Well, hello, people. It's episode 148, and today I'm talking the power of self-reflection. This is followed up this month with an episode with Jenny Lee, where we get a little bit more spiritual and talk about the power of self-inquiry. But with this episode, I'm hoping to dig in a little bit to the power of it, why you would want to prioritize this.
And I'll also add some practical ways in which you can really self-reflect and dig into those internal wants, drivers, and needs of yours, because I really do think it is so powerful. Welcome to Head of Thrive. I'm your host, Kate Snowwise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life.
It's for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It's a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don't believe we're here to merely survive. I truly believe we're here to thrive.
So let's get going. If you've been listening to the Head of Thrive podcast, it comes as no surprise that I would be talking about a theme such as this. So many of my episodes talk about listening to ourselves and how we can tune into that inner voice. And self-reflection really is what we're doing when we turn off the noise of the outside world and tune in with to hear what is going on internally for us.
There is that famous dictum claimed to be from Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living. And I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's not worth living, but I do believe that there is so much to be gained from examining your life. It's an intentional life. And it is the self-reflection process that gives us the ability to live our lives intentionally.
To know yourself is to make those soul-centered, intentional choices for your life. But you have to have the way to hear yourself. This is self-reflection. So I touched on it in the introduction, but there's so many different things we can call this.
Self-inquiry, personal discovery, getting to know yourselves, showing up authentically, they're all pretty much pointing at the same thing. Hearing your inner voice, being guided from that inner knowing, your inner uniqueness, your authentic self, the self that you are when you are not simply running on default and soaking up the noise from the outside world around you. So I really do see self-reflection as a crucial path to our soul selves, our authentic selves. You can't ever really know yourself if you don't ask yourself the really big questions.
It brings me back to a time where I remember feeling like I didn't have an internal guidance system. Like I didn't have intuition. And really it was just that I was so disconnected from my inner voice that I wasn't sure how to hear it. One year after arriving in the US, I can remember sort of sitting in my son's bedroom in Texas.
And the best way I can describe it is my soul was aching. It was a really hard time for me in my life. I had intense culture shock when I moved to the States. I had two kids under two.
My husband was working long hours at a time completing some training. And I really didn't know many people at that point. So I felt socially isolated and disconnected. And I think that highlighted how disconnected I was in general.
I had a huge loss of identity when I moved to the States and I didn't realize how much I was struggling with that too. Ultimately, I really felt lost. That soul ache was this feeling of lost, disoriented. It's like I couldn't find my feet.
It was at that point that I was like, intuition is something that other people have. I don't have that. Like I'm not some special intuitive or psychic. And I don't think I have those types of intuitive hits.
That's for other special people. So I can remember sitting in that sunshine and thinking, what matters to me? Like, what do I value? What do I care about?
Who am I? And all I knew at that point was that I valued personal growth and that I knew deep down somewhere that I was a soul seeker and I had always felt most alive when I was seeking the spiritual in life. So it was that little nudge, that little nudge that started to crack me open and sort of show me the doorway to listening to myself. And it read so much to me.
It breathed a sense of self-trust that I could rely on myself if I turned towards myself. And I did begin to hear this inner voice that I had never tuned into before. So rather than shutting it down, numbing it out, or as I had previously done in my twenties, just making myself so busy that I couldn't hear it, I created practices to cultivate listening to this voice. I made space for it.
I really, really do think that making space, creating the rituals in your life and opening up that doorway to hear your inner guidance is essential if you are going to be able to live an authentically driven life. Now, I share all of that simply to say that if you're like me and you don't think you have the sense of inner knowing or wisdom, I challenge you to suspend that judgment for a moment and replace it with wonder and experimentation. So just choose to maybe entertain the idea that what would happen if you just opened up a conversation with yourself? Honestly, I didn't think I had a strong intuition six and a half, seven years ago, and now I'm sitting here having this conversation with you.
And I think that I really am fairly tuned in for the most part of it. So like I said, if I can do it, someone who is certainly not gifted psychically, I believe we can all do it. We can all tune into this inner guidance system that every single one of us has. But how, Kate, how do we do it?
This is some of the stuff that I did and I offer them up simply as suggestions. But I encourage you to find a quiet space. I say it over and over again, but the world around us is so loud and it's just getting louder. Like we're getting bombarded with even more information and more noise, but your inner voice, it's so quiet.
And you can never hear the whispers from that inner voice if you're not going to create the space for them. If every single time you go for a walk, you're listening to a podcast. And every time you're in the car, you're listening to the radio. And if you're not working, you're plomped in front of your TV, Netflix binging, then where is the space?
