The Most Profound Question To Ask Yourself

The Most Profound Question To Ask Yourself

by | Feb 1, 2026 | Self Development

What Can I Give Myself That No One Else Did?

There’s been an energetic theme this year that has delivered a spiritual and radical transformative change. Did you experience all the feels?

I know, it’s felt big throughout the entire 2025. Wave after wave of shifting vibrational space, drama and old krud surfacing.

I’ve likened those heavy sensations to being bumped around inside a washing machine. It was not comfortable, and I know I’m not alone. My clinical clients have been telling me they have been feeling it too.

There’s something significant I share with clients to bridge the gap between clinical appointments. This is your invitation to journal.

I recognise there are times when it feels overwhelming to sit and feel the sensations of unexpressed emotions. It can, therefore, feel impossible to speak about what you’re feeling. Sometimes there are no words, but the sensations remain.

When this heaviness resides within, journaling can allow your body to express what you’ve been holding onto. It’s a fabulous form of expression to stop those thoughts swirling around your everyday mind.

There can be occasions when you open your journal, and the intensity of

If you deserve to feel pain, you deserve to unpack it. It’s that simple. Life is meant to be lived, not just survived.

When you’re always in survival mode, there’s no space for growth, evolution or recalibration. When you’re in a state of survival, there is zero space or capacity for healing.

What if I could permit you to look at your pain in a different way?

What part of you hasn’t healed because you’ve been too busy surviving to get to tomorrow?

I was physically and emotionally challenged last year. I found myself journaling one day to gain self-awareness about the situation.

So when life hits you a good one, upside of the head, if you don’t cry or don’t do something different, your reactive response is to unconsciously seek a way forward.

You haven’t dealt with the life slap, you have just reacted to it.

So here’s your permission to acknowledge the slaps and parts of you that haven’t healed. It’s time to process and learn so that when tomorrow arrives, you will have naturally evolved and recalibrated change within your nervous system.

Here’s your permission to parent yourself.

I wonder where you might start the healing process?

Will you give yourself permission to soften?

Permission to be vulnerable? To cry? To feel?

Will you permit yourself to sit in the sensations until they pass?

Could you write about that, as if writing a love letter to your inner self holding the wounds?

I wonder what that part that has been trying to survive all these years needs to feel safe? I wonder what it feels like to release the need to survive? Write the answer in your journal.

This is what you then discuss in therapy.

This is how you bridge the gaps between therapeutic sessions with your practitioner.

This is how you dig deep.

This is how you heal.

So what might stop you from leaning into the answer of the question — what did I need, but never got?

Then ask yourself the most profound question of all — Can I now give this to myself?

Conclusion

Asking simple yet profound questions builds a relationship with yourself. Be prepared to be surprised at how simple the answers might be as you gift yourself the missing links!

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Behavioural Change Facilitator — Mental Health Counsellor, Kinesiology Practitioner + Business Mentor, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Wellness Coach, and Clinical Resource Therapist. She is a published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic and loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

Alignment is the new coaching tip

Alignment is the new coaching tip

by | Dec 30, 2025 | Self Development

Recovery from cancer is never-ending. It’s not spoken about much, and I think that is because cancer is a tough topic to discuss safely. There’s a societal expectation that once treatment is over, you can go back to the status quo.

Everyone expects you to return to normal.

The reality is that normal no longer exists.

The experience of cancer teaches you the lesson of change, that we grow and evolve. The lesson reminds us that we never remain the same.

The experience of cancer teaches the patient the importance of regularly tuning up their physical body to ensure optimal functionality. However, when you pair recovery from oncology treatment(s) with menopause changes within your mind and body, big changes are required.

Those changes aren’t just physical; you need a different mindset.

Why?

Your chemistry changes with age. Your capacity to detoxify, oxygenate, and energise cells changes over time. As you can imagine, your body’s chemistry is bombarded during oncology treatment — and it can take years to recover.

