If you don’t plant a seed, you won’t get a flower and if you don’t have a slice of bread, you won’t be able to make a sandwich. Same goes for changing your relationship with food - If you don’t start with a solid foundation of awareness, you most likely won’t get the results you desire.
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My last post introduced my 3 step process for finding food freedom. You can check it out HERE. In this post, we’re digging into the first step: awareness.
Awareness is key
Awareness is everything when you first get started with healing your relationship with food and making changes to your lifestyle that last. When you do this first step well, you create a beautiful foundation on which to build the food freedom and well-being of your dreams. You take yourself off of autopilot and put yourself back in the driver's seat. And that feels amazing.
Building awareness is a critical step that is all too often missing when people try to create change. Why? Because it doesn’t feel sexy. It doesn’t feel exciting. But it actually is!
Hear me out - building awareness opens the door to success (like - real success - the kind that lasts)! You’re no longer taking random action - you’re taking the right action and the action that is aligned with your most authentic self. Oooh! I get excited just thinking about it.
OK, so we agree - you're not going to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. You don’t have time for that! You’re going to build a solid foundation that allows you to take your well-being into your own hands in a way that truly creates the outcome you desire.
Now, what does that actually mean? Good question.
What is awareness?
Awareness is a deep and clear understanding of where you are now, where you want to be, and what you need to know in order to create the food freedom and well-being you desire. When you dig into these three elements, the path forward starts to reveal itself to you. You move from trying to force change to inviting and allowing change. And as that awareness unfolds, making the change becomes nearly inevitable (actually, oftentimes, in the light of awareness, the changes start happening on their own. It’s fascinating).
Awareness is created by a combination of exploring your own mind and also gathering information to support you on your way forward. We start with where you currently are and where you want to be and then, using that information, we look at what you need to know to move forward in the most authentic and aligned way possible.
Let's break it down
- Where are you now (current state awareness): This is all about having a clear picture of where you’re starting. We need to know this in order to assess what we need in order to move forward. A few of my favorite questions for building current state awareness are: Where am I now? What does my current behavior look like? What’s driving my desire to make change? What am I noticing that I don’t like and want to shift? What are some of the obstacles I currently face? What strengths help me achieve goals?
- Where do you want to be (future state awareness): We need to know where we want to be in order to build a path to get us there. Reflect on the following questions to start building your vision of the ideal state: What do I desire? What does success look like? What will I be noticing/experiencing/enjoying when I reach my desired level of well-being? How will I feel when I achieve success?
- Education/resource gap: Awareness around education is two-fold: it includes, 1 - the awareness about what you need to learn and how you are going to learn it and, 2- the actual obtaining of information. Learning is an awareness step. We frequently confuse it with action because learning feels like actively doing something. But, in this case, learning helps us build awareness. We need to actually implement learning for it to be action (and that comes in the next step: choice).
Building your awareness
You may be thinking, “OK, I get it, awareness is important, but how will I actually build it?”
I’ve got you covered.
Journaling is one of the most efficient tools for building awareness. I’ve created this worksheet to guide you in building your awareness. It’s totally free, I’m not even going to ask you for your email address. But, if you like it and want to make sure you’re the first to know when other resources become available, make sure you sign up for my email list. You can do that HERE.
Now what?
Once you build up awareness, you will be inspired to move ahead with making choices and taking action. In fact - if you build awareness but don’t take action, you may end up with some anxiety caused by the dissonance of know and not doing. You’ve probably experienced something like this in business. Same thing happens in wellness.
So, make sure you stay tuned, because next week will be all about making choices and moving into action! Can’t wait to see you back here then!