What is your lockdown self awareness?

How well have you managed lockdown? What a potentially inflammatory question to start this week’s musings with! In fact, I wrote it and deleted it twice before deciding to continue. Bear with me…

As a coach, my whole approach is to empower you to be the best version of you that you can be. To walk in the identity you have – whether you have a faith basis for that or not. I was musing on that here last week; what it means to choose each day to think, behave and respond as the best version of ourselves in agreement with the best that others see in us. How true has that been of you during lockdown? 

And as a coach, there are two key aspects of what I encourage in clients.

Firstly, self awareness. 

How well do you know yourself? When something difficult happens, how quickly are you able to notice that you are unsettled, and do the inner work of finding out what is going on and – crucially – WHY? 

Self awareness is about learning to ask ourselves questions to get to the root of belief systems, behaviour patterns, and the stories we tell ourselves. See Brene Brown’s stunning book Rising Strong for more on the stories we tell ourselves and how that affects our ability to recover after failure and grow in character.

Self awareness is the first major stepping stone on the path to transformation. We need to know where we are starting from before we can move forward. And this is never about shame for how we have failed, as that does not serve us well. No matter how you feel you have managed lockdown, what is important is being able to kindly and objectively self assess so that you can then learn. 

Secondly, choosing to be proactive.

I speak about this a lot here. It picks up themes of recognising what we CAN do rather than getting trapped in what we can’t, personal responsibility rather than passive resignation, being the agents of our own change and learning from what happens to us. 

When there is so much that is beyond our control – as evidenced by a global pandemic and associated dramatic curtailing of normal life – it can be easy to feel helpless and totally at sea. Our emotions become the dominant factor in our behaviour, hijacking rational decision making and a sense of personal agency. 

However, when we choose to be proactive, we look at what we CAN do rather than being overwhelmed into inertia by all that we cannot. We choose to notice our feelings and acknowledge them, but them act based on objective truth instead.

For more on mindsets, and a free email resource to help you identify and change your own, see here. 

So, taking us back to where we started, how have you managed the lockdown? 

There have been so many conflicting and complex emotions, and a vast and often overwhelming array of difficult and rapidly changing circumstances, losses, disappointments, and fears to negotiate. 

It is important to acknowledge this, and not minimise the enormity of what we have lived through. 

But self awareness encourages us to stop each day and look at how we are behaving, and to what extent those emotions might be getting the better of us. We then have space to choose a response that brings out the best in others as we express the best of ourselves:

…to be kind and patient rather than irritable with others

   …to practice living in this moment not fearing tomorrow

      …to be honest about how we are feeling and share the vulnerabilities of others rather than keeping people out

         …to make space for fun and connection rather than feel we have to do everything perfectly. 

So this week, do a little self awareness. Notice where negative feelings are taking over and causing internal or external strife.

Choose instead to be who you are at your best, for those around you and for yourself.