Self-Awareness & Awareness of Self

In this episode of Dr. Tami Talks, Dr. Tami unpacks the vital role self-awareness plays in personal growth—and why it’s only half the story. While self-awareness is often celebrated as the key to transformation, she reveals a critical (and often overlooked) truth: without a compassionate, empowered awareness of Self—your highest, truest essence—self-awareness can become a trap.

Through this unscripted and unfiltered conversation, Dr. Tami invites you to go beyond the mindset of “fixing” yourself and instead, cultivate a deep, loving relationship with the part of you that is divine, creative, and whole. She shares how matching self-awareness with awareness of Self unlocks the kind of inner freedom and power that makes true, lasting transformation possible.

If you’ve ever felt stuck on the path of personal development, despite all the courses, coaching, and mindset work—this is the conversation you’ve been waiting for.

Tune in and discover how to create a life you truly love… from the inside out.

Join Made To Thrive — a free 3-part masterclass series with Dr. Tami Berry. Discover the science and soul of thriving — and remember what it feels like to truly live in flow.

You were never meant to simply survive. You were made to thrive.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello there. Welcome to this episode of Dr. Tammy Talks. I'm your host. I'm Dr. Tammy. I have to just start off by saying I'm loving this new format. This, like, I'm just going to talk about what's on my mind, what's on my heart. What's in my heart, what's in my mind, and I'm doing it uncensored, unfiltered, unscripted. This is feeling really liberating and terrifying at the same time because I don't know what's going to come out. We're about to find out. Um, I wanted to talk about something that I see as a gap in the personal development industry as a whole. And I think it is a really important conversation because we talk again and again and again about the critical importance of self awareness. There is no. Like that's not in question, right? Like there's no denying that it is self awareness that becomes the vehicle, the catalyst, the, um, the seed of change, right? Because there's so much that we don't know. And, and what's interesting about mindset work. I think I've already said this maybe on the last podcast, but you know, you don't know what you don't know. And that becomes really interesting because the brain has a really interesting, um, bias built into it that we think we know when we don't know. And it's not until you actually experience a mindset shift. It's not until you have a moment of self awareness that changes everything. That you then realize how important your mindset is to your life experience and your ability to create what you want in your life. And then it has you so humbled and moved and inspired to cultivate self awareness because you realize, okay, this is actually the fertile ground for my transformation. And so as you start tasting this, you become a really, I mean, I now have a nearly insatiable appetite, desire and insatiable desire to discover and explore and, and experience greater self awareness. I want to talk about. Why that's good and why that can be a little dangerous. That's good because without it, nothing changes, right? We're interested in change. We're interested in our own personal evolution and our expansion, which I believe is not just a personal quest. I believe this is so important for the whole. This is a fractal, holographic thing. Universe from all of the science and the indicators that I have collected over the last decade plus of my actual research into this, which means every internal change has a massive major external effects. And so as within, so without and self awareness. Was the first thing I started cultivating on my own mindfulness meditation journey when I started doing sort of like a, a mindfulness base, uh, stress reduction, um, type, uh, you know, training and, and, and so forth in my early like burnout. Recovery journey. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this was the golden ticket. And for years, I spent time cultivating self awareness, not realizing the double edged sword that it can be, which is why I wanted to record a podcast on awareness of self with a capital S. Because when we cultivate self awareness, We become acutely aware of how crazy we are, right? And if we have a punishing, condemning, critical, perhaps abusive relationship with ourselves, as we cultivate self awareness, we're actually cultivating ammunition. And when the psyche. Feels like it can be attacked. It will intentionally hide things from your awareness because it is terrified of being seen and ridiculed and berated and abused. Right. So your own evolution, your own personal transformation is limited by the relationship you have with yourself. And so I wanted us to talk about the awareness of self because when we think we are somehow damaged, or not good enough, or not worthy, or broken, then what ends up happening is Is that our journey of self awareness, our journey for personal transformation is rooted and seeded in trying to quote unquote, fix ourselves as within. So without, if we continue a journey with the goal of fixing ourselves, there will always be something to fix, right? And awareness of self. Is an invitation, not just to cultivate self friendship with ourselves, right? To, to be really curious about who's the self that's observing, right? Who is the witness? Is this witness kind and loving and supportive? Is this witness within me, my own best friend? Is that who's coaching me, guiding me, cheering me on? Or is it my inner critic? Is it? Some sort of ideal of perfectionism, that's impossible to achieve anyways. So I wanted to put that out here because this can change your entire trajectory of your self development and personal evolution journey. Right here. This conversation is a total game changer. If you're listening, congratulations, because you have given yourself one of the greatest gifts you will ever have on this journey. And that is the invitation to understand how important it is. Like when we talk about self kindness, when I talk about self love, I'm not talking fluffy, um, sentimental bullshit. I am talking about a power A force that allows you to fuel your own evolution and