The Awareness that Heals is a never-ending cycle of self-inquiry. Even as you may feel you have reached development of several levels in one area of your life, you may begin to recognize that you, and all of us. are rookies in another. Identifying yet unseen aspects of your life with awareness need to be met with compassion and a sense of appreciation. It takes great humility and courage to look at what areas aren't yet developed. You are opening vulnerable areas that many of us avoid! Yet, we are being guided to meet these challenges with a compassionate inquiry with a tone of support. This week Robert encourages listeners to take a brief review of The Awareness That Heals process and ask, where am I able to implement these steps quickly? Where am I yet unaware? This work is a dedication to expressing what we feel is difficult and aren't sure how to move forward. Then, we can focus on what it is that we really need and how we can get there. Ultimately, this is the roadmap for being able to not suppress what is difficult, identify with this being a universal tendency and make that courageous turn to care and move in the direction that will create the most benefit.

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Most people are part of the program. The equation is: success + sex + power + moving toward wealth + being popular + having a family = Fulfillment. This is the dominant western narrative of how to arrive at happiness. In this week's episode, Robert challenges this assumption. He suggests we ask essential questions of ourselves, listen carefully to our guidance, then follow through with new thoughts and actions. This sincere questioning will help develop qualities in our character and heart. Fulfillment is something that really requires thinking for yourself outside the box. As you consider a shift, it may help to imagine yourself from the end of your life. Can I visualize going for this? Would I really have higher esteem, a higher sense of purpose if I went for it versus not?

It takes tremendous courage to move outside the collective consciousness. If you do take that leap, you may fear that not many people are going to support you. Join us for some steps you can take to start visualizing this potential in your own life. Robert offers grounded ways to move contemplatively toward fulfillment, inspiration, compassion, or creativity. You are not being careless but careful in living an inspired life.

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Recognizing a style of how we deal with our challenges can be a great way to begin learning how to best take care of ourselves. At one level it may appear paradoxical because most of us have been raised to believe we want to feel good. That we want to appear to feel good to others and ourselves. We haven't understood the price of suppressing feelings. This episode highlights the importance of taking some time to drop into life's most difficult experiences. It can lead to a contemplation of needs to support having a more complete and accurate direction of how to feel and live. Stewing is one of the other common ways to deal with challenging emotions. Like a forgotten pot of food boiling on the stove. We do not recognize that the food is there to be eaten/experienced in a way that doesn't create harm. It can then guide us to recognize and follow our most essential needs. Many people are not aware of their feelings, or they might be aware of them but they do not want to share them. They want to appear together, happy, and cool. However, both these tendencies are what actually keep away deep connections from ourselves and each other. This is why it is so important to investigate a more nuanced way of being with our feelings. We can't deeply trust ourselves when we're having to run away or compartmentalize.

For those of you that have not yet looked at The Introspective Guides to Awareness That Heals, this would be a great time to download those for free. They identify 75 challenging emotions, 75 healing qualities, actions, and essential needs. It helps us to become much more literate at being able to both see what is difficult and to see what is healing, which gives us so many more options.

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Accepting our emotions with an astute mind can be a key component to being kinder to ourselves. Rather than rejecting our feelings and internally shaming ourselves for having them, we can make an important pivot to welcome them with courage and curiosity. They have something to teach us. Emotions can be muddled and hard to unpack, but within them sits the possibility of accessing our deepest wisdom. This intelligence will lead us to qualities that we can embrace to care for ourselves. Robert and Dave summarize five steps of moving through life's challenges and share some of their own stories. Whether you are experiencing pain, anxiety, uncertainty, or a myriad of other uncomfortable feelings Robert teaches us how to greet them at the door of our minds and recognize that they are a valuable part of us. Our mind can be our ally in our intention to heal and care for ourselves.

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The importance of this podcast is to put attention on yourself, so you may touch on the most universal needs that are going to benefit your life when challenges arise. When you are able to do this, even some of the time, you will begin to be able to benefit the world as well. It is a common misunderstanding that when we focus on ourselves, this is narcissistic. However, by discovering and accessing our essential needs, it is actually the most generous thing we can do. We can focus on challenges to support ourselves to live and use them to pivot to discovering and activating these essential needs. By recognizing and accepting ourselves as we really are, and not our fictional selves, our social media selves, or our shiniest selves, we can better support ourselves and those around us.

Our desires go awry when we excessively put our focus on success which often excludes interconnectedness, transparency, poverty, and caring for others as we want to be cared for. So of course our self-image can appear shinier and more perfect. Robert offers an invitation for self-inquiry. What has been the greatest desire in your life that has caused the most suffering? Or perhaps even, what desire is causing the most suffering right now? After this reflection, Robert expands our investigation. What happens when desires go awry? Join us for this week's discussion of the self in relation to the desires for power.

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Desire can take many forms. There are frivolous desires that can be fun. We all have these, and in fact, are quite a natural part of the human experience. The focus of the podcast this week is not those desires, but those that are not realistic at all or in some cases destructive, and therefore can warp our feelings. These desires will leave us with deep challenges. Robert discusses that healing here almost always comes through the recognition that the desire is unrealistic or harmful and then being able to make the deep distinction between what results in simple enjoyment and what will create harm to ourselves or others.

Robert sees examples of this often in his practice. The desire is often a substitute for needs because we are not accurately in touch with our needs or how to fulfill them. We are raised in a culture that idealizes youth, sex, success, wealth, and power. These desires when they are in excess are a false substitute because they are not connected to our simple pleasures or our deeper needs. If they were, they would never create harm.

