E190: Awareness Without Choice Is Regret

You already know the truth. The question is—are you willing to respond to it?

In this episode, I explore the uncomfortable space between knowing something and actually doing something about it. Through a recent experience with my own health, I realized how often we override what we already know—not because we lack insight, but because we haven't made a conscious choice about how to respond.

We'll unpack:

• Why awareness alone doesn't create change
• The difference between waiting and self-abandonment
• How to know when it's time to act versus time to pause
• What self-trust actually looks like in practice
• The PACT Framework and where you might be stuck within it

If you've ever wondered why you keep ignoring what you already know, this one's for you.

🎧 Listen now, then tell me: What truth has been tapping you on the shoulder?

Transcript

Welcome And The Knowing Gap

Cynthia Jamieson 0:05

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Uncharted and Unfiltered, a Journey Back to You. I am Cynthia Jameson, your host, and I am so glad that you are here with me today. Today's episode is about the space between what we know and how we respond. It is about those moments when something inside us already knows the truth, but we haven't quite acted on it yet. Maybe it is a boundary you have been avoiding, a conversation you've been postponing, a need you have been ignoring, or a quiet inner knowing that keeps tapping you on the shoulder, asking for your attention. Have you ever had that happen? So if you are like any of the beautiful people that I work with, you may be wondering, why do I keep ignoring what I already know? Why do I stay stuck even when I have clarity? How do I know whether it's time to act or time to wait? What does self-trust actually look like in practice? Or how do I stop second-guessing myself? We are going to explore those questions today as we look at the difference between awareness and action, why awareness alone isn't enough to create change, and how self-trust grows when we consciously choose how to respond to what we already know.

A Dizziness Story With A Lesson

Cynthia Jamieson 1:20

And I want to share a story with you. A few days ago, I noticed something. It wasn't a big thing. I experienced moments of dizziness, a little here, a little there, enough to notice, but not enough to stop. Now, for some context, I have experienced BPPV, or if you're not familiar with it, benign, paroximal, positional, vertical, vertigo, sorry, it's a bit of a mouthful, off and on since 2015. And it is a condition that can cause brief episodes of dizziness or a spinning sensation when you move your head in certain ways. And while it's usually not serious, it doesn't feel like that. It can be incredibly disruptive when it flares up. So when I started noticing the familiar sensations again, I had a pretty good idea it might what might be going on. But I did what so many of us do. I carried on living my life. I went with my run group, I coached my clients, I worked on my book, I checked things off the list and I kept moving. And then on Saturday, I asked my husband to support me in doing the Epple maneuver because I knew that it had returned. And as I moved through the positions, I was thinking to myself, as I'm always thinking to myself, how did I end up here? And I had this realization, I could have done this days ago. So it's not because I didn't know what was happening. It was more that I didn't respond to what I knew. And then I found myself wondering, how often do we do this in our lives, not just with dizziness, with boundaries, with exhaustion, with relationships, with opportunities, with dreams, with decisions that we have already made in our hearts, but haven't yet made in our lives.

When Awareness Turns Into Regret

Cynthia Jamieson 3:10

And that's when this phrase or this thought came into my awareness, and I've had it before, and I'm going to share it here with you now, which is awareness without choice is regret. And the more that I sat with this, the more I realized it needed a bit more nuance because I don't actually believe awareness always requires immediate action. I don't think every insight is asking us to make a dramatic move. And I don't think that every awareness means like quit the job, leave the relationship, have the conversation, or make the decision today. Sometimes awareness is simply asking us to tell ourselves the truth. And that's where I think so many of us get stuck. We confuse awareness with transformation. We celebrate awareness because it feels like progress, right? Like this is the breakthrough, this is the insight, this is the moment where we finally understand ourselves. And don't get me wrong, awareness matters. I talk about it a lot on the podcast. It is powerful, it is necessary, it is where everything begins. But awareness alone doesn't change anything. So one question that I often hear in my work is if I already know what's wrong, why am I still stuck? And here's the thing: because knowing and choosing are not the same thing. Understanding a pattern doesn't automatically change it. Seeing the truth doesn't automatically mean we are going to respond to it, case in point, my own experience, right? In fact, this is something that I see reflected in a framework that has emerged through my coaching

