The Vurnal Ep #2 Awareness

The speaker discusses the importance of awareness in personal development and mental health. They emphasize the need to be authentic and not rely solely on the advice of others, as individuals are the experts of themselves. The speaker highlights how awareness is the key to emotional mastery and the ability to understand and process one's feelings. They use examples of a leaky roof and a car oil leak to illustrate the importance of awareness in identifying and addressing problems. The speaker encourages listeners to trust their own judgment and make choices that feel right to them. They also share a personal experience of feeling overwhelmed and struggling with a new job and business ventures, highlighting the importance of self-awareness in understanding and managing their emotions. Hello guys and welcome to Mark Tully The Vernal where I talk about real-life situations and the personal development and mental health tools that can be used to overcome or work through them. As always, I'm going to try and be as authentic and genuine as possible so there might be a wee bit of swearing. I'm sure you'll either relate to it or get over it or not. Just a heads up. So this episode is about awareness, what it is, what it can do for you and how to create more of it. Now just before I get into everything, I would like to say, wow man, like the response from the first episode, a little introduction thing I did there. Wow, wow, unbelievable. Thank you guys so much, the guys who are chatting to me and gals chatting to me about all the different aspects of it and had some questions and said they learnt some things and a few guys said they wanted to jump on so I'm excited for that and the feedback and the constructive criticism, honestly, absolutely amazing. So a big shout out to every single one of you guys, you know who you are and thank you very much. One more thing before I get stuck right into awareness and that is something I promote with all my clients and everybody for that matter and that is to not listen to anybody. Not at all, nah, I'm joking. It's not to listen to anybody 100%, right? So what I mean by that is you and anybody, we're all the only experts of ourselves, right? You get me? So you're the only one that's there 24-7 with yourself. You're the only one that can witness everything that goes on in your mind or anything for that matter. You're the only one that truly knows yourself, right? So yes, you'll listen to all the gurus out there and what they're saying and you'll be like, oh yeah, that's cool and then the things that you don't like, just don't. Just choose not to use that or implement that or disregard it and don't worry about what you're picking and choosing, just go with what feels right, bam, bam, bam because you can always change it at the end of the day and it's all about working things out for yourself and also taking something that a coach says and then give it a little tweak, right? Because trust me, if you tweak something and make it your own so you've just changed a small thing of it but the end result is still exactly the same but it fits better for you and you've essentially then created that thing, man, you're going to have that and hold that and keep that forever and use that whereas if you just follow instructions, trust me, even the best student of life, if you will, won't do it forever or at least it won't have the same impact. So yeah, don't listen to anybody. So just to summarise on that, you are the only expert of you so gather all the information, make any necessary tweaks to it and implement exactly what you feel is best for you because you're the only one that knows and whether we like it or not, that is the big responsibility that every single human being has and that's to be this person for ourselves, to understand that nobody's coming to save us and that we're the only person that can save ourselves from whatever situation we're in or improve ourselves from our already great situation if that may be the case. Yeah, so I just wanted to put that point across and yeah, I hope you all understand exactly what I'm saying. Right, okay. So this episode is on awareness and the reason I picked awareness for my first subject episode and also my second episode is because this is the start, this is the beginning, this is where you would go to if you wanted to improve anything, if you were like, oh I'm anxious or I procrastinate too much or I'm depressed or I'm just not, I've got the fear of being judged so I'm not going to take these steps to improve my business or start this new business, a lot of stuff that I've just recently gotten over and it's had different levels to it, right, so I've gotten over certain aspects, obviously I'm doing a podcast but there's other things like, you know, I still haven't started an Instagram page, where is that? I'm doing a TikTok though but I'm doing posts on there, you know what I mean? But anyway, I'm going off track. Awareness is the key, it's the fucking key to everything, it's the key to like the mecca of all this personal development which is emotional mastery which is basically like understanding why you feel which way in every situation and be able to, you know, like turn on or process, say something sad's happened in your life, you can process that at an X time slot in the day because you have the time and then you can turn it off and use certain triggers and anchors to access like going into a, speaking into multiple people at a big event or something like this and being all confident and courageous