The first step to change is awareness: you know what it is that you want to change.

The things we want to change generally fall into three categories:

• External factors: This might be your job, home, a specific environment, or a relationship.
• Inner factors: Attitudes, beliefs, mindsets, emotions, and thought patterns.
• Actions or behaviors: Things you do or say.

Actions and behaviors arise from external and internal factors.

The Challenge With Creating Awareness

Most people are aware of the external circumstances or actions/behaviors they want to change. These are generally easy to see, even if not always easy to change.

If you want to create a lasting and sustainable change, you must change the inner pieces as well as the outer pieces.

Creating awareness of the inner triggers is difficult because we cannot see them.

We can create this awareness through many tools, both self-guided and externally-guided.

One of the best self-guided tools we can use is the practice of yoga.

Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self. — The Bhagavad Gita

This practice of yoga, both on and off the mat, is the practice of creating awareness.