PACT: Pause Awareness Choice Trust

Cynthia Jamieson 4:51

work. And I'm calling it the PACT framework. And PACT stands for pause, awareness, choice, and trust. And what's interesting is that I didn't sit down one day and just decide to create this framework. As I mentioned, it emerged over time through my work, through my lived experience, through my writing. That's when it really started to become clear for me. And that has encompassed my work with more than 550 leaders at this point. So as I listen to people's stories, observe their patterns and my own, and reflect on the transformations taking place, I just kept noticing the same progression. People needed to pause long enough to hear themselves. They needed awareness of what was really happening. They needed to make a conscious choice about how they wanted to respond for themselves. And they needed to be able to trust themselves enough to follow through. So over time, those patterns became fact. And what I'm coming to realize is that so many people spend years in awareness without ever moving into choice. And listen, I've done this myself with my own story, right? So I'm on the living embodiment of the work. So we know what's happening, right? They know what's happening, they understand the pattern, and they can explain it. But they haven't yet decided how they want to respond. And I have worked with leaders who could explain every pattern they had. They knew where it came from, they understood why it existed, they could describe it beautifully, they had all the language, they had all the insight and all the awareness, and yet their lives weren't changing. Why? Because awareness had become a substitute for choice, a substitute for trust, a substitute for responding to what they already knew. And I think that's where regret begins. Not because we waited or because we didn't act fast enough, but because we repeatedly witness ourselves overriding what we know.

Waiting Versus Self-Abandonment

Cynthia Jamieson 7:02

And at this point, so many people ask me, well, how do I know if I'm honoring myself or abandoning myself? And it is an important question because the difference isn't always obvious. The deepest form of self-betrayal is not that we don't know the truth. It is that we know it and we keep asking for permission to ignore it. Because we know we are exhausted, we know we're caring too much, we know the conversation needs to happen, we know that something is no longer aligned. And when that happens, we are shrinking, we are settling, we are pretending, and yet we continue as if we don't. And again, hand on heart, I have done this, right? And that's why I know it so well. And that is a very different thing than consciously choosing to wait. In fact, one of the questions that came to me after this realization is, what if I'm wrong here? It's always a great question to ask yourself. What if awareness doesn't always require action? And I think that's true. Sometimes the most aligned choice is to wait. Sometimes the most aligned choice is to gather more information. Sometimes it's acceptance, sometimes it's grief, sometimes it's rest. And sometimes it's recognizing that just because you are aware of something doesn't mean that you are responsible for fixing it. Which leads to another question many people wrestle with. How do I know whether I should act now or wait? And the answer isn't always immediate action. The key word here is choice. Because waiting can be a choice. Not yet can be a choice. Saying can be a choice, leaving can be a choice. But what creates regret is not waiting. What creates regret is unconsciously postponing what we know is true while pretending we haven't already chosen. And that's why I have come to believe that there is a difference between waiting and self-abandonment. Waiting says, I know what's true, and I'm intentionally choosing my next step. Maybe I'm going to take it in three months or three years or whatever it might be. Self-abandonment says, I know what's true, and I'm going to keep talking myself out of it. One is trust, the other is disconnection. And I've said this many, many times on the podcast, you will always know it by how it feels.

