Building Your Foundation: Part One

Y.O.U focuses on providing on-the-go strategies for a successful life! 

In a special three-part series, the next few issues will cover self-awareness, the foundation of our journey for interpersonal growth.

What’s your Foundation?

When thinking about strengthening your interpersonal growth, we first have to begin with the foundation. Just as an architect starts with the foundation when designing a structure, we will spend time on the fundamentals of our growth to create stability and the base for a structure that withstands and resists wear. Self-awareness is indeed the bedrock of our journey, so we will start by highlighting the importance of self-awareness. 

Why self-awareness?

Wikipedia defines self-awareness as how an individual experiences and understands their character, feelings, motives, and desires. Duval & Wicklund (1972) referenced that if you're self-aware, you can objectively evaluate yourself, manage your emotions, align your behaviors with your values, and understand how others perceive you.

Ask yourself, why are you reading this newsletter? Was it out of curiosity? Was it because someone recommended it to you? Was it because you're struggling with something? There are plenty of reasons why you might've started reading. However, if you're still reading, chances are you want this newsletter to help you make something better in your life. And usually to make things better, you must first make a change.

Self-awareness is that first step toward making a change in your life because it helps you identify what's wrong and what’s not working. Like how we handle our finances, many are unaware of how our physical and mental habits can impact us over time. People always ask us how we're doing. Do you answer this honestly? Or do you behave like most and reply transactionally? There's a lot of power in reflecting and truthfully answering how you feel for yourself. Answering these questions often and honestly helps bring about self-awareness, but it also eventually brings about growth and change.

It’s important to note that walking through life evoking self-discovery, healing, transformation, or enlightenment, requires malleability. However, not everyone will master self-awareness, and sometimes it can be quite a struggle in the beginning. That’s okay. In fact, change sometimes only happens if there is some resistance or lack of awareness that change needs to occur. 

For example, the Transtheoretical Model (also called the Stages of Change Model), developed by Prochaska and DiClemente (1970), indicates that people do not change their behavior intentionally but rather through a cyclical process, and the first stage is precontemplation. This stage refers to that lack of awareness and a firm resistance to change or making a change.

Instead of focusing on your progress with achieving self-awareness, what’s more important is to bring the notion of self-awareness to the forefront of your reflections. Think of the importance of self-awareness as an essential ingredient (i.e., your foundation) to develop while you walk your journey of self-discovery, healing, transformation, or enlightenment. It would also help if you were just plain honest with yourself. You reading to this point in the newsletter, likely means that deep down you know something is "not quite okay." That's great because that’s one of the first steps to changing your life.

If you're ready for change, answer these seven questions.

One, Do you know what you want to change?

Two, Are you open to change?

Three, Are you ready to be honest with yourself and others?

Four, Are you ready to be uncomfortable with being uncomfortable?

Five, Are you willing to do the work to make it happen?

Six, Are you ready to not have the answers and ask for help?

Seven, Are you ready to look yourself in the mirror and say I love you?

Each question is part of the journey to develop self-awareness.

Take time this week to reflect on these questions. In the next issue, we will spend more time to dig deeper on why self-awareness can be so difficult for some people.