Like you're waiting for like something to hit you over the head. Like intuition isn't like that. Intuition is going to be like a giant brick wall that stands in front of you and says, not this way. Well, not very often anyway.
You have to get quiet to hear the whispers. Contemplative space isn't built into our lives these days. Like if you're practicing religion, you may have some element of contemplative space sort of built into your routines. And if you do, by all means, use it, use it.
But if you're not practicing a religion, I feel like it's just powerful to recognize that there is a reason that this kind of contemplative, quiet space is a part of most of the world's religions, right? Like get quiet and be with yourself. That quiet, contemplative space matters. So yeah, first element is really to create the quiet space.
My next thought is around asking the big questions. Now the big questions can be scary, I get it, but it is the path to authenticity. Now I'm a writer and I love writing so much that journaling has been a really powerful practice for me. So I do morning pages from Julia Cameron and I encourage you to look those up if you've never heard of them.
But also I think knowing your mission knowing your values, knowing what matters to you and diving into questions that can help you uncover or get the words for those kinds of things. Now you can Google search, there's this really cool Franklin Covey mission statement developer thing on the internet. I will link to it in the show notes and that's really cool. But journal prompts are so powerful as well.
So asking yourself the big questions. I have some free journal prompts over on the headofthrive.com website in the shop tab and there's a values kit there as well if you're interested. But it's about getting to know yourself, asking the big questions and just seeing what you find. Get to know yourself and open up that dialogue.
It's fun. It's so fun. The final offering I have is that you need to recognize that self-reflection is a practice. So it's not something you do kind of one-off and check the box and you're like, yay, self-reflection done.
It has to be a practice if it is going to meaningfully inform your life. So just like you have with any good friendship, it's an ongoing relationship with yourself. It's going to get stronger the more you go back and the more you connect, the easier it becomes to tap into it in a wisdom. You're building a relationship with yourself.
So for me, that looks like routines and rhythms and rituals on the regular people, creating the space on the regular to hear and tune in. So practically speaking, when we're talking about self-reflection, here are some things that I would encourage you to focus on if you want to bring more of this into your current experience. Number one is intentionally create space. Intentionally create quiet space where you can hear the quiet inner voice within.
Number two, ask the big questions of yourself. You can use journaling to do this, courses, retreats, and coaching therapy is another great space to do that kind of big question diving as well. But if you're anything like me, there is so much to be said about opening a dialogue with yourself, starting a conversation with yourself, and the written word and journaling can really help you do that. And then the third point is that it must be a practice.
So set up rituals and routines that make this a habit. That might look like a monthly self-reflection worksheet that you have saved that you do at the end of every month at work, for example, or a weekly check-in on your goals and progress. Maybe you do a monthly soul check journaling session or a yearly review or a daily practice like morning pages, which is from Julia Cameron that I mentioned earlier. Just Google search morning pages from Julia Cameron and you'll see all the details.
I just realized I totally hadn't intended to mention this, but I do have a free life planning guide on my website at heretothrive.com shop. It is free, but it's in the shop tab. And that's a great way to do more of a kind of starting point review of where you're at. So all of these points and notes, just to say that the relationship you have with yourself is the one that allows you to show up authentically when you trust yourself and when you can hear yourself.
That is when you can create a soul-driven aligned life that feels good to you. The precursor to a fulfilling life is knowing yourself and you know yourself through self-reflection. Very excited to share the next episode with you from Jenny Lee. She had a new book out, which I'm just, I'm literally obsessed with this one.
It's called Spark Change and it's 108 provocative questions for spiritual evolution. So if you want to get ahead of the game and already have the book by the time I release the episode in two weeks, I would actually encourage you to do that because it is that good. And she's got 108 big questions to help you dive into self-reflection and getting to know yourself that much better. It means so much to me when you leave reviews.
It reminds me that you guys are there and that what we do over here with Here to Thrive really does matter. So your rating and reviews mean the world to us. And if you can take the time to do that, if you have yet to leave one, I read them all. And yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much. That is what will help more people see the show. If you can also share Here to Thrive with a friend, if you enjoy it, that would mean so much as well. We'll be back the week after next, but in the meantime, I hope that you take this as a reminder to tune in to yourself and just to take a pause from the insanity that is the world outside of us and to come back to your center and listen to what you know to be true.
It's there even if you can't yet remember. Keep thriving, beautiful people, and we'll be back soon. Keep thriving. Has anyone you are going to study horses going home?
If you can't control it, Mutual Act quiere that I'm going home.