323 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Why Knowing Yourself is So Important & How to Get Started

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

Joanna Hennon and I are back with another co-hosted episode! Today, we talk about why knowing yourself is so important. If you’ve been listening to my recent episodes from the past few months, you’ll know why this is such a big deal for me. I’ve been wanting to have this conversation with Joanna, because we always come to new realizations when we talk about things like this. We have a lot of a-ha moments in this episode!

More About Joanna Hennon

Joanna is a #SoulSmart Success Mentor – she helps people to easily create more success by using the wisdom and power we all have access to at soul level. Living life from a place of soul power, in tune with your higher self and your Guides, and using the Law of Attraction with intention will literally change your life! To get started, grab one of these free resources.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What does it actually mean to know yourself
Our journeys to getting to know yourselves – what that looked like
Is knowing yourself really important? Why?
Does who you are ever change? Can you be identity-fluid?
What does it look like when you don’t really know yourself
Why some people don’t want to really know themselves
What are the benefits of knowing yourself well
How knowing yourself can increase happiness
Why knowing yourself is the precursor to self love + self acceptance
How knowing yourself can benefit your intuition + soul connection
Why self knowledge helps you make the right decisions for yourself – but it’s not a guarantee (and what you need to do once you have this self knowledge)
Practical actions you can take to get to know yourself (and why you can start with just one thing – you don’t need a to do list of 27 action steps)

Things We Discussed

Connect with Joanna

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to Into The Wood podcast, episode 323. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back – finally! – with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Joanna Hennon. Today we talk about a topic that we have been discussing on and off for the last few months, which is knowing yourself. We ask the question: is knowing yourself actually important? If you have listened to my recent episodes you should know my answer to this!

So what are you going to learn today on this episode? We talk about: what it actually means to know yourself, we share our journeys to getting to know ourselves, and what that looked like to us, how long that has taken. We ask the question: is knowing yourself actually important and why? We ask: does who you are ever change? Can you be identity fluid? What does it look like when you don’t know yourself? How does that show up in your life and what problems does that cause? We share why we think some people don’t want to really know themselves, not everyone is ready, willing and able to start down this path, and why. We talk about why we think knowing yourself is the precursor to self-love and what are all the steps that come before knowing yourself and loving yourself and why this is a really important step on the path. We talk about the benefits of knowing yourself well, we talk about how it benefits your intuition, how it helps with self-acceptance and how it helps to make better decisions for yourself and how it helps with manifesting and reality-creation and creating the life that you want to live. We also share practical actions that you can take to get to know yourself and start consciously walking down this path of self-knowledge. So, as always, I hope you find this episode interesting and useful, I am super-excited to be back with Joanna with another episode after summer and that’s all for now, let me know if you have any questions.

Holly: Hey Joanna!

Joanna: Hey Holly!

Holly: {laughing} I am super-excited about our topic today!

Joanna: I am too, I am glad we chose this one!

Holly: So, today, we are going to be talking about how important is it really to know yourself, is knowing yourself actually important? Is that something you should be investing your time and attention on?

Joanna: Yeah, if it matters, really, for your life. It will actually make your life better, right? That’s why we want to do anything, that’s why we want to invest our time in anything: will it make a difference to your life?

Holly: Yeah, perfect! So what does it mean to you to know yourself?

Joanna: Are you asking me?

Holly: Yes, I am asking you! {laughing} Also to the listeners, what does it mean to you? Think about that as we are talking.

Joanna: I guess it means knowing what I like and what I don’t like and what works for me and what doesn’t work for me, rather than painting myself with the same brush as the rest of society. Just being really clear on what success looks like to me, what gets me to feel better, how I really want to spend my days; so you know those really horrible ideal life exercises that coaches make you do? {Both: laughing} Like it is so hard to fill those in, because we don’t really know ourselves, we don’t take time to get to know ourselves. So we don’t really know what we want and so, it makes everything difficult – now I am getting ahead of myself – so I am going to ask you the same question, what does it mean to get to know yourself you think, Holly?

Holly: To me, it means: who am I? What do I like in my life? What do I want my life to look like? What kind of lifestyle do I want? What do I want to eat? Where do I want to live? What do I want to do? How do I want to spend my time? It is knowing what I want to experience in this world and why? What are the things that I like, what are the things that I don’t like? You know that kind of thing. What’s important to me? Values.

Joanna: I think that the journey of getting to know yourself and getting the answers to all those questions is really important, but I think even when people do those things to find out and get to know themselves, they don’t take it that one step further because, that’s the really important piece, because you have to be willing to not just know yourself but to actually take action based on it. So if you don’t like Thai food, then don’t go to Thai restaurants, even if everybody else want to go – I mean, within reason obviously, don’t be annoying {laughing}, if you don’t mind it, you don’t mind it. But you know what I mean, actually follow up on those things that you know about yourself. If you hate running, choose a different sport. Yeah, I don’t have any other examples that come to mind, you know what I mean, right?

Holly: Yes, exactly, don’t do the things that everyone else is doing just because they are doing it you assume that you should do it, when maybe it is not right for you.