Therefore, trying to re-align to former behaviours and patterns from before a cancer experience is impossible — and sets you up to fail dismally.

Gone are the days when I can push my body beyond the fatigue signals. Oncology treatment ensured that I’m left with finite energy levels every day. That took a while for me to wrap my head around.

For someone who is neurodiverse, the concept that something is blocking me from being able to function with 50 mental browsers open, or juggle six things at once, was unfathomable.

I’d spent nearly four decades literally on the go and unable to sit still. Oncology treatment instigated the arrival of menopause, and it felt like I had joined a world wrestling match without training or preparation.

I got slammed.

To feel sane, I had to address the loss of expectation that I would recover to who I was before I was diagnosed. I had to say goodbye to the old me.

This translates to the fact that I could no longer coach myself through hard days. If I’m honest, I couldn’t coach myself through easy days either.

My level of fatigue was so extreme that I couldn’t talk myself into a positive mental place. I could no longer push for more or dig deep. I couldn’t recite affirmations to get myself through the mental fog.

I felt stuck in mud up to my shoulders.

This was a physical stress merged with mental thoughts and emotional behaviours. I felt the fullness of that stress vibrationally. Coaching no longer worked. Gone were the days when I could give myself a stern talking to.

I had to feel into a new alignment.

Menopause has gifted me an enormous awareness of how much oestrogen padded me out, and buffered me from a case of the ‘can’t be f*cked’.

On the other side of the cancer experience, I find myself in a place called nowhere. It’s liminal in nature, where space and time have little relevance. v

I have grown tired of making plans I can’t sustain. I have arrived at a mature awareness that I’m both neurodiverse and menopausal. This translates to — my hormones no longer masking my neuro-spiceyness!

I’m now a fully fledged ‘Karen’.

I try to keep her happy and lean into life, rather than coach my way through it.

I can no longer push myself to function without observing the emotional space of that moment, and actively listening to what my body needs or is capable of.

I was tired of always trying to do more, and now relish the stillness.

I was tired of the grinding and pushing. Just thinking about anything associated with ‘have to’ feels uncomfortable.

These days, I connect with what feels right. I align with the bodily sensations of feeling good. It’s a full-time job some days to take good care of myself.

I treat myself with kindness, not coaching. Coaching infers pushing, alignment invites stillness and recuperation.

And the truth is … I am not alone.

My clients tell me similar menopause transition stories, too. In fact, I hear these stories all the time from my clients. The mature women express their frustration at the expectations placed upon them, and the mature man doesn’t understand why he is now feeling disconnected from his partner.

Menopause is a kicker of asses.

The decline of oestrogen teaches women that our energy changes daily. We can’t pretend to perform and repeat a ‘big day’ every day. We simply aren’t designed that way.

Therefore, we must release the rigidity of fixed routines and lean into the toolbox on a daily basis. Try asking yourself, “What do I need right now/today?” Allow the answer or action to arise.

Sometimes the most important thing a menopausal woman can do is just breathe and practice stillness. After all, during menopause, scientific research shows us that a woman rewires her entire brain.

Is it any wonder our thinking becomes foggy, and our memory lags? You can’t perform like a thirty-year-old circus monkey anymore. It’s time to use your wisdom gained and lean into what you need, rather than who you can prove yourself to.

Menopause is a rewiring of puberty. You get to psychologically revisit any unresolved emotional trauma from your teen years. Have fun with that!

Menopause isn’t a time for more coaching-style discipline. You’re being called to incorporate more awareness and observations, and less doing.

By all means, use the coaching structures work, like waking and honouring your body in some way before breakfast. This pays homage to the energetic alignment you desire for the day. This will create your mood and outlook.

As you move each morning purposefully, do whatever is required to plan your day with clarity of what feels good. Eliminate the pressure or plan for success wherever possible. Plan kindness into your schedule. The version of you falling into bed exhausted won’t thank you for adding more to the list of things to accomplish. In fact, she’ll be a snarky bitch.

