What you need to know about your 'self'

What do you need to know about your 'self' in order to create the life you want, to live your dreams, and to feel fulfilled and purposeful?

Your needs – these are things you cannot really live without. Sometimes those things that you are missing from your life make things hard for you because of this.

Your values – these guide your choices and behaviours, your decisions about any and every person or situation you find yourself with. From the many you can find listed, you can reduce that to half and find your five or six that are 'non-negotiable' for you, that are part of who you are and choose to be/become. 

Find out more about how to identify your values.

Your beliefs are those perhaps inherited from your family, culture, and experiences that informed how life might be for you, how it might turn out or how you have to be in life. These will be, in part, 'nature' informed as you model parents, carers and the community around you – roles, responsibilities, acceptable and common behaviours and attitudes – hence the inherited ones.

You then begin to develop more as you move through your life, the new people you meet, and other perspectives and ideas or options you discover are out there beyond your initial upbringing.

Your talents are the 'nature' part of you, that you were born with and are good at and interested in (because we like to be able to do things and so enjoy utilising them and finding satisfaction in them). Organised, creative, analytical... whatever you have, you will likely find use for in your career or hobbies, or some part of your life. Others too will want to have these skills for them like job roles and salary as payment, services people buy or help that your skills and talents can bring.

The more you know about your 'self', the more personal power you will have to make things happen the way you want them to

Your tendencies or (NLP) preferences are also natural, born to you, and these often cannot be changed but, like your talents, enhanced and honed to meet your needs and wishes. These are things like your communication style, time management, outlook in part or how you choose or prefer things like learning styles, perceive the world and more.

Your expectations develop from all the above and inform how you expect your life to be at each stage and age, as the person you are or aim to be with each purpose and environment you move into. This can change. These can be incorrect or need to change with the change and development of yourself and your environment, the contemporary world.  

Sometimes when these are not met, you experience disappointment, frustration, and even anger. Especially so when you expect things from others and their outlook from your needs or viewpoint, thinking they or everyone thinks, feels, and acts like you.

Your options when you start to explore the world and have new, different experiences in your life. From baby to toddler, home to nursery, schools to college and maybe university or straight into a work role. What you can have with income and your circumstances, your situation. This is when you start to choose, rather than expect what you always had. You can make things happen differently for you if you wish, when you can.

Your opportunities – being ready for them when you know where you’re going and your 'why'. You can create them as well as be prepared for them when they arise for you. Knowing who can help you, how, and what the win-win situation will bring for both parties, for example.

Your intuition – instinctive, unconscious reactions and feelings and energetic connections versus your conscious responses (when you naturally read people from their body language, voice and eye or facial expressions, even fleetingly.) Trust those feelings and thoughts rather than doubting your initial instincts and intuition for what society might say is 'right' or 'wrong'. We survive on our instincts and intuition, our reactions (not triggers).

The more you know about your 'self', the more personal power you will have to make things happen the way you want them to, live how you want to live, to understand your 'why' and what that means for you and your future, your choices and options.

It also makes you more understanding, compassionate and tolerant of other people’s needs and values, etc. To understand more why they are not like you or you like them or why they are. This also reduces the disappointments from unmet expectations you built up through childhood, teens, and early adulthood, to older and wiser, to where you are today.

When you see the unique mix of you and others – when you understand what might go into that ‘mix’ – you will realise how complex people are, and hence relationships and opportunities in your life and theirs!

It helps you to meet those needs, live to your value system and manage your beliefs with each piece of new information you learn every day.   

We do naturally only learn from our mistakes though – not repeating them, hoping for something different from the same behaviours and beliefs. So it is inevitable we will learn from things we do as we go through life and, that is normal and to be expected.

Once you do expect life to be more complicated than you once did – when you find more and more about people and life – you have more options and opportunities, too.  Sometimes it can feel overwhelming though!

How can coaching help you identify who you truly are? 

Life coaching helps you navigate those changes, those explorations and realisations, the options and opportunities to create and prepare to receive and work with, not against. To go with the natural flow of who you are and why you are that way, what can be changed, tweaked or enhanced, and tips and techniques to bridge gaps perhaps.

Life is complicated. People are complex beings. Relationships can be a minefield because of this.

Animal instincts and reactions, or intuitive gut feelings, to conscious thoughts and choices, to soul talk and things you can’t explain but just 'know', exist with connections to other people and environments that work for you or don’t.

Life is exciting, and interesting too and it does actually not 'come naturally' or happen naturally. We have to learn to navigate it, yes, but also to manage and coordinate it, something many people are not aware of. Maybe once this was passed down the generations, but less so now.