Self-Awareness and Behavior Change: Why Knowing Isn't Enough

You Know What's Holding You Back. So Why Are You Still Holding Back?

What years of embodiment practice taught me about fear, visibility, rejection, and learning to move forward without abandoning myself.

There's something I recognized about myself last year.

When it came to launching new products, programs, or creative projects, I would sometimes find myself in this strange, quiet pause.

It was almost like having my foot on the gas and the brakes at the exact same time.

I wanted to move. I was excited about what I was creating. I could feel the passion, the possibility, the desire to bring something into the world.

And yet, something inside me would hesitate.

From the outside, people have told me that I move quickly.

I create. I launch. I put myself out there. I move through obstacles like they're quicksand, finding my way through before they have a chance to swallow me.

And there's truth to that.

But what people don't always see is that this capacity to move has come from years of practicing embodiment.

Not years of eliminating fear.

One of the most fascinating things I've discovered about self-awareness and behavior change is that understanding our patterns doesn't automatically mean we respond differently when those patterns show up.

Years of learning how to experience fear without automatically allowing it to make my decisions.

And guess what?

I still have moments when I think:

Oh my God. What if I launch this thing and it completely flops?

And then another part of me responds:

SO THE FUCK WHAT?

Seriously.

So what?

What if it doesn't work? What if nobody signs up? What if people don't understand what I'm creating?

What if I pour my heart into something and it doesn't land the way I imagined?

Well, then I get to learn something.

I get information. I get experience. I get an opportunity to create differently next time.

But I don't get any of that information if I never give myself the chance to find out.

And that brings me to something I've been exploring more deeply.

Self-Awareness and Behavior Change: Knowing Isn't the Same as Doing

What happens when you already know your pattern?

When you've spent years exploring yourself, connecting the dots, understanding the emotional experiences that shaped your responses?

What happens when you're incredibly self-aware, but your body still hesitates?

Do you need another breakthrough?

Another workshop?

Another explanation for why you do what you do?

Maybe.

But what if there's another possibility?

What if the next step isn't understanding your fear more deeply, but learning how to include it in your experience without letting it stop your life?

For me, this has meant getting curious about what happens in my body when I'm preparing to launch something.

The subtle pause.

The tightening.

The internal negotiations.

The moments when I'm suddenly finding a hundred other things to do instead of taking the next step.

Rather than immediately trying to get rid of those experiences, I've been learning to recognize them.

To feel them.

To acknowledge that something inside me is responding.

And then ask:

Okay, what would it look like to honor what's happening here and still take one step forward?

Sometimes that means giving myself more time.

If I know that launching something new can bring up old stories about performance, visibility, and acceptance, why would I continually create timelines that leave no room for those experiences?

Why not start earlier?

Why not build in space for the hesitation?

Why not allow myself to feel everything that's arising while continuing to create?

That's embodiment, too.

It's not always about pushing through.

Sometimes it's about creating conditions that allow you to move without abandoning yourself in the process.

The Eight Months It Took Me to Launch Erotic Spirit Podcast

When I look back at launching Erotic Spirit Podcast, I can see just how much of this was playing out.

It took approximately eight months of planning, practicing, questioning, and moving through the internal blocks that came with bringing the podcast into the world.

Eight months.

And it wasn't because I didn't know how to launch something.

I had spent years in product development. I understood strategy, execution, bringing ideas to life, and navigating uncertainty.

But this was different.

This wasn't simply a product.

This was my voice.

My perspective.

My relationship with sexuality, spirituality, consciousness, healing, and the human experience.

These were topics that people still considered taboo.

Topics that could make people uncomfortable.

Topics that might invite judgment, criticism, misunderstanding, or rejection.

I remember having a conversation with my soul sister, who was launching the podcast with me, and asking something along the lines of:

Are we sure we're doing the right thing by talking about this?

And underneath that question was so much more.

Would people understand?

Would they judge us?

Would they think we were too much?

Was I speaking from my ego, or was this genuinely coming from my truth?

Who was I to talk publicly about sexuality and spirituality?

Who was I to challenge conversations that society had spent so long teaching us to keep private?

And perhaps the deeper question was:

Would I still be accepted if I allowed myself to be fully seen?

When Your Desire to Create Meets Your Desire to Be Accepted

This is where things started getting really interesting for me.

Because the more I explored what was happening internally, the more I began recognizing familiar stories.

Stories about being seen.

Stories about emotional unavailability.

Stories about whether my voice mattered.

Stories from childhood experiences that had taught me, in different ways, to question how much of myself was acceptable to express.

And then there were the broader cultural messages.

Don't talk about that.

Don't make people uncomfortable.

Don't be too sexual.

Don't be too provocative.

Don't challenge what people believe.

Be digestible.

Be palatable.

Be someone people can understand.

And here I was, creating a podcast that invited conversations about sexuality, spirituality, pleasure, shame, and the parts of ourselves that so many people had learned to hide.

Of course that brought things up for me.

But here's what I began to recognize.

I wasn't only afraid that people wouldn't understand my work. I was afraid of what their misunderstanding might mean about me.

Would I be rejected?

Would I be judged?

Would I be seen as inappropriate, unqualified, or too much?

Would people still accept me if I stopped editing myself to fit their expectations?

And isn't that fascinating?

Because how often do we recreate the very experiences we've spent years trying to heal?

