Episode 42 - Lead from Your Heart with Mike Horne

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If there’s one thing I’ve had hammered home over the years it’s that while awareness may be the open door to easy, getting to actual awareness is anything but easy. Building awareness is so much harder to put into practice than it sounds. We talk about awareness, specifically self-awareness all the time, and yet the reality is that most people have huge gaps in their own awareness despite even the best of efforts. 


Myself included.

And honestly, the fact that there are still so many things about myself that I’m not aware of yet is actually really exciting to me because it means I can’t even imagine the type of growth that is still coming my way. 


But I digress…

Awareness is such a challenging topic for people because without intentionality (and practice) around challenging our perceptions and opening ourselves up to whatever we learn, it often comes in the form of criticism or hard feedback when we aren’t ready for it. And, since nobody wants to feel all that comes with those moments, it often becomes easier to claim a commitment to awareness rather than actually take the actions that move us towards awareness. 


The hard truth is that good awareness is not a completely isolated process and it cannot come only from thinking about things, or even doing things. Rather, it requires the addition of other people’s input and perspective into what we are thinking about or how we perceive things to create real awareness rather than simply basking in the idea of awareness. 


As my guest on the podcast this week, Mike Horne notes, “you are what you say and do, not what you think you say and do”. And most of us are stuck in what we think we are saying and doing much more than we are ever likely to know.


The reality is that, when it comes to awareness and perception, most of us buy our own stories and narratives so deeply that it is virtually impossible for us to have any understanding there is even a gap in our awareness. And therein lies the rub and the never-ending cycle of why human brains are so fascinating.


Now, before I bore you with the meta-ness of where this topic can easily go (feel free to send me an email if you want to nerd out with me about this sort of thing because you know I’m happy to get into it if given the opportunity), I want to acknowledge the real reason I started down this path which is to explore the important link between awareness and authenticity, one of the many topics that Mike is an expert on. 


As Mike puts it “Authenticity means my words and actions match--even better: my thoughts, words and actions match.” But how can we ensure that all those things match if we aren’t properly aware of our thoughts, our impact on others, the ways in which we are showing up?

It all starts with being open to becoming aware and creating situations that enable awareness, whether they are comfortable or not (noting that a lot of them will be UNcomfortable, which is going to be perfect). 


If we want to truly be authentic, to lead with integrity, to create alignment with the people around us, we have to start with a commitment to and a practice of building our self-awareness. 

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To learn more about Mike Horne, you can find him online at https://mike-horne.com/. Or, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehorne1/), Instagram or Twitter (@mikehorneauthor).