Joanna: And having the courage to just say: no this is not right for me, is actually really, really, important, because otherwise we just say yes to everything and we over-extend ourselves, so we end up doing things that deplete our energy and therefore we can’t create a better life really, and that is what we all want. So Holly, would you say that you know yourself pretty well, or not?

Holly: Well, like you said a couple of minutes ago, it absolutely is a journey and I feel like I am well into that journey, but I am still getting clarity on stuff everything week, every month, every day.

Joanna: How did you start then? Very few people I think have this realisation of: oh, that’s what I need to do, I need to know myself! That doesn’t happen! So how did you start getting to know yourself?

Holly: That is such an excellent question! So what happened was, as you know and as I think a lot of people listening to this know, I ran my first business for ten years with a business partner who is also my ex and I got completely off track for those ten years. I followed what he wanted to do, how he wanted to do it, where he wanted to do it, I completely denied my own values, my own interests, and what was right for me. So for ten years I got completely off track and during those ten years I forgot who I was because I had to be someone else to do the things I had to do to just get through each day.

Joanna: So you think you knew who you were before that relationship? You say, forgot, so…?

Holly: Well I think a part of me knew some things. I don’t think I knew myself, I don’t think I ever knew myself very well otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten myself into that situation, but I completely forgot who I was, or not even forgot because I knew that certain things didn’t feel right, but I didn’t have the self awareness to know why they didn’t feel right, why they weren’t right for me. I didn’t stop and analyse that because my life was so fast-paced, it was so hectic, I never had time for introspection and I think I avoided introspection because my life was so bad, and so painful and so difficult that I don’t think I wanted to go there, I don’t think I wanted to look at why everything was so wrong. So it wasn’t until I got myself out of that situation, and into a better situation, that I started having the space, the time, the space, the head space, to start looking at myself because I left that relationship a year later, I quit that business, I left my participation in that business and I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I think that was what sparked it. It was like, I no longer had a business, I hadn’t had a job in over 10 years, I knew I didn’t want a job, I knew I wanted a business, but I didn’t know what that business was and there were so many things that I could do but I had no idea what I wanted to do. And so, and then I moved to the UK and was simultaneously trying to set up a business and trying to get a job and seeing which one worked out first and so I was applying to all these jobs in the hospitality industry and for spa director, and hotel director, and now… that was my experience that was what I knew how to do, I hated it, I didn’t want to do it again, but I didn’t know what else I could do, I didn’t know what else was possible for me because I didn’t know myself. And then I trained as a coach, and then I trained in all kinds of personal development stuff, and therapies and NLP and that helped me get on the journey to knowing myself. So that started in 2011 and so for the last nine almost years I have been on that journey of getting to know myself. So I feel like I have come a long way, but I started at a very, very, low space. How about you?

Joanna: Yeah, I was just trying to think, actually, as you were talking I was listening, and I was thinking what am I going to say when Holly asks me this question {laughing} because I should have probably prepared! It is just not anything I ever considered, knowing myself, my life when I was younger was all about go, go, go. I had coped with a lot hardship, a lot of struggle, everything was not just fast-paced but really focused on getting stuff done and doing stuff and getting more work, getting more money and all that kind of thing and I think I just kind of got stuck in that. And when I was doing that and when I was preparing to do that and all those things, knowing myself wasn’t a consideration because I needed to get through college and pay for that, then I needed to support myself and pay for that, so it just wasn’t a thing. And then, when I had my breakdown and I had more space in my life I started considering some of these things.

Holly: And when was that, just to get an idea of the timeline? How many years ago?

Joanna: Probably like seven, like seven years ago. So I was kind of forced to stop and I started looking my intuitive art course, the intuitive art course that really started me on this whole journey of getting to know myself, of developing intuition and becoming a channel, all those things. Then I remember being really frustrated because I wanted results, even from that course, I was so used to going for results and really tangible things, and I would do this piece of intuitive art and my message would be like: this is how you relate to yourself, and this is how you relate to the world. And I was like: what the hell is this, this is not useful information, what am I supposed to do with that, like, who cares!?

Holly: {laughing} Tell me what to do!

Joanna: Yeah, tell me what to do! I was very resistant to the whole process because I didn’t really see a point and I didn’t realise that that journey of getting to know myself was actually a journey of self-love because I had always been someone who had very, very, low self-esteem. And not anymore, to be honest I never thought that I would overcome that particular thing, but because of that work on getting to know yourself what happens is you get to know yourself and then you see other people getting to know themselves, and you kind of realise that it is okay, it is okay that I am really impatient. You start to accept the things that you are, and when you know them, and then you accept them, you can go into self-love more, you can start feeling a little bit different about yourself and less judgemental because it just becomes normal and you acknowledge it.

Holly: Yes, I agree. So would you say that knowing yourself is really important or how important is it on the scale of life? {laughing}

Joanna: I think it is really important. {Both: laughing} Otherwise I would have said no to this podcast!

Holly: No! This is totally not worth your time, that’s all you need to know, goodbye.

