Ep #36: How to Build Awareness

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast, Episode number 36.

Welcome to The Life Coach Business Podcast, a show for coaches who are ready to up-level their business and take their impact, leadership, and results to a whole new level. If you’re ready to start taking powerful action and become the leader your business needs in order to grow and thrive, this show is for you. I’m your host, Amanda Karlstad, certified life and business coach, and entrepreneurial leadership expert. Now, let’s get down to business.

Hello, and welcome, everyone. I’m so glad to have you join me here today. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you’ve had an amazing week. I have been busy this week working on some things behind the scenes that I’ll be sharing with you in the next couple of weeks that I’m really excited about.

And I’ve been working really closely with, of course, all of my clients. And it’s been so fun to see so many successes that they’re having and just the growth that they’re experiencing in their businesses and just personally and as the leaders of their businesses. It’s just been so much fun.

And I want to say that given everything that’s been happening, I’ve also been taking time in these past couple of weeks to really just pause and reflect and to educate myself, as I talked about in last week’s episode, to really process my own emotions and to process the recent events that have unfolded, and also processing the future.

And so, I just feel like there’s been so much processing happening and there’s been a lot of reflection and thinking about both what has happened, but also what can happen. And I have to tell you, I am feeling excited in some ways as I really do believe that we have a huge opportunity in front of us.

I really do believe that despite the tragedy, despite all of the turmoil, I do believe that this is a time of opportunity for all of us. And so, I think for all of us in our own way, it really is time to pause and to reflect and to go within. And it’s really about raising our overall level of awareness as to how we’ve been operating as a society and also as an individual.

And so, one of the things that I think the recent events have really shown us, or at least shown me, is the power of awareness. This is something that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about lately. It’s the power of awareness that we have both as an individual and also as a society.

And so, I want to go a bit deeper with this today because this is something that I think Is not only important as we’re dealing with the crisis at hand. But it’s something that I think we have to be aware of in our daily lives as we’re building and growing and scaling our businesses.

So, growing our own levels of awareness to that we can make the type of impact we want to make. It’s about going within. And so, that’s certainly what I’ve been doing over the last few days is just taking pause and taking some deep breaths and educating myself and listening to my body and listening to myself, listening to my thoughts, getting rest, paying attention to what I’m hearing, and essentially tuning out the things that aren’t serving me.

And so, I want to share with you that, for me, I have found that – and this is something that even before all of the events – this is something that for me, I rarely watch or listen to the media because I’ve found that, while it’s important – and I do believe it’s important to stay up to date on what is happening from a news factual level, I’ve also found that it’s just as important to constrain my energy.

And in terms of the recent events, it’s really, for me, been about constraining my energy towards self-education, towards self-reflection, towards my own level of awareness and my clients, my family, and really how I can become a better human through this.

And I know, I’ve had this conversation with my clients as well. So, if you’re currently feeling like you’re consumed or you’re feeling overwhelmed or if you’re in a state that’s not serving you or serving others around you, I really want to encourage you to assess and to look at what you’ve been giving your energy to.

And I really encourage you to assess whether it’s helping you move forward in an empowered state, or whether it’s keeping you in a cycle of disempowerment. Because I see this happening a lot and I want to give you permission that, if you’re in a space right now where you feel stuck, where you maybe feel stalled out and you just can’t find a way to change it, I want to encourage you to get re-centered, to get back to your center.

And I think this is absolutely something that all of us need especially right now. And so, I’ve been having a lot of conversations, both with clients and in doing my own work, my own coaching, with everything that has transpired, and one thing that I can say for certain is the importance of being centered, especially right now.

And so, maintaining my own sense of power has been really, really important. And so, I’ve been looking for ways to be calm. I have been finding peace. I have been spending a lot of time listening and observing just how important this really is, no matter what’s going on, to maintain that balance, some semblance of emotional regulation.

And you all know that I talk a lot about emotional regulation in my work. And the reason I do is because it’s so important. It’s the reason, essentially, that we do and don’t do things in our lives. And it’s really important to understand that, as humans, we are either moving towards some sort of pleasure, or we’re moving away from some sort of pain.

And that goes for any circumstance in any situation we’re in. We’re either moving towards pleasure or we’re moving away from pain. It’s literally how our brains are wired.

So, when I look at what is happening in the world right now, obviously there is a lot of pain. There’s a lot of pain in the events that have happened and what is happening in our country and it’s all for good reason. And I’m very sad about this. And for good reason.

And the result of that is that I’ve been observing on a large scale is that this has been having a major impact, obviously, on our emotions on a large scale. And it’s having an impact on the overall emotional level within the masses, within our society.

And so, because of this, there is major impact happening on individuals and what I want to talk to you today about is, specifically in the lens of business and looking at this from our own level of awareness, which is dictating how we’re showing up in our businesses.

And, you know, how we’re showing up in our businesses is what will contribute to the results we experience and the results our clients experience in working with us. And so, while I do think that there is a lot of good that will come from all of this and I think we’re already starting to see some of that, I’m also hoping that we’ll be able to emerge as an even stronger and more united society.