This is an invitation to practice making the distinction between need and desire and how to intervene to find our needs is crucial, not because you should but because it will make your life more naturally enjoyable and fulfilling.

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How much do we like or care for ourselves when we are being challenged? In this week's episode, Robert invites us to begin moving from self-rejection toward self-caring and compassion. Are you being anxious on purpose? Are you being depressed on purpose? Do you get the joke? Of course not. When we see that we aren't, we can sense our innocence and let more compassion in. Robert offers simple and proven practices for creating awareness that heals. These tools can be applied again and again. Creating expansion opportunities even in the face of life's greatest hurdles and being able to reflect on these moments can help each of us set better conditions in which to bring out our best selves.

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In this episode of Awareness that Heals, Robert continues to explore the importance of recognizing, accepting and communicating our challenging feelings.

It takes significant motivation on our part to recognize that our feelings are important as a starting point. It's how we get to be honest with ourselves without running away from what's difficult. Facing your feelings head-on can be challenging, but continue by asking heartfelt questions especially when things are difficult, and then responding to the caring suggestions we receive.

Robert is also joined by Dave and Mark, both of whom share similar experiences about dealing with challenging situations and conflicting emotions. For example, Mark shares how his faith has been clouded with doubt, which makes him feel conflicted about the strength of his faith.

But Robert shares a novel way of approaching this conflicting feeling. The key is to honor both your faith and your doubt. Being able to doubt your faith takes strength and understanding; it requires your faith in supporting your doubt which is something that almost all of us haven't been taught to do.

When it comes to using your feelings and emotions to expand your quality of life, you need to expand questioning yourself. "What are my needs?" We also need to respond to the guidance we receive. There is no state, whether it is extraordinary suffering that's overwhelming and traumatic, or whether it's circumstantial, that isn't dignified and worthy of our caring attention. Our responsiveness to guide ourselves toward what is our best potential toward well-being and healing is what will pave the way forward to healing in our lives.

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f someone were to ask you, which is your most challenging emotion, would you be able to name it? Maybe you require some prompting and help from your friends or loved ones. Throughout the Awareness That Heals podcast, Robert makes an empathetic request for listeners to become aware of and recognize their most frequent challenging emotions.

But why is it essential to put a name to your feeling? It's because recognizing your challenging feelings with literacy helps you move toward healing. It's the same for recognizing specific qualities, actions, thoughts, and attitudes that help you take the steps toward healing with conscious effort and awareness.

Along with awareness of what you're feeling, there also comes a sense of identification. Once you're aware of and have identified your feelings and emotions, you will be better equipped to deal with the situation or the feeling in the best possible way you can by learning to recognize your needs. If you're struggling to identify your feelings, here's a handy chart of 75 of the most common feelings and emotions that will help you put a name to your emotions.

Most of us will shy away or turn our backs on our challenging and complex emotions. It's the way we've been brought up. But there is immense value in discovering your ability to recognize and name what's challenging you emotionally. When we have the courage, honesty, and humility to face where we are and how we feel, we let the shame of feeling a certain way take a back seat. This is what allows us to move toward healing more deeply.

Challenging feelings are mostly the result of thwarted or unsatisfied needs. Sometimes it's chemical, hormonal, hereditary, trauma, but mostly they are our day to day needs that are blocked or frustrated.

In this episode, Robert channels his insights from almost half a century of counseling to share with us the profound connection between our feelings and needs. We are asked to develop an almost instinctive (but learned) response to our challenging emotions — a longing and understanding to move toward the needs that will serve healing and well-being.

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One of the first steps to move toward healing is awareness. In this episode, Robert explores how awareness and working towards a deeper understanding of our tone of voice can positively impact our relationships with others and ourselves. Think back to the last time you were in a challenging situation. What were your internal thoughts? What did your tone of voice toward yourself sound like? Was it partially judgemental or did it have elements of a critical edginess? Or was it mostly empathic and accepting? When faced with a challenging situation, taking care of ourselves involves learning to find a place inside ourselves that allows us to organically change our tone of voice to one of greater kindness, strength or whatever is most called for. It's okay to be where you are and feel what you are feeling no matter what it is, and at the same time it is an art to energize the parts of ourselves that will bring the most connection and fulfillment.

When you set on the path to understand and work on your tone of voice, you will find that it requires awareness first and then honesty and humility to respond in a way that most conveys what is in your heart. It takes humility to understand what your most important intention is. The priority is to keep moving toward healing and caring. Both humility and honesty are crucial because seeing your tone of voice clearly and using inquiry and wisdom guidance to understand yourself better can also reveal some unflattering parts of yourself. We all like to feel good about ourselves, about what we feel and it might take time for you to accept your thoughts, emotions, and feelings more deeply. It's often helpful to take the time to find an outlet to express yourself without harming anyone else. In the moment, it might be difficult to see that as progress towards your wellbeing, but finding an intention to heal and care and moving toward it is a great start.

This episode also makes a case for a healthy amount of self-doubt because it almost always goes hand in hand with a healthy amount of self-trust. Awareness about your imperfections and that you're a work in progress will help you in the long run. It sets up ideal conditions for the chance to see how you are human like everyone else and optimizes the chance to lead a more fulfilled life. It also creates the conditions that gives you/us greater intimacy and peace and an intrinsic desire to contribute to the world at large.

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