To view this newsletter in the browser, click here                 Issue #187       A newsletter from Creativegarh to help you live a life of passion, purpose and meaning.         When you know your weakness, then it is no more a weakness.                     Self-awareness is your invincibility cloak, your armour of self-love and self-preservation that you wear after taking off your flimsy dress of illusions which barely hides your scars.           Because when you are self-aware, there is no way you can be hurt. Because when you know what can hurt you, you have the awareness to not allow it to rattle you.           When you know that you get triggered when you are made to feel selfish, you compensate by overgiving, saying yes to everyone. But when you are self-aware, you already know that your pattern is overgiving to feel needed - your wound is abandonment.           When you can watch yourself playing the same role again and again, you can change the script. Sure, people will say you have changed and that might spiral you into guilt. But when you have the awareness, you can unspiral yourself to draw a boundary, consciously and confidently. The weakness loses power the moment you name it and accept it. And the moment you can identify a weakness, it stops being a weakness. When you know your flaws, no one can weaponise them against you.           When you know who you are - your values, beliefs, patterns, flaws, needs and where they come from, your identity becomes less wobbly. Random opinions shake you less. Criticism doesn’t lead you to the doors of doom. Praise becomes nice to have, not oxygen for survival. You become harder to trigger, harder to control, harder to manipulate. Self-awareness might lose you a few people, but the ones who stay will be staying for the real you.           Self-awareness is being sakshi - an unattached witness of your patterns while you live them in everyday life. It allows you to make shifts in real time, from people-pleasing to drawing boundaries, from creating drama at the slightest provocation to restraining your wild horses, from letting anger take over your being to letting it do a little dance and leave. The more you know your inner weather, the less terrified you are of other people’s storms.           Also, as you walk the path of self-awareness, you also realise that your intuition, empathy and compassion put on some muscle too. You not only see people, you see through them too. You see the hurt coming your way even before the arrow leaves the bow. Because you have worked so deeply on yourself, you see manipulation before it lands, you notice shifts in tone in others, you clearly read others’ patterns.           And in the journey to learn to love and hold yourself and others, in the holding you have the deeper awareness that we all are one with the same hurt running through life waiting for salvation. All we want is love. And if self awareness can lead you to realise that you are nothing but love, you've got this life right.                 We spend our lives living for an audience that doesn’t exist.                     No one cares about you. Now this thought either liberates you or stifles you. It either allows you to surrender the outcome of everything you do or to control the outcome to the last pixel.           Nobody really cares and you spend your entire life for an audience that doesn’t exist. To think of ‘log kya kahenge’, who really are those log, these invisible people whom you have curated your life around? Think deeper and write down the names of these people and you won’t be able to come up with more than three. That’s it, just 2-3 people are those whom you have let go of your authenticity for. Everyone else is just background blur, busy surviving their own inner noise. Most of your life is edited for people who are too busy editing theirs for 2-3 people and you don’t figure in their list at all.           And who are these people? One will be representative of your personal world - parent, partner, ex or frenemy, and one will be from your professional life - boss, colleague, client, WhatsApp group. That’s it. Your whole life shrunk to a jury of 2-3 humans who are not even paying that much attention to your life. Yet, every decision of yours, every one, is filtered through their imagined reaction.           When you post a story on Instagram, you only care if that one person has seen it - the ex, the crush, the boss, the rival. 500 people watch your story and you zoom to just one name. That’s your invisible audience - just one pair of eyes you’ve given too much power to. It's just their validation you really seek.           Everyone is rehearsing what they’ll say, regretting what they said, wondering how they look, replaying their own embarrassments. Everyone is performing for people who are too busy performing to notice who’s on stage.           When you live for the invisible audience, you abandon the only real audience - yourself. The idea is to flip the world-love to self-love. Instead of ‘what will people say’, ask ‘what will my future self say’. Move from ‘will they approve’ to ‘will this make me more me’. Instead of ‘will they like this’, ask ‘do I respect myself when I choose this’.           There’s no audience, just your one magical life, waiting for you to start living wholly.             Our upcoming retreats                         Bhimtal Sold Out 10th to 16th May     Bhimtal offers a rare kind of Kumaoni serenity. This landscape creates the perfect setting for inner work, allowing reflection to unfold naturally.   More details         Mandi Last 4 Seats Left 14th to 20th June     Mandi in summer is a calm escapade. Cool mountain air, green slopes, and quiet mornings create space to breath, rejuvenate and slow down.   More details     Reignite conversation     Kolhapur Last 6 Seats Left 12th to 18th July     Escape the city's clamor, reconnect with your inner light. Indulge in a life changing retreat, experiencing the discovery of your true self, within the arms of nature.   More details     Reignite conversation           This week, let's revisit     Kasauli January 2026                         Experience a life full of purpose                     My life purpose is to use sports as a tool for education, development, inclusion, empowerment and transformation.   Mona Shipley Munnar, October 2022         My life purpose is to entertain, enthrall, heal and let people break free from their limited lives through my stories and acts.   Amitabh Jolly Tirthan Valley, December 2022               For a daily dose of Creativegarh and our retreats, follow us here:                           Mantra Gold Coatings & The White Paper Creative         Sunita Somani         Pedal On               View Our Collabs for Joy                   creativegarh.com             You are receiving this newsletter because either you have subscribed to it through our website, interacted with us by filling an invite form or because you have asked us to put you on the database. 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