“Where is your energy right now on a scale from 1 to 10?” A question I’ve asked clients a hundred times. Recently one gave me, not an uncommon answer but, an interesting one.
He paused for a moment and then laughed slightly before saying, “I have absolutely no idea.”
What surprises me is how often the answer is the same. Not because people lack intelligence or reflection, but because most of us rarely stop long enough to notice what is actually happening within us.
We move through our days in a near constant state of motion. Meetings, messages, decisions, deadlines. Keeping up with the pace of our organisations and the expectations around us. Many leaders sit right on the edge of opportunity, ready to catch the next idea, the next deal, the next challenge.
But the truth is that we are unlikely to catch those opportunities if our energy is low, our minds are distracted, and our awareness is somewhere else entirely.
So the real question becomes: where do we begin if we want to change the way we operate?
In my experience, the answer is always the same. We begin with awareness.
Many people believe they are self-aware. They know their personality traits. They know what they like and dislike. They may even understand the past experiences that shaped their perspectives. But there is a difference between knowing who we think we are and understanding how we are actually showing up moment to moment.
Real self-awareness is far more dynamic. It asks us to notice what is happening across our body, our mind, and our emotional responses in real time.
The body, for example, is speaking constantly, whether we notice it or not. Imagine a colleague walks into a meeting and something about the interaction immediately frustrates you. Your mind may simply label the experience as annoyance. But if you pay closer attention, the body often tells a much richer story.
Your shoulders might tighten. Your stomach may knot. Your breathing becomes shallow. Perhaps your jaw clenches slightly or your heart rate rises. These reactions are not random. They are signals from the nervous system, clues about how our brain is interpreting the environment around us.
Most of us walk through our days completely unaware of these signals, yet the body is constantly communicating what supports us and what drains us. Becoming aware of those signals can be one of the most powerful starting points for change.
Then there is the mind.
If you pause for a moment and listen carefully, you will notice that your brain is rarely quiet. We are in a near continuous internal conversation. Predicting how meetings will go, evaluating what someone just said, replaying past moments, preparing our next response.
Most of these thoughts are automated. They are shaped by previous experiences and patterns that have been reinforced over many years. The challenge is that when we operate purely on autopilot, we rarely stop to ask a simple question: is this thought actually helpful?
This is where the idea of becoming the observer of our thoughts becomes powerful. When we observe our thoughts rather than immediately believing them, we create space. Space to choose which thoughts deserve our attention and which can simply pass by.
World-class athletes understand this well. Mindset coaching is now a core part of elite sport because the way we think profoundly influences how we perform and recover. Leaders face the same challenge.
One of the most common admissions I hear from senior executives during coaching is surprisingly vulnerable. They will quietly admit that they feel like they are “waiting to be found out.” Imposter thoughts appear even at the highest levels of leadership.
The difference is not whether those thoughts appear. The difference is whether we become aware of them and learn not to let them dictate our behaviour.
Awareness allows us to recognise a thought as simply that — a thought, not a fact.
The science of neuroplasticity shows us just how important this awareness can be. Our brains are constantly reshaping themselves based on experience and attention. One famous study led by Eleanor Maguire found that London taxi drivers developed larger hippocampi — the part of the brain responsible for spatial memory — because of the intense navigation demands of their work.
In other words, the brain physically adapts to what we repeatedly do and think. What we pay attention to quite literally shapes our neural pathways.
This is remarkable news for anyone who believes their habits, reactions, or thought patterns are fixed. They are not. The brain is designed to adapt and rewire across our lifetime.
But change rarely begins with a dramatic shift. It begins with noticing what is already happening.
This matters deeply for leadership. Leaders who lack awareness of their own energy, emotional responses, and internal narratives unintentionally shape the environment around them. Their stress becomes the team’s stress. Their reactivity becomes the culture.
Leaders who develop self-awareness create something very different. They pause before reacting. They recognise patterns in themselves and others. They create space for better decisions and more thoughtful conversations.
And perhaps most importantly, they model the kind of conscious behaviour that allows organisations to learn, adapt, and grow.
If all of this feels like a lot, the starting point is remarkably simple. At some point during your day, pause and ask yourself a few questions.
Where is my energy right now?
What is happening in my body?
What thoughts are running through my mind?
That small moment of awareness can be the beginning of a completely different way of working and leading.
Change does not begin with a new strategy.
It begins with awareness.
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