289 | Centering Reset: The Power of Awareness

A warm welcome to Centering Reset: The Power of Awareness. We're gonna spend some time with being aware, aware of God, aware of yourself, aware of what's happening around you and inside of you as a way to help us regulate our emotions, regulate our experiences, and become closer and closer to God, to our true self. Because awareness is not passive. Actually, awareness is very powerful. As we cannot change what we do not notice, and as we become aware, we can unhook from our thoughts, our emotions, our experiences, and have that sense of healthy detachment. And on top of that, bring to God whatever is important to us. If we're not aware of it, we cannot really bring it to God. Sure, God knows about it, but when we become aware, we can become intentional, as awareness is the first step really towards freedom and towards wisdom and towards transformation. So today we're going to spend some time with awareness and resetting ourselves to stay grounded and stay present in God and increase our capacity. And if you're a regular, I want to welcome you back. And if you're new, welcome to Thriving in Christ Show for Christian women professionals and servant leaders. And this is for you if you feel at times stressed, depleted, on a busy treadmill with Sunday night blues in spite of loving what you do, if you sense blocks in reaching your highest potential for the kingdom although you're carrying significant responsibility and impact. If you wrestle to fully replenish yourself and access that peace that surpasses all understanding, no matter how many programs you've tried, and might worry that the self-care and deep renewal will add more to your mile-long to-do list, or wrestle to stay grounded and expansive in your impact, especially high-stakes situations. If this is you, welcome! You are not lacking discipline. You are not lacking faith. More often, what's missing is sustainable and skillful renewal. See, many of the solutions available today, they act like a Band-Aid placed on top of already burdened foundation, which is shaped for us by chronic stress, past events, cultural conditionings, misconceptions, without taking consideration the needed alignment and wholeness that is necessary to have a sustainable life in Christ. And I know this intimately because I burned out twice, not because of lack of knowledge, because I'm in the mental health field, and not because of lack of faith. In this show, we take a different approach through the integration of science, psychology, Christian faith, and spiritual care. In this show, I help you to return to a place of inner renewal, accessing the living waters of Christ from within, aligning your body, mind, heart, and soul to reduce inner fragmentation and restore you to a grounded self. Simplify your daily habits from inside out—body, mind, heart, and soul—to build sustainable rhythms that support your life and leadership without adding pressure. Access clarity, peace, and joy, and grounded presence and purpose, especially in high responsibility and high-stake moments, so you can expand your capacity and keep leading and serving in Christ. This is not about doing more. It is about learning how to return skillfully again and again to God within, where your strength is renewed like the eagle's and your inner life is restored so that your leadership can flow from your soul. I am Dr. Ioanna Popako, founder of Team for the Soul Institute and host of the show. I'm a physician, psychiatrist, educator, spiritual care and executive coach, speaker and trainer. And you can find me on the web, teamforsoul.com. And make sure you sign up for Thriving in Christ resource to get our updates right in your inbox. And if you love what I bring on this episode, please leave us 5-star reviews and make sure you share with other Christian women, as we don't know who might need this. And when you're ready to learn how I can support you specifically through one-to-one spiritual care, life coaching, or executive coaching, you can set up a free consultation call, and the links are in the show notes. All right, are you ready to grow towards your highest potential from a grounded, renewed foundation with Christ at the helm? Then let's dive in. All right, so research in mindfulness and emotional regulation consistently shows that awareness is key, and it can change our brain. Because when we pause and notice our thoughts, our emotions, our reactivity, we can become centered, we can become grounded, We can unblend from our parts and our reactions to really connect with our most wise self. So the awareness creates a space between the stimulus and our response. This is known in psychology. So instead of automatically reacting, we can gain the ability to choose. And this is so important because then all our functions can improve if we can just start and sit in contemplation for a few minutes every day, you will notice in time, within a few weeks, even just 5, 10 minutes every day, our executive function improves, our emotional regulation improves, our self-awareness, we can become so much more grounded. And in leadership, this is one key component, a key foundational skill, that of awareness, which will have impact into everything we do from our decision-making process to our emotional intelligence, our resilience, our behaviors, and healthy relationships. So We're gonna spend some time in awareness today