3 Tips To Improve Self-Awareness And Take Control Over Your Mind
Year 2019 marks 10 years since I started meditating.
I want to take a moment today to slow down and reflect upon the lessons learned. Meditation has contributed to mastering my mind and achieving a state of constant awareness. This helps me stay emotionally balanced throughout the day.
Today I’d like to share my story with you and tips to help you take control over your mind.
1. If you haven’t yet, consider getting into meditation
Meditation has helped me reduce stress levels, cope with anxiety and uncertainty, eliminate anger. Today I can say with confidence that it has positively contributed overall to my mental wellness.
You may wonder what is meditation anyway and how can I start meditating? One way to bring meditation into your life is by starting slow.
For instance, you can commit to meditate 3 minutes right after you wake up, or find a quiet spot at work to take a 5 minutes mental break to declutter your mind.
Try meditate on the subway platform while you wait for the train, or make it an habit to prepare you for bedtime every night.
The power of repetition and consistency
No matter how or when you choose to meditate, keep it consistent and gradually increase the intervals from 3 to 20 minute a day. How long you meditate is a very personal choice based on where you are at in life.
There’s a lot of literature out there stating that by integrating 27–40 minutes of meditation in your daily activities can have long lasting benefits on your mental wellness.
Personally I have noticed a tangible difference when I increased my daily practice from 10 to 20 minutes in the morning. It also helped making a conscious choice of staying aware and present during all the remaining waking hours of my day.
2. Make your mind your ally, not your enemy
My experience at the Shambala Meditation Center
During my meditation journey I happened to cross paths with students of the Shambala center in NYC who invited me to the weekly dharma gathering on Tuesday evenings, back in 2012.
The teachings of Shambala center resonated with me because the classes are designed to help fellow New Yorkers cope with the day to day annoyances that all New Yorkers experience:
- the never coming subway
- tourists standing in awe right at the top of the subway blocking everyone else who’s trying to rush to work
- lack of sleep
- long (unpaid) hours at work
- the push and pull, ups and downs, hypers and lowpers…
Back then in 2012 I was so immersed in the NYC drama that I didn’t realize that I was the one creating the whole drama for myself. Shambala helped me relax into my reality and confront it from the standpoint of the peaceful warrior, as opposed to the feisty New Yorker.
Thanks to the teachings of the Shambala center I discovered Contentment (I took the course Contentment in Everyday Life and absolutely LOVED IT).
The mind left to itself is a wild horse
I learned about how to partner up with my mind as an ally instead of letting it drag me around like a crazy horse.
I began to learn meditation techniques that soon became part of my daily routine. After that, I started observing how my mind quieted down and bent to my lead, working WITH me as opposed to AGAINST me.
I began to gain a sense of peace and feeling grounded, riding the horse of my mind to let it take me to places where I wanted to go to and not letting it push me around at random. Some places where I wanted to go were:
- Quit a career that I had grown out of and find the courage to re-invent myself
- Learn coding and go back to pursuing a career in Tech
- Only allow meaningful relationships in my life
- Minimize exhausting and superficial social interaction that was not fulfilling my deeper needs
- Become an American Citizen
- Lose 6 pounds
- Start diversifying my income streams and draft a plan to build long term wealth
Fast forward to today, March 2019, this powerful collaboration with my mind has led me to reach each and every one of these 6 places where I wanted to go.
I’m positive that if you learn to work with your mind you will be able to achieve any imaginable (and unimaginable!) goal you set yourself to achieve.
3. Deepen your awareness
Today I want to reflect on self-awareness: the ability to see yourself clearly, confront your inner, darkest demons to became aware of who you are.
Know Yourself
One of my favorite classes in high school was Ancient Greek. I loved spending entire afternoons deciphering beautifully written words in Greek characters and translating them into Italian, my native language.
One of the most powerful lessons the Ancient Greeks taught me is:
“γνῶθι σεαυτόν”
Know Yourself
I find that these two simple words contain infinite wisdom. Try to imagine a world of enlightened human beings…
In other words, people, like all of us, who took the time and found the courage to confront them selves. Peel the layers. Discover who they truly are.
I love these people. It is true that you do not meet them often, but when you do they leave an indelible mark. Consequently, I can’t help but wanting to be more like them.
They are emotionally intelligent and pay attention to their intuition. As a result, they interact with everyone around them with respect and exercise self-control in all situations. In doing so, they give others permission to do the same.
I find that being able to take note of my inner world as I engage in my day to day activities makes me feel powerful and fulfilled.
For instance, I don’t let my mind rush to judge and push me around in a reactive state. Instead, I find immense peace in being able to observe thoughts, feelings, words as they arise.
Most importantly, I have learned to take a breath and choose how to proactively respond, coming from a place of inner peace and acceptance.
In conclusion
Self-awareness is conscious of the games that the mind plays and allows you to become your own leader. I believe this is critical if you want to reach a position one day where you will step up to lead others.
Entrepreneural readers out there, I’d love to hear from you! What are your thoughts on Leadership and Self Awareness?
Feel free to leave a comment below. Your experience may help other Readers out there who are one step away from becoming Leaders