The menopausal woman wants to feel alive, purposeful, and aligned… without that crispy, singed, burnout sensation. What if there was a way each day to authentically connect to your heart, and let that lead you throughout the day?

What if leaning into the sensations of your body gave you permission to be gentler with yourself and your schedule?

Would your approach to life direct a shift or a slower and more consistent momentum of achievement?

Conclusion

Might alignment be the way of understanding your energy instead of pulling you out of yourself into exhaustion?

I have learnt to stop fighting my inner wisdom — it took me years of experience to get it, so why wouldn’t I use it for myself? Because here’s the thing, when I stopped forcing myself into coaching programs and systems that didn’t match me, things started falling into place:

I began to understand what I needed.
My clarity of what tools I needed to use returned.
My energy has slowly reignited with fire.
I am back in flow state.

First published with Illumination, a Medium Publication. Click here to read published article.

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Behavioural Change Facilitator — Mental Health Counsellor, Kinesiology Practitioner + Business Mentor, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Wellness Coach, and Clinical Resource Therapist. She is a published author. She is a self-confessed laughaholic and loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

Do you look good in orange

Do you look good in orange

by | Oct 22, 2023 | Self Development

Ask yourself this question next time you’re about to lose it

I had a client exclaim in her clinic session the other day that she was ready to kill someone. Namely one of her family members.

Don’t worry. She’s not a serial killer. And I took the opportunity to remind her that losing your shit causes you to wear orange and heavy duty bracelets!

It’s just that her frustration had escalated so significantly and tipped over into a space of unregulated emotion — namely anger and rage.

She had become a volcano head – ready to explode at any moment, fuming and seething with barely contained disdain. She was exactly like a volcano before it erupted, just smoking away frightening the local townsfolk -namely her family. Her emotional state was exceptionally volatile and she felt completely out of control.

There are numerous things that lead us to feel frustrated. Here are some examples:

  • Feeling not heard within a conversation or space
  • expectations not met despite your best planning efforts
  • juggling too many balls in the air at any given time

Frustration is likely to be the top layer of a feeling. There will be more emotion beneath that has not been spoken, expressed, or given air. It’s highly likely that you may not even be consciously aware of all that is festering beneath the surface.

Frustration can have a voice of its own. A voice that rants, raves and yells uncontrollably. A voice that speaks often from a sense of stagnation or helplessness, an inability to make things happen in the way that someone wants.

The vibrational frequency of frustration means that those feelings of unmet expectation can rapidly escalate to anger or rage in the blink of an eye.

Need some tips to release frustration?

Frustration is often a kinetic energy. This means frustration is a moving emotion, and you’re unlikely to be able to sit still with it. Additionally, you are likely to require some movement to shift the sensation of the unwelcome negative-based emotion. Moving your mouth will commence activation of the release, but you are likely to continue to feel frustration deeply within your body.

1. Stay present

When we feel uncertain about something, this can be likened to triggering an unconscious fear. Therefore our human reaction is that we tend to want to control the process or outcome. This is driven by fear of the unknown, uncertainty, or loss of control. It’s an emotion that is based on the future tense.

When you can remain present, you’re not activating the neurological survival program that drives you to start planning all of those contingencies in your head to counteract the undoubted and misperceived doom you’re stressing about.

2. Accept you are human

Our human existence mandates that we are always gathering data from our experiences. Our brain gathers sensory data of what we see, hear and feel. What also happens is that our brain attaches an emotional response to the sensory data, and creates a program.

This allows your brain to simply respond when an experience is repeated without having to recreate the same program. When we re-experience an emotional response, our brain simply reactivates the survival reaction that was originally created.

Why?? Because change is a constant in our lives. Our brain has a wonderful compensation program to reduce the need for reprograming everything, and therefore screen out what it perceives as useless detail.

Change is a gift. A gift to learn more. A gift to evolve. A gift to flow and receive/give more through our life. I am referring to the gift of shifting or relearning the subconscious survival reactions to create positive change in your life.

