Self-discovery - what is it & why is it important.
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Welcome to you all, if you don’t already know me, my name is Pam, I am the founder and CEO of Pam Poole Self-Discovery coaching. I specialise in Self-Discovery coaching for woman. If you would like to know more about me my website is www.pampoole.co.nz
Look at all the different marketing in the world related to therapy, counselling, life coaching etc. They all offer a variety of possibilities, options, and ideas about both the problems we all have and how to solve them. This is a wonderful thing because we are all so different and we will all be looking for something that specifically resonates with us.
The one thing that they all have in common no matter what, is that they all support you to look at yourself, to get to know yourself, so in essence Self-discovery, is the solution to every problem. This is because every person’s problem and solution is unique to them.
The relationship we have with ourselves is the only relationship we have from birth to death, it is truly “until death do we part”. 😊 It needs to be unconditional, so no matter what, we care about ourselves and have our own back, that means we need to care enough to at least treat ourselves as equally important, to know what we need and how we can get those needs met even when at times it means asking someone else to help us do that.
Nothing changes in our lives without us changing or shifting how we think, feel, or act etc. Whether we like it or not our world revolves around us, no one else’s does, but ours does. Everything we do and everyone we connect with during each day, we contribute to.
Most of us contribute from a place of learnt values and beliefs taught to us as we grew up by society, family, peers, and schooling to name a few, that we have never questioned, we have just taken them on as our own. This is part of growing up – it is how we all begin.
That does not make us the problem, we do contribute though, and what that means is we are always part of the solution.
Self-discovery is the simultaneous exploration of who we are and how we got to this point, who we want to be and how we want our life to look and feel like and then navigating the space in between to bring who we want to be and that life we want into existence.
Self-discovery is not just getting to know who we were taught to be and learned to be, it’s more importantly about getting to know who we choose to be.
Self-discovery work provides awareness, understanding and acceptance of our personality, values, emotions, strengths, weaknesses, desires, and motivations. As these parts of ourselves are brought into consciousness we are able to see patterns, what drives certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. We can ask ourselves “do I want to keep this, is there another way that might be more helpful to me”.
As we learn about ourselves, we begin to notice what really matters to us, what matters to us in terms of values, so trust, reliability, integrity etc. We become expert in everything that relates to us, we are the authority in our own lives.
This allows us to become very clear about our values and beliefs which is essential to making quality decisions, particularly big decisions. It is much easier to achieve the results we want for ourselves and our lives when they are guided by our values, decisions become easy when we align them with our values.
This allows us to share authentically who we are with others, but not to look for others to take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, or behaviours. It is the essence of being self-responsible in shared experiences.
When we undertake this work, it can involve facing some uncomfortable truths or confronting past experiences, but look back at your whole life, when has comfort ever allowed you to feel a sense of achievement, or built a strong friendship, comfort is nice and is important to experience at times, but it is not where the growth is, it is not where fulfilment is, or excitement or even interesting is.
The purpose of comfort is rest and recovery, so you have a full cup to take on the challenges. It is the 50/50 that life offers. The day and night of it.
We all think of holidays when we think comfort, lying on a beach, reading a book, but even on holiday we seek other activities that require more energy, more action. This is human nature we have an innate desire for growth. We try something new and find out whether we like it or not, this is self-discovery, we all engage in it on some level at times in our life, it is just in a subconscious way which allows it to be impacted by unconscious learning and values.
Self-discovery is not looking outside yourself to change how you feel or behave, changing your circumstances with no conscious or intentional exploration as to what is really causing your current experience (feelings), is how people end up in a loop of numerous failed relationships, or 10 jobs in 2 years, over drinking, or over eating etc.
Self-discovery work allows us to see the truth and choose, to take charge of our own lives.
It is very individualised and on-going. It is dynamic in that we get to choose how involved we are in it, what we look at, the pace and intensity of it. It is fluid and flowing, it is important that there is never any pressure, or judgement, expansion does not come from a place fuelled by these things.
Self-discovery for most people I know and certainly for me, has led to increased self-confidence, improved decision making, better relationships and certainly a greater sense of fulfilment and direction. It doesn’t allow us to avoid the human experience, but it sure does support it in a more helpful and less destructive way. It allows us to let go of unnecessary suffering, like when we feel guilty, because we feel angry, rather than just allowing ourselves to feel angry and choosing how to express that.
My own personal self-discovery journey has involved, psychologists, Equine therapy, too many self-help books to count, life coaching.
I chose to train and become qualified in Life Coaching and Equine Assisted Self-discovery because these are the two modalities that changed my life in ways that would be difficult to share in a short space. Ultimately of course it was my willingness to look at myself, my past experiences and choices, my courage and determination to create a life that I love waking up to each day and to stop blaming others or my circumstances that allowed them to have the impact they have had.
They offered me the resources and support, I did the work, because as I said at the beginning, we are the only one with the power to change our life.
If you would like to know more about this, my website is www.pampoole.co.nz, I would love for you to go and have a look and book a free no obligation enquiry call so we can chat in person.
Thanks again for listening, I know I say it every week, but I really do appreciate your time and interest. Have a great week and remember the relationship with yourself is the longest and most important relationship you will ever have.
Bye for now.😊