But until we get to that point – which in my opinion, it’s going to be a marathon. This isn’t going to be a sprint. And I think it’s really important that we understand this and that we are all taking a pause right now, that we are taking time to listen and that we’re giving ourselves the space to go within and do what we need to do, whatever personal work we might need to do in this moment, so that we can emerge even better on the other side of this.

And so, in order to do that, in order to cultivate a greater sense of self-awareness, that does require that we take time to pause. It requires that we take a bit of a step back and we assess where we’re at. And it’s also looking at how we want to move forward.

And so, in order to do that, we have to be listening to others and to be listening to ourselves. And one of the most important things I think every one of us can be doing right now is really assessing and evaluating what it is that we’re actually letting into our head, what we’re giving what I call our mental real estate to. And I want to give you all permission to do just that, to take this pause and to really see what’s going on and to take stock of it.

And I want you to decide for yourself whether or not what is currently going on, if that’s serving you, if that’s helping you move forward more powerfully and positively.

Alright, so, let’s talk about this concept of awareness and how it relates to growing your business. So, I think one of the best ways that I can sum this up, that I can speak to the power of awareness in the context of growing a business is this.

The results that we have or the results that we don’t have in our business is in direct correlation to our level of awareness. An here’s what I mean by this. If you’re a coach, if you’re a consultant, if you’re a business owner who wants to grow your business to, let’s say, a six or a multiple six-figure level, at least to start but you’re not currently there, I want you to know it’s because your level of awareness is not in line with that result. And here’s what I mean by that.

What I mean is that the level of who you are being in your business and the level of consistency with how you’re showing up as that person I your business is not in line with that result. And because of that, as a business owner, you are, in essence, not fully aware yet as to how to grow your business to that level. You’re just not.

And I see this happening a lot in the industry where we might see evidence, we might see others creating a successful business to a certain level. And so, we know it’s possible and we see others doing it and we know that we have the ability to do it as well. And so, that might carry us to a certain point.

But there comes a point where you have to go beyond that where you have to raise your level of awareness, where you can’t not expand your own level of awareness and work on your own level of awareness and grow that to the level that creates that level of result that you want.

And what usually happens is that when you’ve reached a point in your business where you are feeling stuck, when you’re not in momentum, where you’re not getting the results that you want or think you should be getting, in every case, it’s because you haven’t or you aren’t actively working on reaching that next level of awareness for yourself as a business owner.

So, in every case, when I see coaches, consultants, business owners, it doesn’t really matter what niche, what industry, it’s because, when they’re struggling, it’s because they don’t have the awareness yet that they really need. So, they might not have the awareness to ho they’re even showing up or they might not even have the awareness as to what it actually requires to show up at that level.

And so, not having that awareness as to where you are and how you’ve been showing up and how that directly correlates with your results is absolutely something that is key to your business growth. And many times, there is no way to see this. There is no way, when you’re in it, for you to really see this unless you have the awareness of this in the first place.

But once you have the awareness of this, I want to tell you, then it’s time to go to work. It’s time to, once you understand this, to then get acutely aware of how you are and how you’ve been showing up and to really look at the effects of that. I really can’t stress this enough. It’s really, really important to recognize this because what happens is, when we’re not aware of this, when we don’t have a good understanding and we’re not growing our own level of awareness, typically we start to blame other things.

We start to look externally and we start blaming things outside of ourselves. And we start looking for things outside of ourselves to essentially fix the problem. But the reality is, is that our success is created from the inside out. It all starts with our own level of awareness first.

So, I want to encourage you all, if you’re in a place where you’re having a hard time breaking through and you just can’t seem to get into momentum, I want to encourage you to, number one, just stop and go within. And I want you to just take a pause and start to investigate what is actually happening and investigate how you’ve actually been showing up.

And a great first starting point to help you identify what is actually happening is to first start identifying the thoughts that you’re having. Identifying and writing down the thoughts that you’re having about your business, about the results that you have, about where you feel stuck.

And I want to encourage you to actually write them down, put them on paper, get them out of your head. And once you’ve done that, I want you to find the thoughts that feel true. I want you to look for the thoughts that feel like they’re actually facts to you and I want you to look at them, and then I want you to question them.

And a great question to ask is if they’re really true or not because I want you to see what you might be accepting as fact in your business and I want you to see how it’s actually playing out in your results. I want you to see how accepting those thoughts has been making you feel and how they’ve impacted what you’re doing in your business, how you’ve been showing up, how they’ve caused you to not show up in your business and look at the results of that.

Write this down. Take pause. See what this is for yourself, and question it. I want you to see what you’ve been accepting as truth for you and question whether it’s really truth or not. I promise you, this can and will be a good starting point for you and for your own awareness.

Alright, my friends, have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care, bye-bye.

Hey, if you’re ready for a real breakthrough in your business and you’re ready to grow and scale, I invite you to set up a free strategy session at amandakarlstadcoaching.com. I’ll help you put a plan together on how you can effectively grow and scale your business while helping you make more money and accelerate your results.

It’s time to step into your full potential and make the impact you’re here to make and create the business and life of your dreams.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Life Coach Business Podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build, grow and scale your business and accelerate your results, visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com.