Subscribe to the Intentional Self-Care newsletter and join a community of women ready to reclaim their well-being. Expect inspiring insights, actionable tips, affirmations, and transformative self-care wisdom designed to uplift, empower, and nurture your heart and soul each day.
Share
Self Care Newsletter Vol#82 Week #3 "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." Aristotle
Published 6 days ago • 11 min read
Rejuvenate & Thrive
NURTURE YOUR ESSENCE
Focus:
Awareness Before Action
"The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance."
Nathaniel Branden
Your Weekly
Intentional & Sustainable Self-Care Newsletter
Volume #82
Awareness Before Action
"Awareness is expressed in many ways throughout our lives: we ignore it on autopilot, we wait until our back is against the wall, or we slowly build evidence. I've experienced all of them. But for most of my life, "back against the wall" was my default. I lived a great portion of my years playing hide and go seek from myself. I didn't want to get on anyone's bad side, all at the expense of going deeper into the abyss and disconnection of my internal world.
Awareness was both a gift and a burden. Within myself, I knew what was required, but the dance was the internal battle of saying it, worrying about how the other person would take it, and questioning who I was to tell someone else something when my own life wasn't together. Even when people asked for advice, I hesitated to share what my observation had revealed because I feared they would ask why I hadn't spoken up sooner. Once you become aware of something, a responsibility seems to attach itself to that knowledge. That knowledge deserves a moment of pause before action, because it can have a profound effect—and wasting time on the wrong approach only compounds the problem.
Here's what I've learned: awareness has three sacred steps. First comes the awareness itself—the notice of something without judgment. Then comes the pause and sitting with it—the allowing of what was noticed without putting anything on it, just being with what is. Lastly comes action—the pure knowingness that emerges not from ego or "I told you so," but from embracing an intention rooted in clarity and your inner truth.
Why should noticing what you feel and need come before choosing a self-care practice? Because popping a vitamin, running a bath, or journaling about your feelings is useless if you are treating the wrong symptom. As your strategist, I'm here to help you stop prescription-shopping your wellness and start tuning into your actual data. We learn that the most powerful action you can take is to pause long enough to know what you are actually treating.
Have you ever felt stressed, so you immediately forced yourself into a 20-minute meditation, only to spend the entire time stressing about your to-do list? Or have you reached for a "grounding" routine when what your body actually needed was a good cry or a boundary conversation? We love to jump straight to action because action feels like progress. But taking action without awareness is just high-speed wandering. We put the compass before the car."
Chakra Activation: Third Eye (Ajna) Clarity To practice awareness before action, we must clear the internal fog. The Third Eye Chakra, located between the brows, is the center of objective perception and clear sight.
The Physical Anchor: Sit upright with your shoulders relaxed. Close your eyes and gently focus your inner attention on the space right between your eyebrows.
The Visualization: Imagine a clear, luminous indigo light gently opening up behind your brow, sweeping away the mental clutter of what you "should" be doing.
The Breath: Inhale slowly for four counts, drawing clarity into your mind. Exhale for six counts, releasing the urge to rush into solutions.
The Affirmation: Whisper or think: "I pause to see clearly before I move."
The Seal: Gently blink your eyes open, bringing that clear perception into this day.
The Strategist's View: As a strategist, I look at random self-care without awareness as wasted inventory. Strategic shifts for this beautiful rising:
The Symptom vs. The Source: If your nervous system is depleted from people-pleasing, a face mask won't fix it; a boundary will. Awareness tells you the difference between physical exhaustion and spiritual exhaustion.
Stillness as Presence, Not Performance: Remember, stillness is not another item on your productivity checklist. It is not a test you pass or fail. It is simply the sacred art of showing up to find out what is actually going on inside your house.
The Cost of Reactive Healing: When you act before you are aware, you end up wasting precious energy treating symptoms that don't even exist, leaving you more exhausted than when you started.
The "Pause-Before Protocol": Let's practice tactical awareness. Grab your phone or a notebook.
The Current State Check: Write down the exact physical or emotional sensation you feel right now (e.g., tight chest, scattered thoughts, heavy limbs).
The Needs Assessment: Ask yourself: "What is this feeling actually asking for?" (Is it rest? Is it a "no"? Is it water? Is it a hard conversation?)
The Tailored Action: Choose one strategic response that directly matches that specific need—no more, no less.
The Commitment: Write: "I will evaluate before I assign."
The Integration Protocol: True inside-out transformation requires a pause between stimulus and response. Before you attempt to act on a realization or jump into a new wellness habit, integrate the awareness through these three phases:
Tap into Awareness: Bring your focus completely into your physical body right now. Notice the reflexive urge to fix, solve, or do something immediately. Acknowledge that impulse without judgment.
