Awareness: What’s Holding You Back Right Now?
Three patterns of grinding your gears — how to shift into real, sustainable empowerment that moves you forward. Empowerment begins with awareness of the patterns that shape perceptions of our identity, drive external validation, and prolong resistance to change. Through a consistent yoga practice, you build resilience, adaptability, and a sustainable path to real empowerment.
1st Gear: Ego Craves Identity
Bottom line up front — stuck in 1st gear for years.
The ego craves identity because identity gives us something solid to hold onto — even when that identity is built around suffering, judgment, achievement, or comparison. In the Yoga Sutras, Patañjali names asmitā — ego, or “I-am-ness” — as one of the five kleśas, the root causes of suffering. Asmitā happens when we confuse the mind, body, and personality with the deeper Self. The ego says, “This is who I am.” I’m successful. I’m overlooked. I’m attractive. I’m broken. I always have to prove myself.
These labels create certainty — and the ego prefers certainty over freedom. The problem is that once we identify with a label, we start defending it, even when it keeps us stuck.
Identity doesn’t form in isolation. It’s shaped by family, peers, and culture. We absorb what is rewarded and admired — achievement, status, education, appearance, relationships, or success. These markers help us function in the world, but they can also become cages when we mistake them for who we truly are.
Adolescence and early adulthood are when identity takes root. This is when we begin asking, “Who am I?” and “Where do I belong?” It’s also when approval, comparison, and performance feel most powerful. Worth becomes tied to how we look, what we achieve, and whether we fit in.
That identity may help us belong — but later in life we begin to ask: Did I become who I truly am, or who I thought I had to be?
2nd Gear: Labels We Outgrow
Bottom line up front — mistaking external labels for internal identity.
The first step is awareness: How did you form your early identity? Who shaped it? What labels did you carry? Were you the athlete, the achiever, the responsible one, the outsider, the one who kept it all together?
Some of those identities gave us belonging. Others created pressure.
The key question is not whether they were good or bad — it’s whether they still fit.
Awareness reveals where we’ve outgrown the identity we once needed.
As young adults, many of us build our identity around external expectations. We try to go to the right school, land the right job, find the right partner, build the right life, and stay on the right timeline. None of that is wrong — but it becomes heavy when it defines our worth.
This is where the ego tightens its grip. It turns life choices into identity contracts:
I am valuable if I achieve this.
I am behind if I don’t.
I am lovable if I look this way.
Over time, the life we built to feel secure can start to feel like something we’re performing.
Then life begins to challenge those early identities. The brain continues developing into the mid-20s, yet many major life decisions are made before or around that time. By midlife, those decisions are tested. Health changes, injuries surface, relationships shift, and career paths evolve.
What once felt certain begins to move.
This is why many people experience a period of reevaluation in their 40s and 50s.
Not necessarily a crisis — but a realization:
The identity that helped me succeed may not be the one that helps me grow.
3rd Gear: Resistance to Change
Bottom line up front — every external measure says you’re successful; why change?
The third thing holding us back is our resistance to change.
We know life is impermanent, but we still build our identity as if things will stay the same. We attach to a version of ourselves — our body, our role, our energy, our plan — and expect it to hold. You have the career, the family, the house, the cars — all the boxes are checked. So, what’s the problem?
In yoga philosophy, this problem shows up as rāga — attachment — and dveṣa — aversion. We cling to what feels good and resist what challenges us.
But life keeps moving, ready or not.
The real question is:
Did we build a life that prepares us to continuously shift gears?
Did we develop adaptability, resilience, and awareness — or did we build something that only works when everything goes according to plan?
Many of us were trained to chase stability, success, and control. Those things can be valuable — but they don’t prepare us for transition.
And life is full of transitions.
The body changes.
Relationships evolve.
Purpose shifts.
If our identity depends on stability, then change feels like a threat.
But impermanence is not the enemy — it’s the teacher.
The question isn’t whether change will happen.
It will.
The question is how we meet it.
Resistance says, “This shouldn’t be happening.”
Awareness asks, “What is this asking of me?”
“If this experience were to last forever, what quality would have to emerge for me to have peace of mind?” — Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith
When we stop fighting change, we begin to see that impermanence isn’t just loss — it’s renewal.
Shifting Gears — A Sustainable Practice of Empowerment
“Cometh the time, cometh the thinking.” — Dr. Clare Graves
When life conditions become too complex for our current value system, the system breaks down. This tension forces a shift to the next level of spiral development.
If identity, external validation, and resistance to change are what hold us back, then the solution isn’t another identity to adopt — it’s a practice that helps you see clearly, adapt, and return to yourself.
Yoga becomes a system technology for awareness.
Not performance.
Not comparison.
Awareness.
A balanced practice develops both Hatha and Vinyasa energy — strength and stillness, effort and ease, discipline and flow.
Hatha builds stability.
Vinyasa builds adaptability.
Together, they prepare you for real life.
The transformation doesn’t come from the pose.
It comes from the awareness inside the pose.
Over time, something shifts.
You stop defining yourself by what you can do and start noticing how you show up.
You become less reactive.
More present.
More grounded.
This is the real return:
Clarity. Stability. Self-trust.
Consistency matters — not to fix yourself, but to reconnect with yourself.
Each class becomes a reset.
Over time, those resets compound into real change.
At Sol, we don’t just teach poses.
We teach people how to pay attention, find balance, and move through life with awareness.
The goal is not to become someone new.
The goal is to remember who you are.
Transmission → Transformation
| What’s Holding You Back | What Moves You Forward |
|---|---|
| The ego prefers certainty over freedom — we cling to identity, even when it limits us. Reference: Kleśas — asmitā |
Choose awareness over identity — recognize labels without attaching to them. |
| Identity is shaped externally early in life — family, peers, and culture define self-concept. Reference: Identity development research · SpiralDynamics.net (Don Beck) |
Develop self-authorship — consciously define your own values. |
| Worth becomes tied to performance and belonging — achievement and approval define value. Reference: Self-Determination Theory |
Anchor worth internally — shift from proving to aligning. |
| Early identities were formed for survival and belonging — roles helped us fit in. Reference: Erikson’s Identity Theory |
Reevaluate inherited roles — keep what serves, release what doesn’t. |
| External expectations become internal contracts — success defines self-worth. Reference: Brain development |
Rewrite the contract — choose purpose over pressure. |
| Life challenges outdated identities — health, relationships, and purpose shift. Reference: Midlife transition research |
Adapt identity to reality — grow with changing conditions. |
| We build identity around stability — assuming life will stay the same. Reference: Impermanence — anicca |
Train for impermanence — build resilience through change. |
| We cling to comfort and avoid discomfort — rāga and dveṣa. Reference: Rāga · Dveṣa |
Lean into challenge — use discomfort as feedback. |
| We are unprepared for inevitable transitions — change feels like loss. Reference: Adaptation trends |
Build adaptability through practice — develop capacity, not control. |
The Shift
Empowerment isn’t something you reach.
It’s something you practice — every time you choose awareness over autopilot.