your own growth, your own becoming and allows you to create the life you actually want to experience. There is nothing sentimental about this. There is nothing fluffy about this because this relationship with yourself. We'll give you the courage, will instill the confidence, will allow you to constantly have your own back, show up with the best of what you got and be willing to take risks, be willing to use your voice, be willing to set boundaries, be willing to reach bigger, be willing to dare bigger, be, be willing to do the work that is a previously terrified you to have the ability to move past some of the barriers that have been holding you back because they're all internal, right? If there's a piece of you that's at risk of being ridiculed, judged, criticized, it will always be hidden. And you will wonder why you keep doing the work. You buy the course, you do the, you work with this coach, you take this program, you, you do this retreat and you have like little breakthroughs, little breakthroughs, little breakthroughs, but it doesn't last. And I'm telling you, it's this, it is the relationship you have with yourself that will Hinder your progress or quantum leap you forward. It is that important. And so these come down to the beliefs we have about ourselves, which are often instilled from our familial unit, from our childhood experiences. And you can get an idea of that when you look at. The people closest to you in your childhood, the beliefs they had tend to be the beliefs you've adopted the society, the culture, the media, the religion, the academia, wherever you found yourself your community. So, helpful right I hope this was just, I hope this was such a breakthrough moment for you I feel it I, I know that it is. I'm so happy for you. The other invitation that I wanted us to really explore here was that when you become, when you cultivate this awareness of self awareness of self with a capital S, I want you to become aware of your highest self, your God self, the part of you that is divine. The part of you that is consciousness, pure consciousness itself, and that seat of consciousness is loving. It is. It is the seat of the, of the immeasurables is what my Tibetan teachers often call it. It's the seat of compassion and joy and love and equanimity. It's the ability to see without judgment and reactivity and to do so with love in our heart With loving eyes for ourselves and for everybody around us. And if you don't think this is a skill, then you haven't practiced it. This is a skill, but it is inherent to who you are. And so it's always within reach. It's always within reach. When we move out of the thinking intellectual mind and into the intelligence of the body and our heart. It's always within reach. It's inherent to who you are. It's inherent to your being. Lately, my journey, this will be the journey of my lifetime because we are infinite. We are part of this infinite consciousness, infinite potential, infinite potentiality. And I mean that in terms of our potential and energy, everything is accessible here. There's a unified field that we are a part of that informs us and we inform it. And as I started realizing like, Oh my gosh, this is an expanded understanding of God itself. And I am an extension of this. I am intimately an expression of this. I become a conduit for this. To be expressed in this world. And when I cultivate that level of awareness of myself, I realized that this one precious life, I'm one of 8 billion people. And so are you, you and I are here to see how much we can express the power, the wisdom, the love, the potential. Of God, and I am so proud of myself that I just said that because if you follow scientific doctrine for very long, you realize very early on in your journey that we don't talk about God. We don't talk about God, right? There was a very specific split. Between science and religion that stems back to the 1800s, right? The massive inquisition where Galileo and the greatest minds that dare to say. That the earth wasn't the center of the universe, that the sun was the center of the universe and we rotated around it, right? These scientific geniuses were either in prison for life or. Murdered and I love science and I have now, it has taken me so long to decondition shift the beliefs that are within me so that I can merge science and spirituality because I believe now that that is why I am here and the scientific mind within me is terrified, but my heart knows that this is the truth and I'm here to speak my truth. And I think you're here to hear it. And so thank you. Thank you for being on the journey with me because it's your journey too. There is something within you that is begging for your courage. There is something within you that is begging you to shift around your beliefs so you get to show up and deliver on your greatest self. I'm so honored to be on this journey with you. It's going to look different for each one of us, and that's what makes it so beautiful. I am delighted to continue recording in this way where I just talk about what's on my heart and what's in my mind, even when it scares me, I'm going to say it again, ye are gods. We came here as creators to create, and we're creating all the time. And we can either be creating from our intellect, the one that's been conditioned to perpetuate the norms that currently exist, or we condition a new mind, one that is intelligent, one that's rooted in the heart. And we use the mind and the intellect as a tool to express that deeper intelligence. Wow. Beautiful. Awareness of self. So important. So, so important. Self awareness, absolutely critical for your own transformation. Please match it with an awareness of self, please, for your benefit. Don't get caught in the self awareness trap. You aren't trying to fix anything. You're trying to liberate what needs fixing. There's nothing about you that's broken. There's nothing about you. None of this has actually gone wrong. When you become aware of self, you become aware of all of the ways that you actually created this and you find a radical forgiveness, radical compassion, equanimity to hold it all. And this gives you the capacity to change everything so good. I absolutely love you. Thank you for being here. Thanks for tuning in for this episode of Dr. Tammy talks. I'll catch you again. Hopefully soon. Take care of my friend.