Self-Awareness and Self-Confidence – Living in Balance
What a concept that is, for late (ish) 2022, when this is being written, we all need to be aware that there are differences between short-term interest and long-term interest and the consequences of both and how we choose to focus and how we choose to operate.
Our behaviours, and, our long-term interest in anything is far more important than the short term.
It serves us to remember that there is no absolute and everything is relative. We must be able to judge according to the circumstances, our experiences, and feelings which are mainly related to our bodies and our minds.
It is also wise to remember that mental happiness and mental calmness is beneficial to all. And to consider that although two people may face the same kind of tragedy, or situation, or circumstance, one person will face it more easily than the other due to their own mental attitude, abilities and coping mechanisms.
And if you really want to live a happy life, then it’s important to pursue the internal and the external means and what do I mean by that?
Personal Development and material development and this is not something you’ll hear me say very often, but we can be as personally developed as we can possibly be. And if we do not have a roof over our head, food on the table, and warmth when it is freezing cold outside, then will we be truly happy?
And as much as we need personal development, and we do need material possessions, we also need spiritual development. Spiritual development does not necessarily link to a religious faith. Spiritual development can relate to the core basic human qualities and characteristics of someone who lives with ethics for a good life doing good for flora, fauna, people and planet.
We all have the same human potential, and even with a mental or physical impairment, many of us have huge potential to become far, far, far more than we currently are.
When we utilise that potential in the right direction, and we utilise the brilliance of the human mind and body and soul, we can create magic, rather than creating disasters.
We can create happy lives for ourselves. And we can also help and support others to create their happy life. We must remember that we all have a natural creative ability. We sometimes just have to find the switch and turn it on.
We need to realise our own potential and accept our own potential and then build if we do not already have it, the self-confidence in our own ability and potential.
Self-confidence is not something that comes to many naturally. Self-confidence is something that can be built, it can be developed, and it can be managed.
We can all develop from where we are to where we need to be. When we live with our future in mind, we become the person we need to be to achieve the thing that we want to achieve.
We create balance or imbalance in our own lives. And recognising that everything is in balance. It is an important first lesson in creating a happy life.
As a very simple example, if we do not smile, how would we and why would we expect others to smile at us? Most of our outcomes and our results originate from within and what we put out into the world, generally speaking, is what we receive back. Coming back to the smile, it is illogical to expect smiles from others if we do not smile.
And one of the first stages to live a happy life is self-awareness. Now, what do I mean by that?
Being aware of our own behaviours, our own thoughts, our own habits, our own unconscious, and conscious driving forces, which allow us to make judgments, which allow us to change our behaviours, which allow us to assess and rationalise the situation.
Why would we do that?
When we think and rationalise, we can think about the potential for our own benefit and the benefit of others.
Self-awareness, and self-confidence do not always mean that we have to be right. And that thing we are doing, looking at, we are assessing, we are reviewing has to be a win for us, regardless of any other situation, and the other people at the centre in the scenario as well.
And as much as I don’t particularly like the phrase win-win. It is something that when we think about win-win, and utilise the concept appropriately, many situations that aren’t currently a win-win can become one. And believe it or not, on occasions, we don’t have to win, we can lose. And as long as we are losing with a conscious forethought of mind, it can help all parties to lead a happier life.
Remember, everything is in balance, we win, we lose, and we win-win.
Let’s think about self-confidence, when we choose to balance that out, what is the balance. The other ends of the spectrum, it could be conceit, or it could be pride, or it could be lack of confidence.
One leads to good results, and the others potentially lead to not so good results for very different reasons. Maybe this is the point to say one of the things that very often comes up in these types of conversations, people are told they have an ego, and the ego got in the way.
Let’s have a think about this, we all have an ego all of us, it is neither good nor bad, we need it
Let’s look at what that actually means. The ego is a person’s sense of self-esteem, self-importance, self-confidence, self-image, self-worth. Our ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious, and is responsible for our reality testing, and provides us with a sense of personal identity.
We need our ego to allow us to continue, we need our ego to get us through things. Ego is not necessarily bad and it is not necessarily good. Everything is in balance. Everything is on a spectrum.
One part, my ego says, ‘I seek to serve’, where another part of my ego says ‘I really can’t be bothered to do that today and I’m just going to look after myself’. Now if either one of those in egos continuously wins, for want of a better word, I continuously sought to serve, what would happen to me. And if I continuously only thought of myself, because I couldn’t be bothered, what would happen?
So once again, I’ll say it and I’ll say it again and again. Everything is in balance. When we’re all out of balance, it can lead to an unhappy life. Then when in balance a life where we are happy.
