01. True Awesome Foundations: A revolving definition

Where we learn how to see things in a new way

I made up the phrase True Awesome.

To me, True Awesome is a combination of three things:

1. You know what makes you awesome externally (your skills and style)

2. You can contact the sometimes flowing, sometimes still source within you

3. You can express the external awesome while in contact with the internal awesome

We can find our external awesome through reflection, conversations, assessments, feedback, and experimenting. These are often the skills that you use at work. You might even use these to describe yourself on LinkedIn, at a performance review, or in your professional bio.

If you’re an artist, the external awesome will be your personal style, your techniques, and how you do your work.

It helps to know your external awesome. Otherwise, you can get trapped into defining it through other people’s words. Yes, later on, when you looking for work, either in a job or as a business owner, you’ll take into account other people’s words, but you can’t find your awesome through others. You find it through yourself.

My favourite way to help people find their external stories is the index card method. I shared the technique in my TEDx talk. It is the first step in my book.

Here’s the process:

1. Get a pack of index cards.

2. Find a space where you can be quiet and undisturbed for about 10 minutes.

3. Ask yourself, “When did I feel alive doing my work?” (This could be a job or your art practice).

4. Let a specific memory arrive and write it down on the index card.

5. Do this for seven days.

If you would like guided prompts on how to do this, you can access that for free until February 28th HERE.

In an upcoming post, I’ll explain what to do with the stories once you have collected them.

Many years ago, when I was first helping people to discover their awesome, I always started the same way — we started with the external stories and used this as the foundation of our work together.

I noticed a trend, though — many people, often the overachievers — had difficulty opening themselves to allow stories to come in. They were set on using the stories to help them validate their worth and have a career brand that the story work wasn’t that effective. For those people, I advise them to do mindfulness training that encourages them to appreciate what is. That is, I asked them to start with the internal awesome.

What I call the Internal Awesome is what other meditation teachers will call the subtle body.

The subtle body is not purely physical, nor is it purely mental. It is an energetic layer of embodiment that bridges the body and mind. It coexists with the physical body but is less material, less solid. It coexists with the mind but is more visceral and embodied.” The Wakeful Body, Willa Blythe Baker

There are stages to connecting with your inner awesome.

The first is to notice, detect, and label experiences as they happen.

Here’s what happens when you are unsure of your next move.

It’s messy.

You spend all your energy on thoughts and worries that keep whirling around and around. You’ll send thoughts and energy out, but they’re all the same. You send them out of your mind as complaints to others and as stress to your physical and emotional body. As new stressors arrive, they add to the mess because that’s the only way you know how to work with them.

Playing with the same worries in this way creates a blockage from new ideas coming in. It blocks you from expressing yourself in a new way too.

You can break it up, though.

The way to break this stuff up is to detect what all those thoughts, worries, and energies are made of. They’re going to be made up of three things.

1. Things you see

2. Things you hear

3. Things you feel

For example, if you think, “I can never make a living as a writer.’' You can learn to detect that is something you hear in your inner talk space. You can detect it and then label it “hear.” This doesn’t stop negative thoughts from happening but it can reduce your suffering.

Over time, worries and thoughts consume less space in your mind and body, and you can start to detect the gorgeousness of your inner awesome. Right now, it might feel impossible that you’ll even be able to linger in that space. Not only is it possible, but it can add more fulfillment to your life.

If all the energy in your subtle body is spent on the same reoccurring thoughts, it’s hard to access those stories to see your external awesome. So, if you try to do the career stories cards activity but are stressed about picking the perfect story — leave the cards for now and do the mindfulness training below.

Below is a guided meditation to help break apart some sensory experiences that might fill your life.

This audio guidance starts with paying attention to physical objects in the room you are in. This is usually an easier starting place than detecting images in your head, which we do in the second part of this guidance.

Shinzen Young created this technique. This technique and others I teach are used at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and in numerous other scholarly studies to study mindfulness. See Out and See In is a great place to start your training.

This week try this:

1. Write out your career stories cards 10 minutes a day

2. Do the See Out See In technique every day for 10 minutes

3. Subscribe to get additional practices and more guidance on the two I shared here

4. Share your experiences with either practice in the comments; I’d love to know how these work for you.

Self-reflection questions for the end of the week

When I did the See technique, I noticed...

Something that surprised me about doing this technique was...

On the days I did See Out See In, I felt...

On the days I didn't do See Out See In, I felt...

Something I noticed about myself is...

All the best,

Kerri Twigg, Mindfulness Teacher and Career Stories Coach