and any actual aspect of how you feel and how you're going to act, right, that's like emotional mastery but awareness is the key to unlocking all that, just like awareness is the key to unlocking absolutely everything if you want to choose, like there is certain situations that you're going to be aware of and then maybe not have the knowledge yet to address it correctly, however, the awareness has to be there first. It's like if you had a leak in your roof, okay, and you don't know about it and it's leaking through and it's getting the ceiling damp and the water's building up and then it gets all plastered wet and fucking poof, the ceiling crashes through. This actually happened to me by the way, like two in the morning, years and years ago in a wee flat I had back in Kelso and yeah, yeah, I woke up two in the morning, I was like, fuck's going on, fucking ceiling, bang, fell right through in the kitchen and it was just everywhere, I was like, oh no, that was shite, but if I knew about that leak, it turned out to be in the upstairs people's bath, I think, if I knew about that leak, I could have fixed it. That's what awareness is, it's going up inside your head and just having a quick, well, maybe not a quick one, but having a good look in there and going like, what's actually happening in here? Like your car, you know, taken to the mechanic and then he has a look underneath, he finds an oil leak and then he can find where the leak's coming from, fix the leak before it gets any worse, it might just be a little sump plug or something really simple to fix, but if all the oil leaks out the engine and it seizes up, it's a big disaster, so without the awareness, you can't fix the problem, right? Now, pretty easy concept to grasp, I hope you're all following it. By the way, I also should have squeezed this in at the start, but I didn't and I'm not that up with all the editing yet, so I'm just going to say it now, I'm just going to speak my mind, right? If you don't resonate with whatever I'm saying and there's a certain little thing or you don't quite like the way I've said it or whatever like that, cool, that's completely fine, I actually want you to be like that, I want you to know yourself so fucking well that you're like, oh yeah, I love what he's saying there, but actually I know something that's better and it does the same thing, so 100% go for gold, like this is something that I think everybody misses out to say, like there's all these like, I don't know if they're scared or some shit, probably not scared, but like, you know, I don't know why, but they're just not being honest enough to say like, this is how I see it and this is how I know it, and yeah, there is like several things in human psychology that are like the human brain will do this, bang, bang, bang, or like one of five coping mechanisms, et cetera, et cetera, but we're actually all so individual that you might see the exact same thing a completely different way and get the same result, so yeah, by all means, like I said before, don't listen to me. Right, enough rambling, let me give you an example actually, a wee deep dive into how I've been feeling recently, where are we, we're in, just got into August, in March I started a new job as night shift supervisor, I had like two weeks of day shift and then straight into the job, so I still haven't figured it out, so that was quite a lot going on, that was also when I became certified life coach and I was starting to build a new business, and I did the GSHA school, and it was like a full like, build your business thing, but it was like every day, you had to log on every day, and I think I ended up doing like six out of 21 days, and I had all that, so there's quite a lot going on, I don't know about business stuff, I'm learning, and I'm loving the growth and things like that, but at the time I was just like so overwhelmed, I think because my coaching was like such a high like rate of improvement and growth, that I was on like, you know, I was just riding that wave and I was absolutely loving it, and then I got to something that I knew nothing about, and I had no like natural ability, and it just like, oh bam, totally scunnered me, took the wind out of my sails, like bust my bubble if you will, and stopped me in my tracks, you know, but I had a lot going on, I was waking up feeling like a zombie from night shift, because the, you know, getting used to the body clock changing stuff, it was just like, my body was just like, wow, what is going on, and I had this new job I was trying to figure out, so that takes a lot of cognitive ability, right, and then trying to learn all these business stuff that I, like at the time, knew nothing about, and I still know very little, but I do know more, which is fantastic, right, and I was like feeling miserable, I remember journaling at a time, and opening line was, am I getting depressed, and straight away the answer was no, I'm just really tired, I'm really struggling, and I have a lot going on, and I'm, you know what I mean, I'm trying to like, do all these things that are new to me, fair enough, being an electrician and being an electrical supervisor isn't, but all the rest, the other stuff is, and then the job, the environment, the physical, like where that switchboard is, et cetera, et cetera, all that's brand new, you have to learn all that, you know what I mean, and I just started doing what you should do in every situation like this, I believe anyways, that is just get curious, no, I believe this actually is, so do listen to this, and I