9 Themes to Promote Deeper Self-Awareness

Having been a podcaster for nearly ten years now, I feel very lucky to have been able to interview so many amazing humans from a wide variety of professional fields. Whether it be a best-selling author, Olympic gold medallist, professional athlete, top educator or world-renowned performance psychologist, many of my guests share very similar core values and guiding principles that have allowed them to thrive within their chosen fields. 

There is amazing commonality in their own pursuits of excellence, both personally and professionally. Not only have most of them been through very tough times and had to overcome a number of challenges in order to find their true path, every single one of them understands and applies deep reflection with consistency in their lives. 

We all want to do well and be impactful. We all have our own unique talents and gifts that we offer the world. Many of us have also done a lot of work to build on our strengths in order to improve our ability to make the genuine difference we desire. 

As I have devoted my life and work to the field of education for more than 20 years now, this post is dedicated to all of the amazing educators out there who are striving to do their very best. Whether you are a classroom or single subject teacher, principal or director of a school, this post is for you. This post is also for anyone else reading this who may not be in education. These themes and reflective questions apply to any professional field or individual pursuit of excellence.

In moving forward with this post, I want to share 9 themes that resonate the most with me, based on my own learning over the past ten years. Many of these themes continually reveal themselves in the interviews I’ve done with extraordinary people on my podcast. Many of my guests continually explore these themes, in their own life, in ways that have them reflecting not only on what they are doing well, but more importantly what it is they need to improve on to help move them closer to the desired self they wish to be. 

Through these 9 themes, I have also been able to reflect more deeply and doing so has helped to keep me more on track in my own personal and professional life and to be as impactful as possible in my work. 

I hope that these 9 themes (and reflective questions) provoke your own thinking, spark curiosity within yourself, and help to guide your own journey of deep learning. I hope you can take away the themes and questions that most resonate with you. My biggest wish is that you can apply any of these themes and reflective questions, in a way, that allows to you honestly reflect on where you are at and what you might need to do to make more progress and improvement in your own personal and professional life --- and to deepen your own level of self-awareness along the way. Please feel free to share this post with anyone who you feel will benefit from reading it.