Self awareness: conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives and desires. Re-reading this definition over and over sort of makes me question my own self awareness. How about you? Since becoming a mom my sense of self has changed so much. I’ve been lost and come back and maybe a little worse for the wear, maybe better than before. Before I became an adult I had this picture in my head of what it would look like, who I would be, how I would feel and honestly it’s harder than I thought, ha. When you’re young, you’re selfish and as you get older, life gets more consuming and you really have to be in tune with yourself to survive. Especially now, with so much outside influence from peers, social media, opinions, etc. Self awareness is more important than ever.

When it comes down to it, we are all still little people at heart. No matter how old we get, how many kids we have, how much energy we dedicate to work or making new friends – we still hold on to things that affected us as a kid. I think about this a lot when it comes to how I react to things. I often ask how childhood me would handle situations and sometimes it softens the situations or sheds a different light on how I’m feeling.

For example –– confidence. I am a firm believer that confidence is a struggle no matter your age. Think about how you felt as a child when you didn’t mesh with a friend in class…you moved on to the next. No skin off our backs, we just went different ways and no one really noticed. I think about this all the time! If only it were that easy. Self awareness and confidence go hand in hand. You can’t be confident if you’re not self aware. You can’t live life to your best ability if you don’t have self awareness. It’s like a pact you make with yourself! A pact to trust your feelings, your emotions – trusting yourself is the utmost confidence in YOU. It feels harder than it looks these days. Everywhere you look there is an opinion to reroute and go another direction or someone/something telling you that the way you’re doing it is wrong. It can be really easy to lose sight of who we are.

I asked a few questions to my Instagram audience yesterday and one of them was “do you feel like you show up as your true self?” And the responses were eye opening. I think a huge thing about self awareness and confidence is accepting that we aren’t necessarily the same person we once were. We hold tight to previous versions of ourselves without honoring new phases or new versions. Sort of like my “adult” mindset. I always thought that being an adult was the end of all the bull shit, but I’ve realized it’s kind of the opposite. We are smarter, more aware, more exposed to the good and bad, fearful, worried, we have a need to control and so on. For me, I let the fear take over and try to control everything which literally leads to this paralyzed feeling of insecurity and self doubt. THE OPPOSITE OF SELF AWARENESS AND CONFIDENCE.

For me self awareness and confidence comes from trusting who I am right now. That my intentions are good, that I approach everyday to the best of my ability and that I’m moving in the right direction. I’m not setting boundaries for who I think I should be or need to be. Instead, trusting the process, the growth, the transitions. Because our intuitions are EVERYTHING. We aren’t going to steer ourselves wrong, you know? I can’t imagine any of us are going through the day not doing the best we can.

*also, I know not everyone here is a mom but I want to address something to the moms reading this. Motherhood is a journey. You lose yourself a little bit when you become a mom. And for the first few years and when you’re experiencing new phases of motherhood and really until you find your community of moms to walk you through it. But on the other side is this new identity that you can’t believe was ever not who you are. And sometimes it is hard to look in the mirror and think about the you before you became a mom but I promise one day it clicks and you’ll never look back. It took me awhile to accept the long days and sleepless nights and the giving of yourself and emotions all the time, but now I can’t imagine giving myself to anything else. Confidence shows up when you see the new you for what you are, instead of wishing for what once was. I promise!