SELF AWARENESS SERIES: THE VALUE I DIDN’T WANT

One of the most valuable qualities a person can possess—one that serves them well in both their personal and professional life—is self-awareness.

In this first article of a series on cultivating self-awareness, we'll explore why self-awareness matters and why meaningful growth often requires more than simply gathering information about ourselves.

When people understand their strengths and weaknesses, recognize their unique skills and communication style, and have clarity about their values and desires, they are better equipped to navigate the many decisions life presents. Self-awareness provides a framework for answering difficult questions and making choices that align with who they are and what matters most to them.

Every day, we make decisions about where to invest our time, money, energy, talents, and emotions. Some decisions are obvious, such as career choices, while others appear smaller: which friendships to nurture, what goals to pursue, or how to respond to everyday challenges and opportunities. While we often think of major life events as the most impactful decisions we make, it is often the accumulation of small, daily choices that has the greatest effect on our physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

Without self-awareness, we can easily become driven by the pressures of the moment. We make the impulse purchase. We agree to an additional responsibility because we worry about what others will think if we say no. We fill weekend after weekend with obligations or social activities that leave us drained, while longing for the projects, adventures, or rest that would bring us greater fulfillment.

Many people struggle to embrace the things that bring them joy or make them feel most alive because of beliefs that have been shaped by society, family, or past experiences. We may have been taught that life must follow a strict routine to be successful, manageable, or respectable. We may have absorbed the message that creative pursuits are frivolous or unproductive. And, particularly in American culture, where productivity and efficiency are often celebrated above all else, there is frequently an underlying assumption that rest is synonymous with laziness.

Self-awareness allows us to examine those assumptions rather than simply accepting them. It helps us distinguish between what we genuinely value and what we have been conditioned to value, enabling us to make decisions that are more intentional, authentic, and life-giving.

If self-awareness is this important, the next question becomes: How do we cultivate it?

There are countless ways to cultivate self-awareness. Self-help books, courses, personality assessments, and skills inventories abound. In today's world, you can even turn to AI for insights about yourself. With so many options available, how do we determine what is truly helpful when we genuinely want to learn and grow?

One thing we cannot underestimate is the power of human connection in the process of self-discovery. Learning information is very different from pursuing personal growth. While some people eagerly consume books, podcasts, and courses and can readily process and apply what they learn, others thrive through discussion, reflection, and interaction. The wide variety of learning formats available today is a tremendous gift because people grow in different ways.

Yet when it comes to the deeper, less tangible aspects of growth, information alone is often not enough. There are truths about ourselves that can remain hidden, no matter how much we read or study. Sometimes we need the perspective, questions, and gentle challenges that come through meaningful interaction with others to uncover them.

I will be the first to admit that I am a self-help junkie. My bookshelves are overflowing, and I've taken more personality assessments than I can count. But for years, I avoided counseling like the plague. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I loved exploring ideas as long as they remained safely in the intellectual realm. I was far less interested in examining the emotional parts of myself. Those were places I preferred not to visit.

The problem was that even my aspirations and ambitions were limited by my unwillingness to take a holistic look at myself. I would become excited about a new possibility or goal, only to watch that enthusiasm eventually fade. I couldn't fully access what it would take to turn those ideas into reality because I had not yet developed a deep understanding of myself.

As I began doing that deeper work, I discovered that many of the obstacles holding me back were not external at all. They were beliefs, assumptions, and patterns operating just beneath the surface of my awareness. Until I recognized them, they quietly shaped my decisions and limited my growth. Greater self-awareness allowed me to lean more fully into my strengths while identifying the hidden mindsets that had been short-circuiting my efforts all along.

I still enjoy the growth process through books, assessments, courses, and other resources. The difference now is that, alongside therapy and coaching relationships, I have learned to process what I am consuming through a more intentional lens. Rather than automatically accepting an idea because it sounds admirable or appealing, I find myself asking questions such as, Is this truly aligned with my core values, or is it simply a response shaped by old conditioning? Is this a personal truth, or is it programming?

One area where I have wrestled with this extensively is identifying my own core values. It was also one of the clearest examples of why I needed someone outside of myself to challenge my assumptions and help me see what I could not see on my own.

When we look at a list of values—such as the one that Brené Brown provides in her Dare to Lead resources—we can easily fall into approaching the exercise with a "right answer" mindset. We instinctively gravitate toward values that seem noble, admirable, or socially desirable.

At first, words like loyalty, honesty, generosity, and compassion immediately stood out to me. My reaction was, Of course those matter. Those are good values. I should choose those.

But as I worked through the exercise—starting with fifteen values, narrowing them to ten, then seven, and eventually just three to five—I found myself becoming increasingly conflicted. In fact, I found the process surprisingly difficult. I had to walk away from it multiple times because of the internal tension it created.

The source of that tension was simple: the values I believed I should choose were not necessarily the values that felt most true to me.

The value that consistently rose to the top of my list was "Fun."

And I hated it.

"Fun" felt trivial. It felt shallow. It felt completely out of sync with how I saw myself. I wanted my core value to be something profound and impressive. I thought, I'm not superficial. I'm thoughtful. I'm reflective. I care about meaningful things. Fun cannot possibly be my core value.

Yet every time I revisited the exercise, "Fun" remained. No matter how hard I tried to elevate something else to the top spot, it kept resurfacing as one of the truest descriptions of what motivates me, energizes me, and brings meaning to my life.

That realization forced me to confront an important question: Was I identifying my actual values, or was I choosing the values I thought a thoughtful, responsible person was supposed to have?

The answer was obvious—it just wasn't the answer I wanted.

What I needed was another human being to help me explore why the idea bothered me so much. I couldn't get outside of my own perspective enough to ask the questions that needed asking. As I opened up to a few trusted people, they began to gently challenge my thinking. Ironically, they saw "Fun" as a tremendous strength. That was astounding to me.

They reflected back examples from my life where I had navigated highly responsible situations—challenging work environments, difficult transitions, and personal struggles—and showed me how my value of fun had actually created connection, brought energy to difficult circumstances, and even contributed to meaningful transformation. Through their eyes, I began to see something I had been unable to see for myself.

I listened, somewhat stunned, as they described strengths that had been hiding in plain sight. Slowly, I allowed their perspective to settle in and challenge my assumptions. I am still learning what it means to fully embrace this value, along with the others I have identified, but the process has been both liberating and empowering. More importantly, it reminded me that self-awareness is rarely cultivated in isolation. Sometimes we need trusted people to help us recognize truths about ourselves that have been there all along.

If this journey has taught me anything, it is that self-awareness is not something we achieve once and then move beyond. It is an ongoing practice of curiosity, reflection, and courageous honesty. In the articles ahead, we'll explore additional tools and practices for cultivating that awareness. My hope is that you'll not only read along, but also engage with the process yourself—because growth happens not simply through consuming information, but through intentionally applying it to our lives.