Discernment In A Noisy World

Cynthia Jamieson 9:41

And that distinction feels incredibly important right now, especially because the world has become so noisy. There is always another opinion, and there always will be another expert, another article, another podcast, another reason to doubt yourself, another reason to wait. And while information has never been more available to us, self-trust feels increasingly rare, which is why I believe one of the most important skills we can develop isn't awareness. It's discernment, the ability to notice what is true for us, the ability to listen beneath the noise, the ability to trust ourselves enough to consciously choose our response. Another question that I hear often is how do I trust myself when I'm afraid of making the wrong decision? And this is where something like the PACT framework can become so helpful, so impactful, pun intended. The first step is pause, right? Before we can hear ourselves, we have to slow down long enough to notice what is happening, what is happening in our minds, in our bodies, in our hearts. Most of us are moving so quickly that we miss the signals entirely. The second step is awareness. This is where we can begin to see the pattern. We can recognize what is true, where it comes from, how we learned it, and we can understand what is asking for our attention. The third step is choice, not reaction, not pressure, not perfection, but choice. And in this context, that is a conscious decision about how we want to respond to what we know. And finally, trust. Now I want to be super clear because trust isn't certainty. Trust is the willingness to honor what we know even when the outcome isn't guaranteed. It's the confidence that we can say, stay connected to ourselves no matter what happens next. Right. And I'm just gonna quick caveat here because one of the things I always think about this for myself when I'm setting an intention is how can I set an intention and release my attachment to any of the outcome? Because that's where I get caught up when I'm wanting to force or create a particular outcome versus trusting the process to unfold just as it needs to. So that is important to be able to stay connected to ourselves because the world again isn't going to become less chaotic. There will always be uncertainty. There will always be competing perspectives, there will always be reasons to second guess yourself. The goal here isn't to eliminate the uncertainty. The goal is to remain connected to yourself within it, to change and shift your relationship with it. And in my work, I have started, again, to see a pattern where so many people arrive disconnected from themselves. Of course, they're never going to describe it that way. They are operating on autopilot, and then the awareness begins. They start to see what they have been missing, they start to see other different choices that they have. But this is often where they get stuck because they see the truth and override themselves anyway. They wait for more certainty, more proof, more permission, more evidence, and they haven't yet built that within themselves. And so the shift happens when they move into conscious choice. And over time, those choices, as they make them, build trust. Not because they are perfect, right? Not because they are making perfect decisions here, but because they develop confidence in their ability to honor what they know again and again and again. So self-trust isn't certainty, I don't think. Perhaps it is shorting the distance between awareness and a conscious choice, not a rushed one, not a pressured choice, a conscious one from a place where your body is regulated. And for me, this lesson arrived through dizziness.

One Conscious Choice To Begin

Cynthia Jamieson 13:56

So it was a simple reminder that I had already received the information. The question wasn't whether I knew. The question was whether I was willing to respond. And for someone else, that might be different. Maybe for you it's the conversation that you have been avoiding. Maybe it's the boundary that you know that you need that you want to set. Maybe it is the opportunity that you keep talking yourself out of. Or maybe it's the rest that your body has been asking for. It could also be a truth that you have been carrying quietly for months. Whatever it is, I am curious. What have you been noticing? What truth keeps tapping you on the shoulder? What do you already know? Not what you need to figure out or what you need to research or what you need to think about for another six months. What do you already know? And where are you within the packed framework? Do you need to pause? Do you need to deepen your awareness? Do you need to make a choice? Or do you need to trust yourself enough to honor the choice that you have already made? Because every time you honor what is true for you, you strengthen the relationship you have with yourself. And every time that you do that, your self-trust grows. Not because life becomes easier, but because you become more willing to stay connected to yourself within it. And maybe that's where your next step begins. Not with awareness, but with one conscious choice.

Coaching Support And Next Steps

Cynthia Jamieson 15:28

So if this episode resonated with you and you are ready to strengthen your self-trust, I would love to support you. You might be asking, how do I stop overthinking and start trusting myself? How do I make decisions with more confidence? How do I know what I truly want? How do I break patterns that keep me stuck? How do I reconnect with myself after years of putting everyone else first? That's a common one for so many of the people that I work with. And through my coaching and the PAC framework, I help people pause the noise, deepen their awareness, make aligned choices, and build lasting self-trust. You can work with me one-on-one, where together we would uncover the patterns that keep you stuck specifically, strengthen your connection to yourself, and help you make decisions with greater clarity, confidence, and alignment. Or you can also join the free Be The Light community where you will find conversations, resources, and support designed to help you reconnect with yourself and live from a place of greater intention. I will be scheduling some office hour sessions in there. I haven't done it yet, but I will be scheduling them this week. And you will find the links to all of that in the show notes. So until next time, I invite you to remember self-trust grows every time you stop abandoning what you know. And the path back to yourself isn't built through certainty. It is built through the choices you make when you trust what you know. Take good care, and I'll see you next time. Goodbye. I hope that you're walking away feeling more aligned with your true self, more confident in the choices ahead, and ready to leave the safe path behind, knowing you've got everything you need within. Remember, the journey to you isn't about finding one perfect direction. It's about trusting yourself enough to explore all of it. If you're ready to dive deeper, join me for the next episode and don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss the next step on your path. I invite you to join my mailing list at www.cynthia Jamisoncoach.ca, where we'll deepen our relationship and you can claim your copy of your inner compass, a guide to charting your course to authenticity. Until next time, stay unfiltered, stay true, and most importantly, stay you.