The Challenge of Self-Awareness

You have a decision to make.

And, you have an awareness, an inner knowing, of the path that is right for you.  You also have thoughts that start with the words, “But what if ….” and end with all of the reasons you should make a different decision.

This is what happened to one of my clients recently.  There is an opening in her organization, and she could apply.  It would be a promotion and an advancement for her career.  It is available to her now.  It will be available again in the future.

As she shared her story with me, I noticed that her facial expression, intonation, and body language all shifted dramatically when she talked about applying vs. when she talked about staying in her current role for a while longer before advancing.

To me as an observer, it was easy to see which way her heart, her inner knowing, was directing her. It wasn’t as easy for her.

When she considered staying in her current role a while longer, her thoughts rambled on about missed opportunities.  When she thought about moving forward with applying, her thoughts equally confused her with why that wasn’t the right decision.

Leaving her with, “I don’t know what to do.”

Through a series a questions that are designed to guide someone through their awareness and distinguish between true inner knowing and the distraction of inner chatter, she was able to see the same things I saw from my outside perspective.  When she reached this point, I said, “I think you know your answer; you just don’t want to know because of what it means you’ll be giving up.”

She agreed.

Sometimes the challenge of tuning into your self-awareness is that when you act in alignment with it, you must give up something that you think you want. 

And so, you must ask yourself the question, “Which thing(s) do I want more?”

That which I will gain by aligning with my inner knowing.  Or, that which I think I’ll gain when I act out of alignment.

In my life, the only thing that ever came from acting out of alignment with my knowing was regret.

A result that was never worth the trade.