Who doesn’t love a beautiful shiny sparkling diamond! I often think we’re all diamonds, even if we’re ‘rough diamonds’. A diamond doesn’t start off perfect; there is a process it goes through that transforms it from a lump of rock to a diamond. The same could be said about us really. We’re all ‘rough diamonds’ and it’s our job to discover the facets of our diamond self, cut away, re-shape, and polish until what is revealed is a unique individual beautiful, and slightly flawed, diamond.
The process of Heartbeatz, where our hearts engage with our minds to elevate performance, helps us polish our diamond by exploring the 3 areas of Self-Awareness, Self Management and Self Direction. I liken the development of Self Awareness to the process of becoming a diamond. Often we are ‘covered’ or ‘hidden’ by the muck of the past with buried emotions and patterns that no longer serve us.
Self-Awareness starts with recognising our behaviour patterns and increasing our emotional literacy, in other words expanding our vocabulary around how we feel. It’s reported that being able to simply state verbally how we’re feeling contributes to changing the chemistry in our body. Emotion that is trapped within can often become the start of creating imbalance in our health, be it our physical or mental health.
When we realise that emotions are just data, another source of information coming to us through our senses, we understand that recognising and expressing our emotions are simply part of the process of increasing our awareness, after all we can’t change something we are unaware of!
How do we become more aware? – Simply notice yourself more, how do you talk to others, even more importantly, how do you talk about yourself? How do you respond (or react) to different requests from co-workers or friends; notice how you feel in the moment and see if there aren’t some self-defeating behavioural patterns that could do with an overhaul!
Be the diamond you were born to be!
