Embark on a journey of discovery to awaken the fulfilling life you deserve!
Do your life responsibilities overshadow your self-fulfillment? Have you lost sight of you? Do you want to nurture and grow your self- awareness? The Gift of Knowing You is an inspiring resource for assessing your personal fulfillment, making peace with your past if needed, and discovering where your joy resides.
Author Joselyn Smith-Greene set the intention to transform her inner turmoil from a traumatic childhood into a life brimming with gratitude and fulfillment. She shares her experience to help you craft a life that embraces the essence of your truest self.
You’ll discover how to:
• Awaken your transformational self-discovery with three important questions.
• Use powerful self-care practices to illuminate your path along your journey.
• Encourage reflection and self-awareness with the practice of journaling.
• Transform negative experiences into a catalyst for creating positive change.
With personal examples, reflective questions, and easy-to-follow exercises, you’ll reconnect with who you are, value your unique qualities, and discover the power of your story.
Embark on a journey of discovery to awaken the fulfilling life you deserve!
Do your life responsibilities overshadow your self-fulfillment? Have you lost sight of you? Do you want to nurture and grow your self- awareness? The Gift of Knowing You is an inspiring resource for assessing your personal fulfillment, making peace with your past if needed, and discovering where your joy resides.
Author Joselyn Smith-Greene set the intention to transform her inner turmoil from a traumatic childhood into a life brimming with gratitude and fulfillment. She shares her experience to help you craft a life that embraces the essence of your truest self.
You’ll discover how to:
• Awaken your transformational self-discovery with three important questions.
• Use powerful self-care practices to illuminate your path along your journey.
• Encourage reflection and self-awareness with the practice of journaling.
• Transform negative experiences into a catalyst for creating positive change.
With personal examples, reflective questions, and easy-to-follow exercises, you’ll reconnect with who you are, value your unique qualities, and discover the power of your story.
There is no greater gift you can give or receive than to honor your calling.
It’s why you were born. And how you become most truly alive. —Oprah Winfrey
The greatest gift you can receive is the knowledge of who you are. The Gift of Knowing You is intended to spark the realization of your truest essence, giving you clarity on what makes you who you are, unlike no other. Discovering how you see yourself, recognizing your personal greatness, and realizing your life purpose are the objectives of this journey. The only requirement for you to receive this priceless gift is your willingness to dwell within.
In this book, I will guide you through a creative process of discovering who you are from the inside out. You’ll recognize what captivates your attention and why. The questions scattered throughout the book are intended to spark internal dialogue as you travel along your discovery journey. You will also find creative play and exploration activities. Creative self-discovery is not about making stuff; rather it’s about finding a mode of self-expression that speaks to you. It’s listening to your inner voice. It’s getting lost in the doing. It’s about providing food for your soul and creating the pathway to your authentic self.
The “we” in the pages that follow refers to you and me because I’m on a journey right alongside you. To help you navigate more easily, I share parts of my personal journey thus far. Keep in mind, life journeys are ongoing, a continuum, an evolution, and a testament to a fulfilled life.
Before we embark, let’s consider three important factors that will help maximize a successful journey. The first is mindfulness. Mindfulness is being present with your thoughts and feelings, while being aware of what’s going on around you. It's the ability to stay focused on what you are doing as you are doing it, independent of your life circumstances. Past hurts, worries, and responsibilities are kept at bay as you process each moment. The past is the past, and the future is yet to be. The present moment is the equalizer that levels the playing field. Regardless of economic status or the level of success achieved, the present moment is all any of us truly have.
Perhaps mindfulness can be better understood by pro- viding a few examples of what it is not. It’s not completing your morning routine and later wondering, “Did I … ?” (fill in the blank with any of your morning tasks). It’s not getting to your destination and wondering how you got there. It’s not formulating your response while another person is still talking. It’s not replaying past moments or anticipating future ones.
Instead, mindfulness is disengaging from autopilot and bringing your awareness to what is unfolding before your eyes in real time. Bringing your awareness to the present moment is the easy part. Staying in the present moment can be quite arduous, as there are so many dis- tractions vying for your attention. How you remain in the present moment is an individual strategy that can develop over time. Exercise 1, at the end of this chapter, offers suggestions to help you begin flexing your mindfulness muscle.
