The Power of Self-Awareness

Black woman journaling

Self-awareness is a powerful tool that can help you take control of your life and maximize your potential. It recognizes your thoughts, feelings, values, and motivations to make conscious choices in pursuing your goals and making informed decisions.

Self-awareness also helps you stay mindful and present in each moment, allowing you to appreciate the beauty of life and all its joys. By focusing on self-awareness, you can unlock the power within yourself to lead fulfilling lives and contribute positively to society.

Starting today, each Monday, we will use a journal prompt to support your journey to the life you want through increased self-awareness.

Each week we will explore a new journal prompt. We will explore these prompts through the Live in Color workbook for two weeks.

This week’s assignment: Watch the video on page 4 and complete the exercise on page 7.

Journal Challenge | It's Generational

This right here is powerful. Think about it. Everything you feel, how your body processes food, and what color your eyes are is influenced not just by your parents but nine generations back.

Baptist church run

We can likely understand the physical aspect of this since we’ve been taught about the genetic physical markers that influence our physical health and appearance. This is saying that that also influences our mood, emotions, and mental health - and it goes back as far as nine generations.

Somebody better shout! Get Curious. with this five-day journal challenge, which asks you to explore your past to better understand your feelings, actions, and behaviors.

 

5-Day Journal Challenge

Day 1 | Document your birth story. If you can, ask your parents how they felt during the pregnancy with you and at your birth. This may be a hard ask, and they may say no, but it is worth the ask. If you cannot, try to pull together as much as possible about your birth story. Here’s a guide for what information to collect:

Start with the facts. This is the who, what, when, and where. Include who was present, your birth type, where you labored, where you were born, and your stats. Use your medical records for a basic timeline and to document how it went down.

Color with details. Set the scene. What was the weather like? How did labor start? How long was your mom in labor? What happened after she gave birth? Consider the five senses. Ask other family and friends who may have some emotional insight into the state of things for your parents during this time. They might remember details that they don’t or won’t share.

Add all the feels. This is where you can process and analyze. What did you learn? What things come up as ah-ha moments for you? Are there themes or emotions that run through the story that help you better understand your family and yourself? What are those things?

Day 2 | How many emotional and mental traits do you share with family members in different generations? What are the traits? How might that inform what you can learn about generations before you?

Day 3 | What inherited emotional traits do you love? How do these traits align with the person you want to be? What behaviors can you assign to what you’ve uncovered?

Day 4 | What inherited emotional traits do you dislike? Why don’t you like them? How do they misalign with who you want to be? What can you do to support being the person you want to be in spite of these traits? What behaviors can you assign to what you’ve uncovered?

Day 5 | What did you learn over the past five days that has been beneficial? What new tools did you discover? How did you support yourself through the curious process?

Get Curious.

Get Curious.

What does it mean to Get Curious.?

Getting curious is the process of asking questions to get to the root of the shit! Through the process, you ask a series of questions to unlock answers that will get you unstuck and lean into the soft life, a life of ease and peace. It is an active process that requires you to dig deep to find the root cause of your pain. You continue asking and answering questions until all is well with your soul. This could take days, weeks, months, or years. You commit to finding the answer.

To Get Curious., you must:

  • Give up being right. Do you want to be right or healed? Act accordingly.

  • Feel your feelings. As you explore and get curious, you will find that feeling you’ve tried to suppress, and memories you’ve tried to forget will come up. Your reaction may be painful and full of emotions. Allow yourself to sit in those emotions and feelings. Get curious about where they are coming from and why. These clues and answers will reveal things you need to know to heal. 

  • Take your time and write that shit out. Healing is a journey, not a destination. Use SoulMed’s Journal Challenges to help you. Each challenge features writing prompts. The prompts are meant to be explored. Don’t rush from one prompt to the next. Take your time and fully explore each prompt, the stories associated with answering it, and your current reality as it relates to it.

  • BEA gracious.  We are imperfect people. Healing doesn’t change that. We will fall short. Allow space for failure and use it as a stepping stone to the next level in your healing journey.

  • Practice kaizen. Strive to do one percent better each day.

  • Feel it in your soul, sis. You must feel settled in your soul before you put a question to bed.

  • Ask for a second [third + so forth] opinion. You won’t see everything. Find some mental health accountability partners. These people should know you, and you don’t feel judged by them - no matter what you tell them. Just because they aren’t judging you doesn’t mean they won’t challenge you. Look for them to challenge you and help you consider other possibilities. Be open and honest with them. Treat them like to should treat your relationship with God, yourself, your lawyer, your momma, and your doctor - tell them the absolute truth. Never lie to them.

  • BEA vulnerable.

  • Meditate. Meditation lets you become more aware and more purposeful about your actions. It teaches you how to respond to situations rather than react to them. Meditation requires discipline. Guided meditation, like Dear Black Woman, can support those starting.

  • Listen to music. Inspiration comes from all places. Some of the lyrics from your favorite songs can give you insight into your hidden fears, joys, triggers, and much more. When listening to songs, listen to the lyrics and sit with the feelings that come up. What are they? Why do you think you respond to them in that way? What are they telling you about yourself?