We want to be seen, but we hide.

We want to be accepted, but we abandon pieces of ourselves to become more acceptable.

We want to express our truth, but we rehearse it so many times that eventually we question whether we should express it at all.

We become the very person withholding the experience we're longing for.

Not always consciously.

Not because we're doing something wrong.

But because somewhere along the way, we learned that being ourselves might come with consequences.

What If Someone Doesn't Get You?

Here's something I've come to appreciate.

People are allowed not to understand me.

They're allowed to disagree with me.

They're allowed to have completely different perspectives on sexuality, spirituality, healing, and how we experience life.

They're even allowed to judge me.

And none of that automatically means that I am wrong.

It doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, either.

It means we're having different human experiences.

What I've been learning is that I don't need everyone to understand me in order to honor what's true for me.

And that doesn't mean I never question myself.

I still ask whether something is coming from my ego, my desire for validation, or a deeper place of truth.

But I've learned to pay attention to how I experience those questions.

When I connect with something that feels deeply true to me, there's often a sense of peace.

A calmness.

An innate freedom to create from passion rather than from the need to prove myself.

And here's the part I think is so important:

That peace can exist at the exact same time as fear.

I can feel deeply aligned with something and still be afraid of how people will receive it.

I can feel passionate about an idea and still question whether anyone will show up.

I can feel free to express myself and still notice an old impulse to make myself smaller.

One experience doesn't cancel out the other.

That's what it means, to me, to embody all of it.

You Don't Have to Choose Between Feeling Fear and Taking Action

Somewhere along the way, I think we've created this idea that personal growth should eventually lead us to a place where the uncomfortable feelings stop showing up.

That if we've done enough healing, we won't feel rejected.

If we've become confident enough, we won't feel nervous.

If we're truly aligned, we won't experience doubt.

But that's not how I experience embodiment.

For me, embodiment isn't about becoming someone who never feels fear.

It's about becoming more capable of being with myself when fear arises.

It's noticing when my body contracts.

It's recognizing when an old story about acceptance begins playing in my mind.

It's allowing the emotions to be present without immediately making them evidence that I shouldn't move forward.

And it's also knowing when I genuinely need to pause, rest, reconsider, or change direction.

Because embodiment isn't about overriding ourselves in the name of progress.

It's about expanding our capacity to experience ourselves and make conscious choices from within that experience.

Sometimes the choice is to move.

Sometimes the choice is to slow down.

Sometimes the choice is to give ourselves a longer runway.

But the difference is that we're participating in the decision rather than unconsciously repeating the same response.

New Experiences Give Us Something Awareness Alone Cannot

There's something powerful about giving ourselves opportunities to experience life differently.

Our brains have the capacity to change through learning and experience, a process known as neuroplasticity.

And while insight can be an important part of change, practicing new behaviors can help us develop different responses over time.

Think about it.

If you've spent years avoiding visibility because you're afraid of being judged, understanding the origin of that fear can be incredibly valuable.

But what happens when you begin allowing yourself to be seen?

When you share the idea?

When you publish the episode?

When you launch the program?

When you make the request?

When you speak up even though your voice is shaking?

You begin collecting experiences.

Some will be beautiful.

Some will be uncomfortable.

Some won't go the way you hoped.

And that's part of the experiment.

The goal isn't to manufacture a positive outcome every time.

The goal is to expand your experience beyond the familiar response.

To discover that you can hear no and still be okay.

That you can be misunderstood and still honor your voice.

That something can fail without making you a failure.

That you can experience discomfort without automatically interpreting it as a reason to stop.

New experiences create opportunities for new evidence. And new evidence can change the stories we're willing to believe about ourselves.

So Where Are You Still Holding Yourself Back?

I look at how much has changed since launching Erotic Spirit Podcast.

The conversations I've had.

The people I've connected with.

The parts of myself I've become more comfortable expressing publicly.

The freedom I've experienced from allowing myself to create something that wasn't designed to be acceptable to everyone.

And I think about what would have happened if I'd allowed those eight months of hesitation to become a permanent no.

None of those experiences would exist in the same way.

And still, I have moments when I pause.

I have moments when an old story resurfaces.

I have moments when I wonder whether something I'm creating will resonate.

The difference is how I relate to those moments now.

I can recognize the fear without turning it into an identity.

I can acknowledge the hesitation without making it a verdict.

I can give myself room to feel what's happening while exploring what action feels possible.

And I can laugh sometimes and say:

What if it flops?

SO THE FUCK WHAT.

I'll learn.

I'll adjust.

I'll create again.

Because I'm no longer interested in making the absence of fear a requirement for living my life.

And maybe that's the invitation for you, too.

Where are you still waiting to feel ready?

Where are you making acceptance a prerequisite for expression?

Where are you asking the world for permission to be yourself?

And where might you be recreating an old wound by withholding the very experience you want?

You don't have to answer those questions perfectly.

You don't even have to change everything today.

But perhaps you can notice what's happening.

Feel what's moving through your body.

Recognize the story.

Honor the part of you that's afraid.

And ask yourself:

What's one small way I can move toward what I want without leaving myself behind?

Because healing can help us understand why we've lived the way we have.

But understanding isn't the end of the story.

There's still a whole life waiting to be experienced.

And you get to participate in it.

With the fear.

With the uncertainty.

With the passion.

With all of you.