The second factor is self-awareness. According to Merriam Webster, self-awareness is “an awareness of one’s own personality or individuality.” Collectively, your personality, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, beliefs and motivations comprise your individuality. When attuned to each of these areas, you are in the best position to understand who you are and operate in a way that serves you. You know exactly what you are thinking, what you are feeling, and most important, you know why.
The foundation of self-awareness rests on your ability to be vulnerable and examine your experiences. This might be difficult. It might involve reliving a painful part of your life. Although it’s challenging to reflect on unpleasant experiences objectively, they can offer great insight into who you are today. The more you connect the dots between the past and present, the more self-aware you become.
Another important factor of self-awareness is being aware of the impact your words and actions have on others. In real time, you are cognizant of their facial expressions, verbal responses, and body language. These observational cues can offer insight into the quality of your interactions and the degree to which you are received.
Our ability to self-assess and self-monitor lessens the chance of knee-jerk reactions. Reactionary responses, behaviors, and unexplained emotions can cause distress, uneasiness, and inner turmoil. It can allow unsettling and unproductive thoughts to run rampant. With self-aware- ness, you are operating from a place of mental clarity, giving yourself the headspace to navigate life with intention. Self-awareness is like a muscle. To strengthen the muscle requires mindfulness and honest self-assessment. The more you exercise it, the stronger it will become.
The third factor that will help you along your journey lies in your ability to question yourself. Questions are powerful. They encourage thought and reflection. As you question yourself, be mindful and aware of your reactions and how you respond. Your responses to the questions in this book can provide you with your roadmap for living your authentic life.
Like questions, quotes are powerful too. They help solidify an understanding capable of leaving an indelible imprint on your mind and, even more important, a lasting impression on your soul. I have included quotes throughout the book to inspire and encourage you to be on the lookout for other meaningful quotes as you travel along your journey.
With mindfulness, self-awareness and self-reflective questions, the process of self-discovery is easier. You are in the best position to identify what’s important, what matters, and your unique recipe for harvesting your joy. As you grow and evolve, your recipe for joy will likely morph and change as well. As you strengthen your connection to “self,” you will also find that ordinary moments become extraordinary. Are you ready to begin your gifted journey of discovery? Let’s start with the first of three major questions: Who are you?
Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.—Stephen Covey
E X E RC I S E 1
FLE XING YOUR MINDFULNESS MUSCLE
One of the best ways to begin exercising your mindful- ness muscle is to turn off your autopilot. Here are a few suggestions that will help you reinforce your connection to the present moment:
• Brush your teeth or write with your nondominant hand.
• Change the order in which you put on your clothes.
• Take a new/different route than you normally would to your next destination.
• Count how many different smells or sounds you encounter on your next walk.
• Acknowledge and document any daily experiences that make you smile.
• Consider keeping a mindfulness journal centering on a goal you want to
achieve. Schedule a few minutes in your day to write a short entry that
focuses on your reflective thoughts, progress, and feelings as you work
toward your goal.
Switching up your usual routines will help you to stay focused on what you’re doing moment to moment.
Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.
—John Teasdale, Research Scientist
The Gift of Knowing You, Discovering the Power of Your Story orbits itself around the philosophical concept of ‘knowing thyself’ and I am all here for it. Smith-Greene puts forward a very conscious guide to unlocking your true self through becoming more self-aware in a variety of easily achievable manners. The book aims to assist you in clarifying your identity as well as how you see yourself through encouraging a creative process of self-discovery. The key themes surrounding this book are mindfulness, self-awareness, and the ability to self-reflect with productive outcomes and the author provides a detailed explanation for each theme on how these factors can improve your happiness as well as your feeling of self-worth. It was interesting to learn about the author’s thoughts on how these three factors facilitate the journey to self-discovery. It was especially eye-opening to read about how as you age and therefore grow as a person, what constitutes happiness for you will change as your priorities shift. Yet, it is of utmost importance that you remain mindful as you evolve into a matured person. Smith-Greene provides abundant tips on how to achieve this constant mindfulness especially in order to increase your focus. One quote that stuck with me in particular was that ‘we might accomplish a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily resonate with our soul’, hence the author’s encouragement to turn off our “auto-pilot”. By autopilot, she means how we go about our day subconsciously without taking a moment to be present and appreciating the little things. I loved learning about how we can thrive and create more positive environments for ourselves and others simply through self-awareness and regular mindful practices rather than merely existing. Readers will also enjoy engaging with the activities provided; I especially enjoyed having to think seriously about and then write down my own personal statement on who I am. I personally feel like it would have been even better to have more activities like this.