Leading from Awareness, not habit
Tania Louise McInnes 
A recent trigger revealed an old script. Here’s what awareness showed me about leadership, and why this matters in an AI-shifting world.
Every so often a single line of insight drops in and rearranges one’s inner landscape. This happened for me this week when I heard:
‘Practices transform you. Beliefs control. Act from awareness, not from memory.’
It made me stop what I was doing and note it down. Then I let it gestate for a few days.
It landed because I’d just been knocked sideways by a tiny drama in some of my community mahi. Nothing huge. Nothing life-changing. Just one of those situations where one small interaction grabs you by the shoulders and shakes loose an old trigger you thought you’d outgrown.
That’s the funny thing about this kind of work. You can be riding a wave of momentum, clarity, and excitement (which I absolutely am right now), and then a minor wobble comes along and suddenly you’re aware you’ve slipped back into an old pattern. For me, it showed up as a WTF moment, a drop in enthusiasm, and that familiar ‘why is this harder than it needs to be?’ feeling.
In the past, I might’ve overthought it and let it take residence. But this time, something deeper clicked: I wasn’t responding to the present moment. I was reacting to my memory of similar situations - old expectations, old beliefs, old conditioning.
That’s where this line hit home.
Beliefs aren’t just concepts – they can be control systems.
We don’t tend to think of beliefs as something that controls us. We usually see them as truths, principles, or lessons learned. But when I heard that line, I realised how many of my own beliefs act like invisible operating instructions.
Beliefs shape what we notice.
Beliefs determine how quickly we get triggered.
Beliefs create the emotional ‘autopilot’ we drop into under pressure.
They aren’t right or wrong - they’re just filters.
And filters narrow your field of view.
A belief might whisper things like:
‘If it’s community mahi, it’s always hard work.’
‘I need to carry the load for everyone.’
‘If something goes wrong, it’s on me.’
None of these beliefs are consciously chosen. They just become part of the memory your system defaults to.
No wonder we get knocked off centre.
Practices, on the other hand, expand you.
Practices, the real kind, the consistent kind, aren’t about self-improvement. They’re about self-alignment.
My practices are simple: walking by the water, journaling, dropping into quiet, noticing my breath, reflecting instead of reacting. These aren’t hobbies. They’re what keep me sane, grounded, and connected to the bigger picture of who I’m becoming.
And what I’ve noticed is this:
Practices don’t tell you who you are.
They give you space to remember who you are.
This space is what transforms you.
Not the thinking.
Not the beliefs.
Not the story about what happened.
The space.
Because when you create enough internal space, you can feel the difference between a memory-driven reaction and an awareness-driven response.
Awareness is where leadership actually begins.
Awareness is the quiet moment where you catch yourself mid-pattern and think:
‘Hang on… this isn’t what’s really happening. This is just the old script.’
Awareness is choosing the present over the past.
It’s choosing clarity over reactivity.
It’s choosing who you want to be, not who you’ve been rehearsing for decades.
If we take AI as an example. It’s accelerating change in ways we haven’t seen before. With that comes a natural shaking of old beliefs: what makes us valuable, what leadership looks like, what skills matter, what it even means to be human in the age of intelligent tools.
If we cling to outdated beliefs, we’ll resist the changes unfolding around us. But if we meet the moment with awareness, we can navigate it with clarity, curiosity, and agency. This is why inner work matters more than ever - the external world is shifting fast, and our internal world needs to stay flexible enough to evolve with it.
And for me, that’s the heart of A New Compass.
We’re stepping into an age where leadership isn’t about controlling others or clinging to certainty. It’s about navigating complexity with inner steadiness. It’s about untangling old beliefs that limit our potential. It’s about developing practices that keep us awake and responsive in a world that’s accelerating around us - especially as AI reshapes how we work, connect, and lead.
This isn’t theory. It’s daily life.
It’s the real, human, messy moments where growth happens.
The tiny drama that rattled me?
It wasn’t a problem.
It was feedback - a mirror showing me where old beliefs still have a hand on the wheel.
And once you see it, you can choose differently.
One question I’m sitting with, and one I offer to you:
Where in your life are you still acting from memory (yep, I have heaps), and what might shift if you acted from awareness instead?
That’s not a philosophical question. It’s a practical one. And it’s at the core of becoming the kind of leader this age calls for: grounded, awake, intuitive, and willing to grow from the inside out.
Categories: : Authenticity, Self-Leadership, personal growth