Gratitude and Self-Awareness 101: A Guide for Entrepreneurs
Ex Army Officer Chris Wightwick helps people access the best version of themselves by harnessing the power of an aligned heart and mind. Hear how he does it, and why he believes mindset the key to success.
When we think about personal growth, we often think about things like putting in hard work, building skills, and taking on challenges. All that stuff is great, and you all know I love to hustle, but there’s another side to it that’s equally important.
I’m talking about mindset and self-awareness.
Everything moves so fast now that it’s hard to take time to realise who we are, what we’re doing and why. But if you allow yourself the space to really ask those questions, you’ll open the door to the actual source of your power.
This is what Chris and I talked about this week.
Who is Chris Wightwick?
Chris is a business and personal development coach, but he’s done everything. He’s an ex-Army Officer who spent 11 years in the military. He worked as a registered nurse. He managed hospitals in Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands and Australia. Oh, and he almost became a golf pro.
So yeah, he’s a pretty cool to be honest.
Now, he helps people access the best version of themselves by harnessing the power of an aligned heart and mind.
Gratitude and Self-Acknowledgement
This part of our chat is where Chris’s opening quote comes from, and it’s where the center of his growth and success comes from.
“Gratitude and self-acknowledgement are the foundational pieces that allow us to evolve.”
“I believe that we need to love where we’re at, and train ourselves to recognise that everything is perfect, that nothing needs to be fixed, that we simply need to reconnect with our most authentic truth more and more often.”
“For me, that is a letting-go process, not an adding-in process.”
– Chris Wightwick
For Chris, self-improvement depends on being able to do two things.
The first is to love where you’re at.
The second is to recognise that we have power over our emotions, our knee-jerk reactions, our almost subconscious slide into frustration, urgency, and other negative and unproductive emotions. It’s all about taking control of the brains we’ve been given. Evolution has taught us to be reactive, but humans have the power to stop, think, and then react.
If you combine the power of controlling these emotions with the practice of loving yourself and the place you’re in, “That’s where I see the magic growth and evolution come from,” Chris says.
Using Business to Connect with What’s Important
“Apart from our intimate relationships, business is the next most powerful tool to connect with what’s most real and grow and evolve as individuals.”
– Chris Wightwick
This is another unique viewpoint from Chris. In my experience, many people think business can take you away from your true self. But the truth is that if you’re honest with yourself, running a business can teach you to connect and grow – not drift apart.
One big reason why this works is that business is…
Well…
…really f-ing hard.
Challenges force you to solve problems – and if you’re running a business, chances are good that some of those problems have to do with you. So admit your own mistakes, solve your own problems, and apply the solutions you discover along the way to your business.
“Business needs to start with the inner game. You can have all the strategies, mentors and advisors in the world, but if you don’t value yourself, your business is never going to be as successful as it could be.”
– Chris Wightwick
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Show Notes
Mentioned in the episode