I’d like to share a framework that has served me well since it was revealed to me in what I like to call a “divine download”. You can use this framework as an essential supporting structure for your views on life. To help you stay aligned with the desires of your heart and intuition.
I was jogging down Ala Napunani Street one day, when three words came to me in a revelation. You may also hear this kind of experience referred to as an “aha moment”. In moments like these, I believe we are in direct communication with Source/God/Higher Power.
Ironically, I heard them in the same melody as the opening line of The Lox song Money, Power, Respect (feat. Lil Kim & DMX). My highest self knows I love rap lyrics and humor so it often uses these means to communicate with me.
In my head it sounded a little like this but with a lot more cursing:
I believe in awareness, power and choice. First you get the awareness, then you get the power, after you get the power, your choices become clear to you.
I’ve linked the song below but before you go sample it, stick with me for a sec. Your ego often tries to distract you from introspection and we don’t need to give it any help. As I said in my first post, what I am about to teach you has the power to change your life and I want you to have a front row seat to the transformation you so deserve.
The three pillars of The Introspective Entrepreneur are:
- Awareness
- Power
- Choice
When we take the time to gather enough information, not only about our external circumstances but most importantly our internal circumstances we give ourselves the gift of AWARENESS which then gives us the POWER to make a better CHOICE. Without awareness we can’t make a fully informed decision.
“Awareness is about restoring your freedom to choose what you want instead of what your past imposes on you”.
Deepak Chopra
Internal circumstances include our emotions and feelings. The things that make us feel happy, bright, vibrant and joyful as well as the things that make us feel uncomfortable, powerless, angry or sad. This is our internal guidance system and it is an incredibly powerful tool.
Like most tools, the more we know about them the better we become at using them to our advantage and receiving their benefits. Your internal guidance system is no different. The more you learn about how it works the better you will become at using it to your advantage.
If you don’t take the time to become fully aware of the conditions that affect your choices, choosing becomes pretty difficult. It’s relatively easy to identify the external factors (ex: financial, time it will take, skill level, environment). Where most of us get hung up is in honoring our true feelings and desires. The conditions that reside within. The things you can’t physically see, smell, touch or taste, only feel.
One of the first places this showed up for me was that moment I realized I was a “people-pleaser”. The irony of people-pleasing is that you are ultimately trying to please yourself but you can’t see it. It drives us to choose instant gratification over long term satisfaction and you become so used to it you do it without thinking. It becomes a default or unconscious behavior. Anytime we do things by default we run the risk of our ego running the show.
Your ego wants to keep you “safe”, it’s the part of you that loves the comfort zone and feels threatened by new experiences. It fears losing the comfort you created for a situation that is now in the past. There may have been a time in your life when that comfort served you well but the only time we have is the present. The best choices available to us always exist in the present.
Like many unconscious behaviors, people-pleasing is a learned behavior we must unlearn if we want to experience long term satisfaction and make choices that serve the greater good. If we don’t, we risk giving our power away each time we are tempted to choose the desires of another over our own and that is unsustainable. I’ve been down this road plenty of times and can assure you it only leads to resentment and disappointment for all parties involved.
So how did I become aware that I was a people pleaser? As the Introspective Entrepreneur that I am, I turned to my go-to personal development tool and journaled it out. Everytime I had an undesirable experience in one of my relationships I wrote about it and eventually I noticed a pattern.
First, I noticed times when I would be quick to say yes without thinking. I’d say yes when I really wanted to say no and I was afraid to disagree with people for fear of the backlash that would inevitably come with their disappointment. I noticed other times when someone wouldn’t even ask me for something and I would automatically volunteer only to regret my over-enthusiastic reaction later. It felt impossible to speak my truth at opportune times which resulted in my truth forcing its way out at inopportune times. I was endlessly apologetic for who I was and it created conflict in my life that defeated the very purpose I was trying to achieve.
Fortunately, the signs of this internal imbalance of energy kept getting louder. I continued to have challenging experiences until it became abundantly clear to me what was happening.
“I tried to pay attention but attention paid me”.
Lil Wayne, She Will
It became especially noticeable when I started my own business. As a business owner, all of your decisions directly impact your bottom line and your livelihood. You have clients, vendors and often employees counting on you. If you don’t make choices that you can follow through on and sustain you may not have a paycheck.
Journaling it out, and taking notice of how I was showing up in my interactions, helped me identify the patterns and begin to see how my actions were not helping me to achieve my goals. I was gaining awareness.
“Knowing is half the battle”.
G.I. Joe
Once I could see that my actions were creating the problem, I could begin to look for solutions. My power was restored once again. Now I had the power to choose better. Your power returns to you the moment you accept responsibility for the things you can change. This is taking your power back.
Without awareness you are unable to understand where the problem lies. Once you understand how something is happening you free yourself to choose an alternative. If you don’t know how something is happening, you can’t possibly be sure if you are changing the correct variable or not and this is just as true for our inner world as it is for the outer. The main difference between the two is that the inner is where all your power lies.
Your power lies in your ability to know what is happening and decide better moving forward. When you know what you don’t want, you can more easily figure out what you do want. You can look for other options, seek help from others and come up with creative solutions.
Once I became aware of my people-pleasing patterns, I could make a conscious choice about how I wanted to handle these situations in the future. I could begin to look for alternative ways to handle those default behaviors I was engaging in without thinking.
The next time I caught myself saying yes too quickly, I could pause and give myself space to think about it by asking the person for 24 hours to get back to them. The next time I caught myself wanting to volunteer for something, I could make sure I took adequate time to weigh the resources I had available first. I could literally list out every behavior I saw creating conflict in my life and come up with a better one that would give me a better result just by recognizing what they were.
First you get the AWARENESS, then you get the POWER, after you get the power, your CHOICEs become clear to you. You are an incredibly intelligent being, you know how you want to show up in every situation. When presented with all the facts, you know which ones you like better and which ones you don’t. So why not give yourself the gift of becoming aware of your internal facts and lean into the innate tools available to you?
You literally have the power that creates worlds living inside of you. It’s time to start using it babe.
Aloha,
XKNL
Here’s a link to the edgy melody that inspired the three pillars of the Introspective Entrepreneur, you’ll hear it in Lil Kim’s opening lines in the first 30 seconds of the song. (Sensitive ears be forewarned; the lyrics are extremely explicit.)