However, if your expectation is unrealistic — that you want the outcome to be perfect the first time — you’re setting yourself up for heartache. We weren’t born and then ran within hours of birth.

You’re not a horse. You are human.

You must first engage your neural pathways to create patterns and habits, rather than stumble, trip or fall. In turn, this trains the brain muscles to move you into new experiences of attempting to walk in new ways without falling. You learn to step out of your survival reaction, refine your resilience and then move forward metaphorically.

3. Manage Expectations

When you place an unrealistic expectation in relation to that experience you attempt something the first time and there is failure, two things happen. You doubt yourself.

Doubt makes you feel big emotions associated with failure when you don’t meet the expected outcome. You shame yourself subconsciously in relation to not achieving. This can lead to diminished self-worth and a misperception of insecurity. This doubt expands your fear of trying again and failing, rather than simply feeling safe or confident enough to make another attempt to achieve the experience.

4. Acknowledge your beliefs

Think back to when you were younger. Were you raised a winner?

I’m being serious now.

Set the snoopy snigger aside, and reflect on whether you were raised with ‘tough love’ or ‘all participants receive a reward’?

Your response links to the previous point and the potential expectations you developed from childhood about how things should be. Your beliefs and values influence your bias, what you know to be true. These aspects of your psyche also influence your behavioural patterning.

When your perceived expectations are not met, this will generate a negative emotional response. This reaction is often subconscious and not something we can initially control. This reaction reaffirms the fear to be true.

Continually failing to meet expectations can generate bad behaviour within ourselves, and worse, trigger misperceptions in others about who we are. In other words, it can quickly lead to a misperception of feeling, or worse feeling judged.

In this circumstance, before you lose it ask yourself the Byron Katie question in relation to the unrealistic expectation — “Is this real?”

This singular and powerful question allows you to acknowledge that the old reactive belief (based on the survival reaction) may now be outdated or no longer serve you. This acknowledgement allows you to step out of the old non-serving program, and release the negativity of frustration, anger and rage. It allows you to choose a different emotional outlook.

Our old programmed survival reactions drive the negativity of frustration and anger. Ignoring the signals this emotion generates, allows the energy of it to build.

As the frustration escalates, your capacity to remain calm diminishes, because your survival reaction is heightened. This is the mental and emotional tipping point of whether you change the colour of your outfits — can you walk away or do you find yourself reacting and later regretting?

Conclusion

Consider implementing one of the suggested actions should you experience those moments of intense frustration, anger, or rage and don’t want to wear an orange jumpsuit!!

First published with Illumination, a Medium Publication. Click here this piece.

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

Need a taste of calm?

Click here to enjoy Karen’s latest 
freebie offer.

Enjoy this program’s short presentation, which includes the experience of a meditative hypnotic recording to support resetting your calm.

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Wellbeing Coach, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, Clinical Hypnotherapist, and training Resource Therapist. She’s also a published author. 

She is a self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

5 Foundations Of Resilience

5 Foundations Of Resilience

by | Sep 2, 2022 | Self Development

What are the five foundations of resilience?

 

What is resilience? It’s defined as “our ability to bounce back from the stress of life”. Stress is a funny word. Most people don’t recognise that whilst we need some stress, like the alarm going off in the morning, any sustained stress is actually not great for our body or wellbeing.

Stress is defined as “a state of mental or emotional strain from an adverse or demanding situation”. Furthermore, the definition is further categorised that when in a prolonged state of stress, can cause imbalance and influence our ability to cope with life.

Resilience (or our ability to bounce back) therefore, requires a strong foundation and comprises five components: self-awareness, mindfulness, self-care, positive relationships and purpose. Resilience is not a skill we’re born with, it’s something we have to learn.

And what a time in the history of the world to learn these skills!

According to the creators of the WorkLife App, there are five pillars of resilience which include:

  • self awareness
  • mindfulness
  • self care
  • positive relationships
  • purpose.