to help you, to support you, to stay more grounded, more with God. And it feels like a soft skill, but actually it's one of the most important practices that will have an impact in our lives because it's the foundation of everything we do. All right, so here's, we're gonna start with this idea that we have what's called a global awareness. Global awareness means we're aware of our entire body, we're aware of our surroundings. Mind you, it's a faint sometimes experience, but that global awareness is mediated, is done through what's called proprioceptors. We have receptors, that sixth sense. We have receptors throughout our body that help us to become aware of our entire body and whatever is happening. And sometimes we get that sixth sense, oh my goodness, something is wrong, right? And we have to act even if our consciousness might not know. Sometimes we have that sense of peace. Sometimes we sense a presence of a person, even if we don't see that. It's an excellent way to practice our awareness. So global awareness. Now we also have what's called focal awareness or local awareness or attention or focus. So this ability to pointedly focus on something. For example, if I say right now, just focus on your left ear, on the lobe of your left ear, and what's the temperature right there? Right now you can just sense inside. I'm like, okay, my temperature is neutral. It's not too hot, not too cold, like Goldilocks, right? Just right. How about inside of your right foot? Switch inside of your right foot. What's the temperature? Mine is warm. How about yours? And now we can switch to the breath. Just notice your breath. And can you see how quickly this local awareness is moving from one place to another? And this is how we can get hooked on so many stimuli from our environment or social media or movies, because they grab our attention. They grab this local awareness. And as we train it, it can become more easily to be detached, right? So as we practice contemplation, as we practice mindfulness, even just a few minutes, we notice how quickly our local awareness switches from one subject to the other, or topic, or, or sensation. And at the same time, we can lean into more of this global awareness, and we have a much larger perspective. So just take a minute right now as you take some breaths. Just notice the sense of, oh, I'm right here, wherever you are, and just notice this transition from the local awareness, this pointy awareness, and how at will you can reset, leaning into this more global awareness. And I invite you to feel as if you're in God's hands, and we really are if you think about it. Through the gravity, God is holding us in his palms. So this is the invitation for a reset, and I, as your becoming aware of this global awareness, staying in God. And you might say, yes, but my attention just kind of jumps from one thing to the other. That's natural. It's good to help your local awareness, your focus, to stay maybe focused on the breath while at the same time you're just aware of just being. Because we have this ability, it's called dual processing brain. We can do can be aware globally while our focus is on something like breath, or could be my words. Just allow yourself to reset as you tap into this global awareness. And I'm going to read a few scriptures so that we can stay with the awareness and just be with God just for a couple of seconds. Here is Psalm 46:10, New King James Version. Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am God. May God bless you and reset you today. Second Bible verse, Luke 17:21. This is New King James Version: For indeed the kingdom of God is within you. So as you stay in your awareness Be aware that you are in God's kingdom right now. God is everywhere, filling all things. Last Bible verse, Ephesians 1:18, NIV version: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. The eyes of your heart will be enlightened. That's the awareness. All right, let's take some gentle breaths. If you need to pause me to stay in silence a little bit, by all means do that. And I will wrap up with a prayer. Thank you, God, for deepening our awareness this week. Help us to notice your presence more often while we're active and also while we're silent, and also in the transitions from one activity to the other. Help us to be aware of what truly matters, and may you help us to grow your wisdom so we can return over and over to you, God, as our center through our awareness. And I also lift up the listener. May you bless her abundantly. Help her as she is moving throughout her day and throughout her week. And may you answer all her prayers, known and unknown, spoken and unspoken. In Jesus' name, amen. And with that, thank you for all you do. May you have a wonderful, wonderful day and share this episode with someone that you know. And if you like the podcast, we love your 5-star reviews. It helps so much with visibility online, with others finding this Message from God. And whenever you're ready to cultivate greater awareness renewal, you can always sign up to Wake Up Your Soul program, which is designed exactly for you to build the rhythms and the contemplation on a daily basis. And when ready for me to support you through one-to-one coaching, spiritual care, or executive coaching, you can just set up a free consultation. And with that, thank you for all you do. May you be blessed. And until next time, I say goodbye for now.