When people ask me what I do and I tell them I am a Life Coach that specialises in Self-Discovery coaching the response I get is “oh, like personal growth” and then they usually start talking about what they wish were different. I just listen because I don’t coach unless I have been asked to, but it got me thinking about this misconception that people have about the work. Often, we start the journey because we want to change something, want our life to be different in some way but what we gain from self-discovery is much more powerful and life changing than a simple change of circumstance/s.

Personal growth can often occur as part of the self-discovery journey, but it is not the purpose of it. To me personal growth is like self-improvement, it comes from a place of not good enough-ness, you do it because you think you need to be different or better in some way.

Self-discovery is quite simply getting to know yourself by becoming curious about who you are, what and why you think, feel, act the way you do. As you get to know yourself you may choose to change or improve or whatever with that knowledge, but you can just as easily decide you love and accept yourself exactly as you are, and it reconfirms and reassures you that you are exactly who and where you want to be and that you don’t want to change anything. What ever you decide will be perfect for you.

It is the difference between meeting up with a friend and noticing she is wearing a new dress then mentioning she would look prettier in a dress you saw the other day at a particular shop and meeting up with a friend, noticing she is wearing a new dress and asking where she got it.

Curiosity is always free from judgement and is essential in self-discovery.

This is especially important because most of us aren’t in a place of “comfortable” when we begin to question what we are doing and why. Usually at some point in our lives something significant will happen that will trigger us to re consider what’s really important to us. Something like being made redundant, losing a loved one, having a near miss or near-death experience. Sometimes it is reaching a certain age and the next minute we begin to have thoughts we have never previously had, or questions that we have never previously considered asking ourselves or others. We look at our current circumstances and experience and question if it is what we really want and wonder if “there’s more to life”.

When this begins to happen, it feels very uncomfortable. As part of this process, we begin to question our career, relationships, who we are, and why we are here. The big questions that we consider when we start to think that life is short. During this time, we may experience confusion, self-doubt, and uncertainty. We often begin to reminisce, think about old friends and the things we used to do. We find ourselves asking questions like “what happened, how did I get here, this is not where I thought I would be”. Particularly for women it is often statements like, “I don’t even know what I like anymore”, “I have spent my whole life looking after others”.

It can be a frightening time, especially if we have no one who we can talk to about it all. It is a time in our lives where having support and guidance from someone who has the knowledge, experience, and skills to help you navigate the tricky world of our humanness is essential. Having a self-discovery coach during these challenging times is like having a co-pilot, it is reassuring and allows you to focus on where you are going, while like the co-pilot of a plane, the coach offers knowledge and system support and keeps an eye out for any possible hiccups so they can be addressed before they become a real issue.

Starting a self-discovery journey can feel terrifying and disorientating. Understandably many of us will allow that to stop us, it makes sense after all as fear is a primitive response all mammals have to encourage them stay physically safe, to survive. However, in the journey of self-discovery there is no physical risk, only emotional discomfort, but the primitive brain doesn’t know the difference. It only registers, “new and unknown”, which equals “risk” and sets off the danger alarm system that we know as the fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses.

The only way out is through, but there is a skill to navigating it, so you don’t end up in overwhelm and helplessness. During this process people often feel like they a losing themselves, when in actual fact they are finding themselves, and like anything we first have to let go of the old to make room for the new.

The braver, stronger, calmer more centered version of you, the you that knows who they are, how they want to show up and what they want in their life. Bye for now and talk soon 😊

FYI - In my next blog I am going to be looking at “Limiting self-thoughts” how to recognise them, where they come from, why they hold us back and how to change them.

If you would like to know more you can go to my website www.pampoole.co.nz and join my email list or if you haven’t already taken advantage of it, book a free, no obligation enquiry call by clicking on the link below.

I appreciate you all, thanks for reading, and have a great week. :)