Sense It and Sit With It: Do not rush away from your current state. Sit right in the middle of your raw data. Let your nervous system learn that you don't need a quick fix; you need true comprehension.
Allowing and Receiving: Stop forcing outcomes or scheduling solutions. Open your hands, drop your shoulders, and simply allow your authentic needs to rise to the surface. Receive the clarity and the truth of what your body is telling you before you ever try to give birth to a new action, a new habit, or a new step forward.
Food for Thought: If you spent half the amount of time trying to understand what you actually need as you do running after solutions that don't fit, how much lighter would your life feel?
Wisdom Insight: Action without awareness is just motion without a destination. This day, stop running toward the cure before you take the time to understand the cause. Pause. Notice. Then move from clarity.
Be Blissful,
Dr. MoJo: Self-Care Strategist
Join Ignite Your Inner YOU Community where it starts and ends with you BECOMING Intentionally YOU! It's time to start BETTING ON YOU!
Pricing Options:
Monthly: $20/month
Quarterly: $60/quarter
Annually: $240/year
Call-to-Action: "Don’t wait to start your journey. Click below to join Ignite Your Inner You Community!!!
"Your Healthy MoJo~Self-Care Strategist: The Chakra Series."
This essential collection, created by Dr. MoJo, guides you through a profound journey of self-discovery and energetic alignment, spanning from the grounding Earth Star and Root to the divine connection of the Crown Chakra.
Each of the eight energy centers (Earth Star, Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Third Eye, and Crown) is addressed with its own dedicated, transformative recording paired with an in-depth eBook to solidify your understanding and practice.
Individually, each Chakra recording and eBook bundle is available for $25.00, offering a powerful, focused self-care strategy. However, when you purchase two or more Chakra bundles, the price drops to just $20.00 each. Start your personalized healing journey today and feel the difference of a balanced, vibrant self.
We live in a world that rewards the fast response, the immediate solution, the woman who can assess a situation and act on it before anyone else has finished processing the question. Speed is celebrated. Decisiveness is praised. And somewhere in the rush to always be moving, always be responding, always be doing something productive with every moment, we lost one of the most powerful capacities we were ever given: the ability to pause long enough to truly see what is happening before we decide what to do about it.
Awareness before action is not hesitation. It is not procrastination dressed in spiritual language. It is the intentional, courageous act of refusing to let your automatic patterns, your conditioned reactions, your fear, or the urgency of the moment make your decisions for you. It is the practice of creating just enough space between what happens and how you respond to allow your truest self—not your habits, not your wounds, not the noise—to be the one who chooses.
That space is where your power lives. This week, we are learning to find it, to widen it, and to trust what becomes visible when we finally slow down enough to see.
Before you move, look.
Before you speak, listen.
Before you decide, become aware.
That is where everything changes.
Food For Thought:
Nourishment for Your Soul:
Awareness Before Action
Awareness before action changes this. Not by making you slower, more hesitant, or less decisive—but by making your decisions genuinely yours. When you create even a brief pause between the stimulus and your response, you create the possibility of choice where previously there was only reflex. You create the possibility of asking: Is this reaction coming from my fear or my values? From my old story or my present truth? From who I have been or who I am choosing to become? Those questions, asked in the space of a single conscious breath, can alter the entire trajectory of a moment—and a life built of more aware moments is a fundamentally different life.
We pause here because nourishment, like awareness, cannot be rushed. You cannot absorb what you have not slowed down enough to receive. So before we move into the practices of this week, let this section be its own small act of awareness before action—a moment of genuine inner attention before you continue forward.
Take a breath. Notice what is present in you right now as you read these words. Not what you think should be present. What actually is. That noticing—simple, honest, without agenda—is already the beginning of the practice.
The Courage It Takes to See Clearly
Awareness is not always comfortable. Sometimes what we see when we slow down enough to look honestly is not what we hoped to find. We see the pattern we have been defending against acknowledging. We see the feeling we have been managing rather than meeting. We see the way we have been treating ourselves—or allowing others to treat us—that we would prefer not to have to confront. Seeing these things clearly, without the softening of automatic excuse or immediate action, takes a particular kind of courage.
But here is what that courage makes possible: change that actually lasts. Because change that is not grounded in clear awareness is change built on sand. You can shift your behavior temporarily through willpower and discipline—but unless the awareness underneath has also shifted, the old pattern will reassert itself the moment the pressure returns. Awareness is what makes the change structural rather than superficial. It rewires the foundation. And that kind of change—slow, honest, rooted in genuine self-knowledge—is the only kind that truly endures.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
Viktor Frankl
Why Awareness Matters First
Stops blind reaction:
You pause instead of rushing into a mistake.