One of the things I am constantly coaching clients, is that we are responsible for the lessons we embrace on our journey called life. Our humanness, all those experiences, are often messy.

Having a sense of self-awareness is empowering. It keeps you in the present moment, which is on the only time reference where change happens.

When exploring self awareness we commence with focussing on our ability to be conscious (present moment). It takes a lot of courage to acknowledge your stuff (what triggers you).

Self awareness includes your courage, willingness, motivation and intention to be aware so that you can change and navigate the path of life. Having an awareness of self allows you to understand how those around us perceive us.

When we are self-aware, and present we can choose to react or simply observe situations around us. This gifts us the space to then be compassionate and potentially consider what others around us are experiencing or hypothesize reasons for their actions.

Having a consistent self care practice that incorporates mindfulness enables you to practice your ability to be fully present, aware of where you are, what you are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what is going on around you.

Berkley University defines mindfulness as “maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens”.

Therefore every time you acknowledge you’re stressed (this is the art of mindfulness) you can gift yourself the choice to actively become self aware to the experience you are having, and what is required to resolve the discomfort of what you are experiencing.

Self-care is the practice of implementing positive action(s) that improve or maintain your wellbeing and health. This practice looks and feels different for everyone – and so it should since we’re all uniquely different.

It is up to you to distinguish how you’re feeling and what self care strategy you need in the present moment that will create an intentional positive effort.

I recommend radical self care for everyone. This means try a bunch of different activities, so that you have a variety of strategies to support you when feeling tired, triggered, low or just in a funk.

The next criteria to solidify the foundation of your resilience is positive relationships. This starts with the relationship you have with yourself, and how well you are prepared to acknowledge what you need and when.

It additionally extends to creating and maintaining healthy relationships with people in your life – those people who we exchange love, care, and respect with.

Knowing your why or purpose. This fundamental understanding of why we are here in this life enables you to create a supportive mindset and attitude towards yourself and others. Your sense of purpose is the key to feeling that you belong or serve something bigger than yourself.

In his book, The Giant Within, Tony Robbins elaborates on this sense of significance and loving connection as two of the required human needs. Our sense of purpose is founded on your faith, your family values, or simply perhaps where you work or volunteer your time and energy.

Utilising these foundational tools takes practice. Let me explain why.

Creating a new skill and mastering it’s effect takes time. It’s often important to stick with a new skill so that you can discern how well it works for you when you’re feeling calm, and then gain an understanding of how it will benefit you when stressed.

An activity like meditation is beneficial in the moment when you’re calm, but really useful if you are consistently undertaking short span practice on a daily basis – then it’s like topping up your zen tank.

Self-care should looks different for everyone. It is the practice of taking action to maintain or improve our health. It is up to us to make an intentional effort to practice self-care.

Conclusion

Learning and maintaining these foundational skills takes practice – to know what skill works best for you and when to use the tool. Using these five foundations of resilience can provide you with the gift of reframing your thinking so you see yourself and the world around you in new ways.

Sometimes, capturing a different view of your reality is all you need to step out of drama and back into the present time frame.

Prioritising foundation resilience upskilling is a radical and fabulous holistic approach to manage the stress in your daily life as well as your overall well-being in the long term.

Want to read more like this?

This is My Roar – signed copies of my first published book can be purchased from this website.

5 Questions to Identify What is Enough – Click here

5 Tips to Focus on What Really Matters – Click here

Self Reflection – A little Look Within – click here

8 Hot Tips How To Journal – click here

How To Stop Making Excuses & Start Living Your Best Life – Click here

Time to make a change?

Bookings – book today for an individual appointment

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About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & TBM & NES Practitioner, Intuitive Meditation Facilitator, Virtual Gastric Band Hypnosis Practitioner – she is a Change Facilitator!

Karen is a self-confessed laughaholic.  She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland

6 Tips To Self Reflect

6 Tips To Self Reflect

by | Dec 5, 2021 | Self Development

A Little Look Within

Self Reflection enables you to face the awkward, uncomfortable and dysfunctional aspects in your life  can change your life!