just get really, really curious and be like, oh, okay, right, why am I feeling like this, and then like, you know, you can focus on it, and you know, maybe you have some answers, but you quite, you don't feel that that's 100% it, you know there's something else there, and a lot of times for me, and this may be my individual circumstances, but it just comes to me like out of the blue almost, because my subconscious is like milling it over, and yeah, it came to me that the feelings that I was having from the waking up from the night shift, that really like zombiness was very, very, very similar to depression, right, and it was triggering like my darkest days from PTSD and stuff like that, and when I was just like, you know, struggling to even get out of bed and things like this, you know, so that's awareness, right, so I became aware of the trigger, and then with the knowledge that I've gained over the last few years, well my whole life essentially, but you know what I mean, accelerated in the last three or four years, the knowledge that I've gained meant that I could link that up to the PTSD, and also the awareness of the diagnosation that I got, right, otherwise without that I couldn't have made the link, you get me, and just making that link is always half the battle, by the way, and in this case, and in many cases, it was actually the whole battle, I was literally able, like I remember the next morning, I remember it's clear as day, the next morning I woke up and I felt horrendous, the body clock still wasn't used to these timings, right, and I went, aha, I know what's happening here, I know I'm getting triggered emotionally from my past, but I've all dealt with that shit, I've processed it, you can never say 100%, but like, you know, 99% of it, right, I can talk about it all day long to anybody, like it's just a fictional book, even though it's actually my real life circumstances, and I didn't have to feel that way. I then started to build, and this is what I'm going to get to, then you have a golden opportunity, right, once you've got the awareness, and trust me, when you know you know, you're like, bam, this is it, and then I started to apply like positive techniques that I know about, like the one thing we all have 100% control over is our attitude, so I used to, I got up, I went, I know why I'm feeling like this, I don't have to feel like this, I looked myself in the mirror and I went, what's your attitude? Yes, you're tired, no, you're not depressed, no, you don't have, well you do have PTSD, but it is manageable, which is something that I truly believe. I remember asking my therapist if you could get rid of it, and she was like, every good, you know, therapist or coach should do, she went, well what do you think? So she, you know, got me thinking, thinking, thinking, and I've come to the conclusion over a year ago now, was that no, you can't, but you can manage it very well, like in exactly the example that I've just explained. I hope that all made sense, and I will move on, we're on 15 minutes, so I will move on to the ways that we can create more awareness in our life, because it all sounds great, right, being able to figure out these situations, but how do you actually go and get that? I've broken it down into three parts, the first one being education, you know, podcasts, there's a guy I know, he's just started one, it's actually really cool, books, Audible books, YouTube, whatever floats your boat essentially, the way I see it is like this though, you know, everything you've done in your life, like learn how to walk, learn how to eat properly, learn how to tie your shoelaces, learn how to drive a car, learn whatever it is you do for a job, you know, you went to college, you went to school, and you learnt all these different things, the one thing that we're not educated on, and the one thing that every human being has in common is that we all have a brain and mind and emotions, and we're just not taught how they work, so now I see it as it's down to us in this modern era that we're in to go and seek out this information, so yeah, the first one, education, go and seek it out on whatever platform that looks like for you, then I have something I like to call seeking assistance, which is exactly that, it's just going and doing the work with a trained professional, like a coach like myself, or there's many, many others out there, whichever one you resonate with the most, or a therapist, psychological trauma therapist, or psychiatrist, psychologist, honestly just go and explore that if that's what you feel like you could benefit from, but do one thing, there's only one thing I ask everybody to do, and that is to be really picky, essentially, it's a relationship, and it's a partnership, and it really is vital to the client's progression and stuff that it's a match, so if you go and speak to a therapist, or a coach, or anyone, and you don't like how things are gelling and things like that, then change, change coach 100%, and a good coach would never be upset over this at all, they would only ever want the best for a client, because that's why they're doing it in the first place, if it's for money and things like that, and they don't like it, then well, that's their problem, and leave it at that, and the third category that I have is personal development, or self-development, same thing, and that's just all about getting really, really curious with your thoughts, and why you might think like this, how you're actually feeling in any given moment, you could say for a week, do like, I'm