Finds real problems:
You see what is broken before you try to fix it.
Gives power:
Clear facts make your next choice strong and useful.
WISDOM FROM SPIRITUAL MOTHERS & FATHERS
Louise Hay:
"Awareness is the first step in healing or changing. We cannot make a change until we first acknowledge what is happening."
Maya Angelou:
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
"Iyanla Vanzant:
"When you don’t know what you don’t know, you keep doing what you’ve always done. Awareness is the beginning of everything."
Closing: Heart-to-Heart
Dearest one, the most transformative thing you can bring to your life is not a new strategy or a better routine—it is the quality of your own honest attention. Awareness, practiced consistently and with self-compassion, changes everything it touches. It changes how you make decisions, how you navigate relationships, how you respond to difficulty, and how you care for yourself—because all of those things become more true, more aligned, and more genuinely yours when they are grounded in clear seeing rather than unconscious habit.
You do not have to see everything at once. You do not have to become perfectly conscious overnight. You just have to be willing to look—honestly, kindly, with the patience of someone who understands that self-knowledge is a lifelong practice, not a destination. One moment of genuine awareness, chosen today, plants a seed that will change the harvest of your entire life.
You are exactly where you need to be, and the awareness you bring to this moment is already changing everything that comes next.
With deep belief in your capacity to see and to choose,
Your Self-Care Strategist 💕
P.S. Sweet soul, if this week revealed patterns you were not entirely prepared to see—if the awareness you practiced showed you something uncomfortable about how you have been reacting, choosing, or showing up—please receive that discomfort as a gift rather than a verdict. Seeing clearly is not the same as failing. It is the opposite. The moment you see a pattern is the moment you gain the power to change it, and that moment belongs to you now. Do not rush past it into the next action. Sit with what you have seen. Let it inform you. Let it matter. The woman who pauses long enough to truly see herself is the woman who builds a life that is genuinely, lastingly her own. That woman is you. You already proved it this week.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
Join Ignite Your Inner YOU Community where it starts and ends with you BECOMING Intentionally YOU! It's time to start BETTING ON YOU!
Pricing Options:
Monthly: $20/month
Quarterly: $60/quarter
Annually: $240/year
Call-to-Action: "Don’t wait to start your journey. Click below to join Ignite Your Inner You Community!!!
"Your Healthy MoJo~Self-Care Strategist: The Chakra Series."This essential collection, created by Dr. MoJo, guides you through a profound journey of self-discovery and energetic alignment, spanning from the grounding Earth Star and Root to the divine connection of the Crown Chakra.
Each of the eight energy centers (Earth Star, Root, Sacral, Solar Plexus, Heart, Throat, Third Eye, and Crown) is addressed with its own dedicated, transformative recording paired with an in-depth eBook to solidify your understanding and practice. Individually, each Chakra recording and eBook bundle is available for $25.00, offering a powerful, focused self-care strategy.
However, when you purchase two or more Chakra bundles, the price drops to just $20.00 each. Start your personalized healing journey today and feel the difference of a balanced, vibrant self.
Subscribe to the Intentional Self-Care newsletter and join a community of women ready to reclaim their well-being. Expect inspiring insights, actionable tips, affirmations, and transformative self-care wisdom designed to uplift, empower, and nurture your heart and soul each day.
Read more from Your Healthy MoJo Spiritual Cheerleader
Rejuvenate & Thrive NURTURE YOUR ESSENCE Focus: Can You Sit With Yourself Without Fixing Anything? "In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to." Dave Hollis Your Weekly Intentional & Sustainable Self-Care Newsletter Volume #81 Can You Sit With Yourself Without Fixing Anything? "Sitting with yourself is the journey of learning to sit authentically instead of running from discomfort. For most of my life, I would sit with myself,...
Rejuvenate & Thrive NURTURE YOUR ESSENCE Focus: Coming Home To YOU "To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive." Robert Louis Stevenson Your Weekly Intentional & Sustainable Self-Care Newsletter Volume #80 Coming Home To YOU "Coming Home To Me has been a process of letting go of fear, people pleasing, guilt, and shame. For years, I chased temporary moments of wholeness, never knowing how to hold onto...
Rejuvenate & Thrive NURTURE YOUR ESSENCE Focus: Most Self-Care Is Taught from the Outside In "To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive." Robert Louis Stevenson Your Weekly Intentional & Sustainable Self-Care Newsletter Volume #79 Most Self-Care Is Taught from the Outside In Do you have a relationship with yourself? Not the one you're working on. What type of relationship? Loving? On and off? Only when...