I have multiple conversations in clinic every week with clients who have moments, and even periods of time, where they feel stuck? Perhaps this immersion into darkness only lasts for a couple of hours, or worse, the stuck lasts several days. Some report that it extends out to weeks and gasp, maybe months!

There’s a common denominator for nearly everyone I see — they don’t know why they are stuck.

I talk to these clients about the need for real honesty with yourself, in order to seek a deeper understanding of that close and very personal relationship called ‘me’ or ‘myself’. Diving deep into the relationship with yourself can support you to overcome sub conscious habits that restrict or inhibit you to live your best life.

If you’re nodding your head then self reflection might just be the thing you’re looking for.

Self reflection is not an activity to beat yourself up. Nor is it designed to instigate shame, blame or guilt yourself. And let’s continue with a bit more honesty and agree, that when you first actively begin to explore yourself, it can feel a little uncomfortable — if you allow it.

Self Reflection is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as
“a serious thought regarding your actions”.

 

In other words you’ve got to dig for the good stuff. For example for you to return to your heart space and perceive what worked well or what didn’t?

Self Reflection is a process of observing yourself. This includes your feelings, thoughts and actions. It’s a process that requires being honest with yourself and should not ignite negativity of self sabotaging behaviour of shame, blame, or guilt.

Self Reflection requires a couple of things in order to achieve a positive outcome. You require courage to explore your darkness as you search for your hidden treasure. This includes your flaws, mistakes and reprimands. Your darkness hides the quirks in your values and belief system. Your darkness hides your strength by running a vulnerability based survival behavioural program.

It means you have to be prepared to accept yourself and get the hell out of your head and step down into your heart space. Connecting into your heart space, you are accessing your innate wisdom. You are activating your intuition and perception of life from a space of love. When you disconnnect from all that over thinking, you are actually stepping back into your heart space.

Allowing yourself to be willing to explore within incorporates the need to embrace six ‘self’ attributes.

These include:

  1. Self-confidence —embracing that feeling of trust of your own abilities, qualities and judgement.

2. Self-image — how you see or perceive your abilities, appearance and personability.

3. Self-Worth — sense of your own worth or value as a person.

4. Self-Respect — pride & confidence in yourself.

5. Self-Belief — the belief that you can do things well.

6. Self-Esteem — confidence in your worth & abilities.

Self Reflection is therefore a personal growth tool which allows you to pause and determine how well you’re travelling your journey path. It’s so easy to reflect on your life with a negative filter like overthinking, worry or fear. Your nervous system drives this defensive type of mental based energy.

Self reflection can be used as a tool which supports you to evaluate, and celebrate what you have achieved in your life. With a little kindness for yourself, self reflection can support you to step out of self sabotaging patterns whereby negativity swirls around inside your head.

You can do this be using the power of reframing your perceived failures, simply as lessons not yet fully learned. In turn this creates a positive energy of acceptance and allows you to shift gears or direction to achieve success in the future.

So let’s explore what Self Reflection can do for you!

So let’s explore what Self Reflection can do for you!

Tip #1 Be Honest With Yourself

Self reflection is an invitation to be honest with yourself about how things are going in your life. Your observation should simply assess your behaviour during your experiences, in terms of your values and beliefs.

Are you aligned to your core values? 

Tip #2 Observe your behavioural patterns 

I invite you to gently lay down the need to judge yourself on this one and simply look at whether the same trigger consistently arises for you to address. This creates an opportunity to become aware of the habits that best support you to live your best life, or address the ones that are holding you back.

Tip #3 Understand Your Core Values

From the persepctive of Self Relfection and understanding your core values means reaffirming assessing what is important in your life.

Assessing your values (because some may change throughout your life as you mature) is like maintaining and re-affirming your inner compass to always point you in the direction of your true north.

Tip #4 Be Kind & Gentle!