going to try every hour, write down how I feel, and why I feel like that, and the triggers that might be causing these things, and this will create a lot of awareness, and also emotional intelligence, which both go hand in hand, they both complement each other, and yeah, you can really start, make some massive impacts in your own life, journaling as well is actually great, I do journal myself, not all the time, but if I have something to work out, I really, really, really benefit from it, I cannot stress this enough, and this is coming from a guy who probably, outside of school, has read like one book in his life, up until like a year ago, I've read several, and would never really write anything down unless I had to, like for work, and I think I've burnt out like three or four pens in the last year, just by journaling, and obviously studying, and things like that, but yeah, honestly, the last person on earth to be like, yeah, you should journal, it's great, I'm telling you, that's how good it is, something special happens when you start to write, it actually lights up different parts of your brain, enabling you to think differently, so you can then have a different perspective on certain aspects, and the fact that you're putting on paper, and can see it as a different perspective in itself, right, so there's many different angles that's happening, it helps you, enables you to understand, and the fact that you're thinking differently, you can then figure things out better, like it's really profound, I'm not saying it's for you, and that's fine, if it is though, there's another thing you should know about, just give it a try, whatever you think, by the way, just be curious, and have a go at it, another thing you should know about is the emotions wheel, now you can google this, or hit me up, I'll send you one, and it's really cool, because like, you know, we don't get taught stuff like, this is fact, by the way, there's 32,000 human emotions, right, and there's thankfully not 32,000 in this chart, but on the emotions wheel, you have like in the centre here, got one in front of me, it's got disgusted, sad, happy, surprised, bad, fearful, and angry, and these are like simple emotions, right bang smack in the middle, and then going out from each one of those, is more emotions that are breaking it down, like for example, angry, this is a good one, because if you can understand your anger, in any given moment, or over a certain situation, you don't need to be angry anymore, right, so anger, then it goes, you've got different ones that are breaking down, and let down, humiliated, bitter, mad, aggressive, frustrated, distant, critical, and then it gets breaking down even more, into betrayed, resentful, that's under let down, under humiliated, disrespected, ridiculed, under bitter, that's something you can't read, violated, mad, furious, jealous, and then under aggressive, provoked, hostile, frustrated, infuriated, and annoyed, and under distant, there's withdrawn, and numb, and critical, and skeptical, and dismissive, right, so you get, you can really be like, oh, break the emotions down, and create more emotional awareness, and help you understand these situations, and diagnose what's been bothering you, essentially, right, it's all a bit like being your own Sherlock Holmes, I'll give you one more example, I am trying to keep these podcasts short, so they're nice and bite-sized, I'm going over the time that I wanted to, but, you know, whatever, juice is sharp on this one, right, happy, we have, playful, content, interested, proud, accepted, powerful, peaceful, trusting, optimistic, under playful, you've got aroused and cheeky, content, you've got free and joyful, interested, you've got curious, inquisitive, proud, you've got successful, confident, accepted, you've got respected, valued, powerful, you've got courageous, and creative, peaceful, you've got loving, thankful, trusting, you've got sensitive, and intimate, optimistic, you've got hopeful, and inspired, now you can really see how this helps you understand situations in your mind, and your emotions, right, trust me, try it, it's fucking great, and that's it, I don't even want to look through my notes, because I probably missed loads of stuff I had written down to say about the subject, it is a massive subject, I might even do a second one on the different types of awareness as well, because we covered basically mental and emotional awareness, but there's loads of different types, I hope you enjoy the podcast, please give me your feedback, I would love to make this a community thing, so if there's something you would like me to talk about, please do let me know, if I can figure out how, I'll add a link into one of my social medias, I don't have a business Instagram yet, but I do have a business TikTok, it's Mark Tully PDM, and PDM stands for Personal Development for Men, my Instagram is Tully in Sydney, so yeah, just let me know what you think, give me some feedback, give me some constructive criticism, tell me the subjects you would like me to talk about, I do already have a load of ideas, and subjects I'm going to put on, and I'm really looking forward to recording them all, I have some guys who are guests, lined up, and more guys seem to want to come on etc, and girls for that matter, yeah, if I could make this a community thing, I would absolutely love that, so thank you very much for listening, hope you enjoyed it, go and smash the rest of this month, tune in next month for the next episode, which will be on the importance of being present.