Self-Awareness: A Tool for CEOs to Access Freedom

The role of the CEO can be demanding. It requires fast thinking in high pressure moments. What if you could ease some of the tension? What if, by turning your curiosity inward – you get time back? You could see choices more clearly. One of your greatest assets is available to you at all moments – if you prioritize the practice of it. Self-awareness can be at the root of every choice you make – which ensures intentional decision making.

Human beings are capable of observing their own thoughts while they’re having them. What a gift! This becomes an entry point into change. Self-awareness is the home of unstuck.

Every thought we have, every statement we make, we are practicing something. We might be practicing beneficial thinking. We might be practicing self-limiting thoughts. The words we use and the thoughts we have create our realities. We are practicing something all the time. Our self-awareness gives us the ability to notice our practices, reflect on them, and ensure they’re getting us closer to our truth and freedom.

THE ROLE OF THE OBSERVER  

We have been conditioned to beat ourselves up mentally, but there’s another way to live. If we can create space from looped self-critical thinking, we can shift our practice. The role of the observer is one of the most powerful roles we can inhabit.

The role of the observer is incredibly helpful by granting us access to reframing and new perspectives. We may not be able to choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we navigate through and respond to them.

While it’s important to learn new practices that support our growth and intentionality, we need to unlearn the practices and patterns that are working against us. In fact, I think I spend more time with clients working on unlearning than learning. That’s how impactful it is on us.

Every time we make a decision, we fire a neuron down a neural pathway. When we find ourselves in similar circumstances, making the same or similar decisions again and again, that neural pathway becomes a superhighway. The effect of superhighways is that our brains are no longer able to recognize that there’s a choice to be made. These pathways have fired so many times, the movement has become automatic (a reaction). Think of habits. If we have a behavior that isn’t serving us—we’ve been practicing it on a loop because we fear pain and don’t want that hurt to get triggered—we’re going to react this way every single time to protect ourselves from the pain. Then we don’t even have the choice to respond differently.

One of my clients recalls a presentation from a time in elementary school when she was ridiculed by some of her classmates. Over time, this caused her to become quiet and avoid sharing in group settings. Fast-forward, and she’s now fairly new in her career at a Fortune 500 company. She has ideas to share and is often told by her manager she needs to speak up more, to be more vocal; she is able to do so in one-on-one settings. The superhighway created from getting quiet to protect herself was lodged into her subconscious, so she just shut down in group meetings. When we were able to identify the pattern and where it came from, we could connect her to what was true today so that she could make new choices and establish new neural pathways.

USING SELF-AWARENESS TO BRING INTENTIONALITY TO OUR RESPONSES  

Unfortunately, vulnerability is often associated with weakness. It’s what many of us were taught—or, more likely, what was modeled to many of us. Talk about a neuron on a superhighway: This is where unlearning and learning can happen at the same time. By connecting to what is true and disconnecting from what we adopted as true because of societal norms, constructs, or what previously had been true, we can start to unlearn the misperception that vulnerability is weakness while also creating a new neural pathway that associates vulnerability with strength.

Here’s an example from one of my clients who was able to dig beneath his trigger in order to access his vulnerability. This client was recently sharing a couple of challenging conversations he was having with his manager and director, which caused quite a bit of frustration. During the first conversation, they didn’t ask my client for his ideas or opinions but rather told him what decisions they had come to and what they expected of him and his team. Based on his previous patterning, he reacted automatically by expressing strong frustration at this micromanaging approach, using terse language, and displaying standoffish body language, which was received as unprofessional. We talked about what was beneath his frustration. Why did he feel wronged? What was being misunderstood or not considered? Where was the tension? He shared that he was one of five children and often didn’t feel heard growing up. He felt like he was being overlooked. This triggered his self-worth issues.

In the second conversation with his manager, he spoke directly to what was beneath the frustration and how challenging the situation was for him—that he wasn’t feeling heard and that his ideas weren’t even being considered, making him feel irrelevant. He also shared that even if his ideas weren’t incorporated, a similar experience was being passed down through the team, creating a toxic environment. Much to his surprise, after sharing this vulnerability, the manager divulged the pressure that she and the director had been under. They were able to come to an agreement and create a new way forward— making room for all to share their ideas and opinions before finalizing a new path.

By modeling vulnerability as a strength, my client was able to give another—in this case, his manager—permission to practice the same approach. If he hadn’t spent the time to practice self-awareness, to see what was beneath the trigger, he wouldn’t have made this progress. Modeling is the greatest form of leadership.

By modeling another way, we give someone else permission to do the same. We create safety through our actions.

ACCESSING THE OBSERVER THROUGH OUR SELF-CRITIC 

One of my clients is a founder of a start-up facing great pressure to successfully deliver upon his idea to his investors. Nexting proved to be incredibly useful as he navigated some of the more high-pressure moments:

I’m never going to find product market fit. Next.

What if I run out of money? Next.

I’m not going to be able to pay the team’s salaries. Next.

What if I fail? Next.

Remember, the critic is not a terrible thing. It might even have relevant information for us—just not when it’s playing on a loop ad nauseam. The important part of observing the critic is to create space so that you can choose how to engage for the information your self-critic has for you.

A spectrum allows for options and the ability to increase our awareness to make intentional choices. If we allow our circumstances to inform us, we have the option of shifting in a new direction. If we are all the way on one side of a continuum, we may be digging in our heels.

How can looking at your life through a different perspective give you the ability to reframe it?

If we find ourselves digging in our heels on one side of the spectrum (e.g., disconnection), can we pause and get curious about what the other end of the spectrum (e.g., connection) holds for us? By doing so, we can begin to identify the space to see and understand our options and decide if shifting on the spectrum would serve us. For instance, if we find ourselves in a place of judgment, can we pause and ask ourselves, What can I get curious about? Judgments typically come with a story, an assumption we are making. Becoming curious about why we’re feeling judgmental enables us to arrive at a useful understanding that can shift our perspective.

One of my clients is in a senior management position. As in many companies, after COVID she had to navigate the world of the hybrid work environment and the challenge of getting employees to return to the office. One employee in particular had quite a difficult time. She would come in late and leave early, if she came at all. My client and I had many conversations about her frustration with and judgments about this employee: how she was taking advantage of the circumstance, how she wasn’t putting her colleagues first, and how selfish she was being. However, when my client turned judgment into curiosity, she was able to discover that this employee was navigating severe health issues, and moreover was a very private person so wasn’t revealing this information willingly. The larger issue overrode whether the employee handled the situation correctly. We want to recognize when we’re being judgmental so that we can pivot to curiosity. How will my circumstance lead me to a solution more efficiently and effectively—and that takes both people into consideration?

There isn’t just one way to navigate our circumstances. The approach I suggest would be to remain open to all the useful information around us so that we can choose the path that serves us best. From that point, we can go on connecting to our values and practicing behaviors that are true to our purposeful way of being.

By refining our self-awareness, we can become an active participant in our days – ensuring we are observing how we are able to meet moments of challenge with strategic and intentional responses.

Written by Guryan Tighe. Parts of this piece have been adapted from Unmasking Fear: How Fears Are Our Gateways to Freedom (Health Communications Inc; August 2025).

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