Self reflection isn’t intended nor designed to beat yourself up about what has happened doesn’t change your experiences. All this does is make you feel like crap.

Remember to not use why questions, because they only leave you looking in the rearview mirror of the journey you’re taking. You need to ask what questions which enable you to open up to a different reality or version of your truth.

Tip #5 Be Forgiving

Self Reflection should encourage you to be gentle with yourself, especially when you don’t meet your expectations, don’t get it right, or completely mess it up.

We all make mistakes.

This is why reframing thoughts and feelings is so vital. Remember that our expectations are often unrealistic and set you up for a perception of failure or fear of not being perfect.

Tip #6 Keep Track Of Your reflections

Capture your observations, thoughts, feelings and whatever burns up your internal barometer in a journal. This enables you to monitor change over time. It helps you map the evidence of your success, or further identify where you can make small adjustments along the way to living your best life.

So Self-Reflection is really like a form of internl auditing.

It’s just like placing your thoughts and feelings in front of a mirror, and being able to examine what the heck has been going on. The reflection enables you to examine what is seeping out of the cracks or what has arisen from the dark depths of your sub conscious. As part of your internal audit, instead of going straight into reaction mode, you can choose to become curious and explore why certain emotional responses arise under specific conditions, or be triggered by specific places or people.

Self reflection is a very useful tool, especially if you’re trying to manifest that next big thing in your life. Perhaps you’re using affirmations or the law of attraction and you’re not quite reaching the desired outcome you seek. Self reflection enables you to look at various aspects of your life where you may be running a hidden sabotage pattern.

Self-reflection is a tool that instantly brings you into the present moment because it forces you to explore how am I feeling about x?

It’s a particularly useful strategy if you know you’re about to face something that may re-trigger stress such as a work situation or family gathering. Additionally it’s a useful tool when you’re studying or working on a project as it supports you to measure actual success and celebrate that!

So where in your life can self-reflection support you?

Let’s begin with your relationship with yourself.

We all know that knowledge is power. When you can acknowledge how a person, place, or thing can push your buttons or stress you out, you can take action to defuse the stress trigger. The relationship you have with yourself needs to be based in self love in order to manifest positivity and productivity. 

If you waste your energy and time with the negativity of shame, blame, guilt, judgement, or even resentment you’re wasting your life. This is because negativity stifles your energy to thrive and shifts you into a space of survival, in other words flight or fight.

The relationship you have with yourself is therefore vital in order to thrive in your life. The person who looks back at you every morning in the mirror is going to be the most important relationship you have in your life. It’s imperative to therefore consciously assess where you perceive any weakness or areas for improvement and this starts with where does your negativity spring up?

What pushes your buttons? What trips you up? What causes you to fall or go splat on your face? What fucks you up?

When you can sit quietly with yourself and honestly replay a stressful situation, accepting the flourish of emotions that may have transpired as a component of your reaction (rather than response) you are creating an opportunity for growth. It’s a choice point when you explore this quiet space because you get to decide how that reaction made you feel afterwards. 

You get to decide whether you might do it differently. You also get to explore where that reaction came from so that you begin to understand yourself on a far deeper level.

Want to read more like this?

Can You Risk Not Stepping Up To Mother yourself? – Click here

How To Stop Making Excuses & Start Living Your Best Life – Click here

Healing Emotions Hurt More Than The Physical Wounds – Click Here

About Karen

Change Facilitator

Karen Humphries is a Kinesiology Practitioner, Health & Business Coach, LEAP & NES Practitioner, and self-confessed laughaholic. She is an avid Breast Cancer Advocate residing in Gippsland Victoria Australia. She loves being of service to the world with her humorous and positive approach to life, encouraging people to ‘choose to change and bloom from within.’ 

Karen Humphries, Change Chick, Change Facilitator, Kinesiology, Wellness Coach, Australian Bush Flower Essences, LEAP Facilitator, Trauma, Public Speaker, Cancer Ambassador, Blooming From Within, Traralgon, Victoria, Gippsland