homes to issues that affect people at a global level. People are trying to figure out what to do… about the economy, about the environment, within their relationships with one another and relationships with people around the world.

As people look for answers, one of the challenges that they will face is that they don’t realize that all change begins within. So many are looking elsewhere for the answers. One of my mentors, Wayne Dyer, released a book called,Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life. When you look at the title you may think, “That is such a simple statement”, but as you allow yourself to explore it at a deeper level you will also find it is a fundamental truth.

Here is a personal example of how that concept worked for me. I lost my left leg to cancer when I was 8 years old. And all I could think about, the driving focus for a good 14 years was, “Why me?” Everything that I focused on was about me being a victim and losing my leg. I believed that I was being punished. I thought that I did something wrong. I had a belief that God was against me. And those thoughts, those beliefs drove every action and created my reality.

Then there came a point where I changed that focus from “Why me?” to “How can I use this experience, how can I use all of the things that losing my leg led me to experience and learn, to serve others? How can I use these things to teach, to help other people avoid the outcomes and the mistakes that I made?”

Think about this for a minute: One idea can change your life. Let me say this again. One idea can change your life. Sometimes that change will be dramatic and instant, and other times it will be a small shift, that over time expands until you find yourself in a whole new place.

I want to be very clear. I am not sitting here saying that I’m going to be the person who’s giving you the idea that will dramatically change your life. The reason I created Self-Awareness 101 is to offer you inspiration, education and empowerment. I intend to give you the spark, the idea that will get the ball rolling. You will then be able to communicate, via comments, sharing what specifically that skill, that strategy, that idea means to you, and how you’ve either applied it in the past in your life, or how you can see applying that skill now can make dramatic changes for you.

I know that some people who come to these articles will be new to their journey of personal development and self-awareness. And that others will have invested years in studying different approaches that have given them tremendous benefits along the way. It is my intention to create a place where the new person can ask questions, and those who desire to, can share their experiences to help others along the way. Remember, “One idea can change your life.”

So I thank you for allowing me to play my part as I pay it forward. I welcome you, and I invite you to become a part of our journey here with Self-Awareness 101.