Copyright © 2022 Lee Spirit
This week’s focus has been on self-awareness exercises, and finding the bliss in becoming more expansive in spirit. In other words, how do you build more present-moment awareness, which includes self-awareness? How do you enjoy the beauty of expanded consciousness, and the gifts of intuition?
When things are going well in your life, you may confuse that for being self-aware, expansive, and happy. But what happens when things go sour? Do you pull away, push away, hide, or feel angry, fearful, or depressed? One of the greatest things we can do for ourselves is learn how to be happy when things are both easy and light, and also when we’re faced with struggles and difficulties. These self-awareness exercises are meant to help develop your capacity for feeling happy no matter what your circumstances.
Water expands upon freezing, so I like this photo of my morning skate this weekend as we discuss making ourselves more expansive! We also have a full wolf moon tomorrow! The moon represents water, the tides, and its phases of impermanence. Our emotions ebb and flow in the same way. The moon rules our subconscious, and can expand our awareness until we feel intuitive and enlightened! It’s a great feeling to really understand yourself, love yourself, and share that love with others.
Self-Awareness Exercises: Begin With a Different Perspective
I took a stroll this week under the mystical, mysterious, inconstant moon, and was wondering how to increase my awareness. The psychic realm has always intrigued me, along with the moon, stars, and planets! I can’t think of a better place to start your self-awareness journey than under the night sky and all its wonders!
Sometimes all we need to do to gain self-awareness is to take a small step outside our back door, and gaze up at the expansive night sky. If you’re lucky to be in a dark enough location, you can gaze at the stars and moon and remember how small you really are. Remember that the whole earth is a speck of dust in the vast cosmos. Looking at your life from a different perspective can make all the difference in remembering who you really are. Gazing at the sky with awe and wonder will also allow you to take a few deep breaths to ease your stress.
Building Self-Awareness Through Nature Immersion
Forest bathing has been one of my favourite things lately. Maybe after wearing a mask so often, my sense of smell is heightened whenever I’m amongst tall Evergreen trees in the forest. Even during a run in the city through my neighbourhood, there’s one corner where I can always smell the Spruce trees gathered there, and I imagine I’m in the forest, not on a city street!
Nature makes all of our senses come more alive when we stop and notice with all our senses. What do you see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and sense? You’ll find out a lot about yourself in this process! What you like and dislike – What makes you feel happy, or resistant – Whether something makes you relax, or feel more tense. This is self-awareness at its finest.
Then you can adjust your life to have more of the pleasantries, while holding an awareness and acceptance of your dislikes. For instance, you go where the sun is because it brings warmth to your soul, but if it happens to be cloudy or rainy, you accept what is, find the beauty in that, and maintain your happy state, even though it’s not ideal.
Self-Awareness Exercise: Keeping a Journal
Writing has always been a favourite activity and talent of mine. This is the reason I’m here writing these blog posts – To serve others on their journey of mindfulness and spiritual development in a way that’s true for me, and sustainable over time!
It’s a great exercise to keep track of your own self-awareness. Writing down your goals, dreams, desires, and values so you can clearly see them, and revisit them is important! You might focus on a physical goal like taking regular walks in nature. Perhaps you also want to jot down an emotional goal, like loving yourself more. Another one might be improving your ability to see through your Third eye of awareness, and what you might do to accomplish that.
Writing things down will help you understand yourself on a deeper level. You may examine your past programming and wounds from the past. It may bring to light your defence mechanisms, or feelings and emotions that you have not yet properly felt and integrated. This is important if you want to become an enlightened being, authentic and expansive.
Expanding Self-Awareness By Noticing Signs From the Angels
I’m a big believer in angels all around us! I didn’t quite think about it until I kept seeing repeating numbers everywhere I went! It blew my mind how often I’d see numbers from 000, 111, 1111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 999, and still do today! There had to be a reason, so I looked it up, and discovered that these are angel numbers, each pattern with a different meaning. I came to memorize the meanings because of the frequency with which I saw them. I wanted to know, in the moment, what that message for me was from the spirit realm.
If we didn’t notice patterns and coincidences, we might miss out on a message we need to pay attention to. For instance 111 might be a cue to “Follow that thought” or “What do you want to manifest?” 444 might be a signal that you are surrounded by angels, and never alone. 666 may be a signal to watch your thoughts, and keep them positive. 888 may be a message of abundance, and so on. If we don’t pay attention, we don’t get the message. Noticing and having faith that synchronicities have meaning and aren’t just coincidence and random will help you develop increased self-awareness.