We have the ups and the downs we have the rights and the wrongs we have the fors and the against.
How do we obtain happiness? When you really think about it? What is another word for happiness, happiness could be that great old belly laugh, where we really do throw caution we may have to the wind and express ourselves in absolute pure joy of finding something funny and laughing with it.
Not against people, but with the thing from that pure joy of that childhood state of pleasure and fun.
If you think about being happy, much of that comes from the fact that we are content with our lot. We are content with where we are. We are content within our relationships, we are content.
Now of course, contentment and comfortableness if that’s the right word, or even a word – if that is a word, comfortableness & contentment can be a preface to not growing and not developing,
We need to be slightly discontent with where we currently are, which then takes us to change and how to do that? And you will have heard me say it and I will say again, nothing sits in isolation.
Remember, we are in balance if we are content, we will also be discontented. If we are happy, we will also be unhappy. For us as the human being that we are, it is about how we balance everything in our life and not get hooked into the negative, or hooked into the positive, without remaining in balance.
Life is a joy, life is beauty and getting that balance right or wrong as we ultimately do. Recognising when it is right, and when it is wrong, leads me to ask you, what do you feed your own mind? That leads to thinking about and believing in a happy life, a contented life, acknowledging that, neither will be 100% of the time, and that we will be unhappy at times
We will be on occasions discontented, it’s perfectly normal. So let me give you an example of something that happened to me the other day, and it could have affected my day, it could have affected my next hour, and I didn’t allow it to, I managed to break two not one, but two crystal champagne glasses the other morning, they fell off a work surface onto the floor and smashed.
Now I will say they were beautiful crystal champagne glasses. And I love crystal. And I will say with a smile on my face, I was not drinking at 9am in the morning, they were on the side to be hand washed from the night before, in fact, the two nights before because I hadn’t done the washing up that day. And currently don’t have a dishwasher. Which I highly recommend to everybody reading this
Now I could have chosen to allow that scenario, that situation to make me very unhappy, I could have allowed that situation to make me become angry. Now please remember, nobody can make you do anything, nobody can make you feel anything is an absolute choice you make.
As much as I was in that initial moment, angry at myself, because I had knocked them over. Nobody else did that. I can only accept personal responsibility for my action. I could have in that moment been very discontented and very unhappy.
They were very nice glasses. And for that split second and maybe a little bit longer than a split second. I was angry with myself for being so stupid as to knock the glasses off of a counter and allow them to smash on the floor.
With the greater good and the greater vision and the greater everything in my mind.
• What’s the point of being angry?
• What’s the point of being annoyed with myself?
• What’s the point of being unhappy over two glasses?
• What is the point?
Yes, they were beautiful. And yes, they have served. And yes, I have enjoyed them. And yes, they can be replaced at a cost if I choose to. They were a material object.
And when we replace material objects, of course, the economy of the world goes round. There is a balance in everything we do. There is balancing everything we think, when we are in charge of and in control of our own thought processes.
This episode of the Conscious Leadership podcast has taken a bit of a different route. And I trust it is allowing you to think about what goes on for you.
• What triggers your emotions?
• What triggers your thought processes?
• What triggers your happiness or unhappiness?
• What triggers your contentment or discontent?
• What triggers your anger or your joy?
Remember, everything will be in balanced one way or the other at some point. That’s not a prediction of doom, gloom and despondency is a prediction of ‘things’ (technical word) and ‘things’ happen in life as life happens.
I wrote an article the other day around the concept of life is a mess. Life is messy, and we go from one mess to the next mess. In reality, there can be two people facing the same mess and depending on the individual, one will look at it and think that’s okay, I can deal with that. Whereas the other one will look at it and collapse into a heap.
We are all through our own personal development, self-development, wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, whatever you want to call it, our experiences throughout life. We are all capable of far more than we can possibly know. And it is our duty to not only serve ourselves but also to serve others, enabling them to be the best version of themselves they can possibly be
Sometimes that is allowing and creating a shining light on others rather than ourselves. We can put others first not ourselves. And then on occasions of course, we put ourselves first and not others.
For some of you that is a big lesson to learn and accept. All of everything combined enable us to be happy, enables us to be content enables us to be in balance with the world and with the people in it.
There is a reason for everything, and things and people come into our lives for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime. Not everything is permanent, and not everything is impermanent, everything is balanced, or will be out of balance, regardless of what happens – we can all have a life of joy and happiness, when we are prepared to realise, we do deserve it.
We are the creative genius that we are. Anybody who wants to talk to me about any of these, please reach out and message me.
I’ve a complimentary call option in my Calendar , if you want to talk about this, book a call