Self-Awareness Exercises: Memory, Mindfulness, and Meaning
The better our memory, the better our capacity to be self-aware and expansive in energy and consciousness. We develop our memory muscles by noticing and remembering what was meaningful, or precious to us during the day.
Perhaps it was the sun glistening off the water in a park, or a touching message from a friend. It might be good practice to also notice what you forget easily. How many times are you driving to work past a beautiful band of trees, and yet you didn’t even notice the trees? It might be a cue to pay more attention to the beauty around you, as well as keeping your eyes on the road.
Mindfulness is about becoming more aware of what’s happening in the present moment. We can become more present through our breath. For example, just stopping to smell the flowers, literally, will expand our openness to receive the wisdom of our intuition.
Similarly, finding meaning in things that we wouldn’t normally think about is one of the great self-awareness exercises. I recently made a visit to my first salt cave, halo-therapy session. For the prescribed 40 minutes, I was in a dark cave made of pink Himalayan salt bricks, with soft lighting flashing different colours to mesmerize me as I inhaled the healing salt crystals.
Before long, I noticed all these faces in the patterns on the wall! Some happy, some sad, some old, some young, some animals…Each of the faces I saw were likely a reflection of what was happening within me at the time. If we pay attention to these meanings, we become more aware of our own emotions, struggles, and what is really going on inside of us.
What Do You See When You Look Into Your Own Eyes?
More self-awareness will be yours if you look yourself directly in the eye while standing in front of a mirror. I took a workshop at one time on self-awareness exercises that said to take a small hand-held mirror and only look yourself in one eye for an extended period of time. So much self-awareness will arise for you as you practice this every day, twice a day, for several minutes. You may see a sadness you didn’t realize was there. You may notice wrinkles around your eyes from a lifetime of laughter. It’s possible you may even cry when you notice your own pain and suffering. Staring at yourself can bring great self-awareness.
Self-Awareness Exercises: Read All About It
For over 20 years, I’ve been so interested in reading about all the topics I write about in these blog posts! It makes me feel lighter, and uplifts my spirit to learn so many things about mindfulness, self-awareness, self-help, personal development, meditation, yoga, and so on. If you want to learn about yourself, read books like the ones found on my References page! These works are masterpieces in my mind, and gems that have expanded my consciousness and saved my soul. I will keep adding to this list as my life and blog posts go on! You can start reading right here on my blog webpage by searching for a topic you’re interested in. Here’s a great example:
Click Here For More Ways to Cultivate Present Moment Awareness
Self-Awareness Through Yoga and Meditation
I’ve said it many times, but yoga and meditation are my two main go-to’s for expanding my self-awareness. I started yoga many years ago thinking it was a light workout, rather than a spiritual practice in gaining self-awareness. I was so tense and didn’t understand what it was all about that I’d giggle throughout the class. While giggles are good, the uncontrollable ones are probably more a sign of anxiety than frivolous fun! It can be good to giggle it all out, as a release, but maybe not during a meditative practice like yoga!
I slowly became more self-aware, through breath and movement, and learned different styles of yoga. Do what suits you best. There are ones involving a lot of movement and strength, while others hold the poses for a long time, and others still focus on moving the breath and stagnant energy.
In meditation you will focus on your breath while becoming the observer of your thoughts. You become mindful of your mind-body-spirit in this practice, and become very aware of yourself and what you truly desire, as well as who you really are.
Natural Mind Healing
If you haven’t already entered your email to receive my free report, ‘Natural Mind Healing’, I encourage you to do that now by clicking the link below in my signature. It will help release negative thinking and anxiety, so you can get into that blissful state of being happy no matter what is going on in your life – good and bad! A regular, consistent practice of these self-awareness exercises, and many others I may write about in another post is key to your happiness!
Lee Spirit is an avid outdoors adventurer with a love for nature, photography, health & fitness, wellness, and spirituality. She helps those who suffer from anxiety & negative thinking to become healthier in mind-body-spirit. Her own personal journey has led her to the study and practice of mindfulness, health, wellness, yoga, spirituality, sound healing, meditation, and personal development for over 20 years. Get mindfulness, meditation, and personal development tips in her Free Natural Mind Healing Report.