Joanna: I think it is the basis, nobody wants to start there like nobody wants to start with self love, right? Because that always sounds really boring. I was always, always, the person who you know how you buy courses on business success and then they have eight modules and module one is ‘know yourself’ or ‘love yourself’ or ‘find your starting point’, all those kinds of things? I would always, always, skip those, those things did not interest me at all: tell me how to do the thing, you know?!

Holly: Interesting, I was always really thirsty for that because I think once I realise I had no clue who I was and what I wanted in life I was like: tell me how to know myself! I love that stuff, those values exercises where you have values on a piece of paper and you circle your values and you narrow it down to your top five, your top three, your top one, I love! I am so thirsty for those. Quizzes, online quizzes, where they are like: get to know your archetype, I love that stuff!

Joanna: I love archetypes, but I don’t like most of those things because, I am only realising this as we are talking, I think I don’t like them because of my need to belong and that is another issue I have had my entire life is belonging. And I think because I don’t do well on those quizzes and tests, because I never fit into any of their boxes. I did a program recently where it was like: this is the first step; you are going to get this test and the type that you are is going to really help you to make more money and increase your wealth and all those things. I see people doing them around me and they are like: I am a number 3 wow! So much clarity, I am number 1. And I did the test and I got the same extract score for five categories and I am like: this does not help me! This tell me nothing! And on top of it I would probably be different categories tomorrow when my focus is different. So I never liked them. So I think for me it was kind of important to accept that I just don’t fit into these boxes and I am very kind of changeable, fluid, that way, identity fluid, and that is part of who I am and that I needed to accept. You know?

Holly: Okay, so I was making a note as you were talking, I think that is really interesting what you said about being identity fluid. So are you really identity fluid? Does who you are ever change or do you just get to know yourself as you peel off the layers of masks and shit that you are not?

Joanna: Okay that is probably what it is. {Both: laughing} Although when you look at it from the perspective of the soul, and the quantum universe, I think it is possible to be identity fluid. My work revolves, as you know, around shifting identities and shifting realities and choosing the one that suits you best that you are happiest in, so, that means that you can be identity fluid, because today I can be really into running and identify as a runner and then tomorrow I might drop that and be really into dancing, both of which I love equally. So it is not a betrayal of myself, it is almost like a different focus.

Holly: Right, so does that mean that who you are deep down at the core is different from your identity? Because we can take on and take off different identities at different places in our lives, but does that change who we are deep down?

Joanna: No, okay I got it, okay, quickly before it escapes {laughing} one of the secrets of the universe! {laughing} No of course not, our core of who we are doesn’t change but I think we have this need to be defined and by identifying with certain identities and by doing that we limit ourselves. I think who we are, I am getting chills as I am saying this, I have never realised this before, at the core of who we are we are multi-dimensional, and multi all sorts of things. So we are actually lots of different qualities at the same time and we have this human need to define ourselves and to put ourselves in some kind of box. You know, in a work situation you are the leader or the follower, or you react with anger or frustration or you are patient, we have these labels. And so those of us who have been doing this personal development work longer see that it is not so clear and maybe that is why I don’t score well on these tests, because I identify with all of these things at the same time even though they tell me I can’t that I have to be or/or.

Holly: So you have just said something that I think is worth explaining. You said that we are multi-dimensional, what does that mean? How would you explain that to someone who is like, what?!

Joanna: Let’s see if I can explain it, so multi-dimensional, just for me, the way I understand it, or when I use it, this is what I mean, is that we exist in various parts of reality at the same time. So you are Holly here in this moment talking to me, at the same time there is a part of you that is your higher self, that is not a separate thing and you are that at the same time. It is not like you switch between them, you are Holly and the higher self at the same time and at the same time as that you are in other time-space-dimensions being other personalities. So at your soul level — oh my god this is so cool because I have never really articulated it before — so at the soul level you are many different things at the same time, many identities, there is no time out there, or time as we understand it on earth so, you are living all your “past” lives at the same time as this life. Therefore you are an infinite number of identities all at the same time so when you are connected with that deeper, higher, however you want to call it, part of you, it becomes ridiculous to try and fit yourself into a personality type, because you are actually capable of being all these things at the same time.

Holly: Okay, so I have a question, I am not even sure how to formulate this, but as you were talking I was thinking: so we have all these different parallel universes, parallel realities, dimensions, {laughing}, do we, do we not? Assuming that we do, is our soul then…the other version of me in a parallel universe, is that not my soul that is divided into these two, so it is the same soul, so other Holly’s are also me?

Joanna: Yes.

Holly: Shit!

Joanna: I know! {laughing} It can make your head explode. The way I understand it, I can’t remember where I got this visual from, if that was from my own guides, or whether I picked that up somewhere from a mentor, but the way I understand it is if you have, if you hold your hand up in front of you and point your fingers down, then all the fingers are different Holly’s but you are all still part of the same thing.

Holly: Oh okay, so the palm is my soul and all the fingers are the different Holly’s, okay.

Joanna: And they can be doing different things within reason. So it makes sense then if we are at our core so many different things, or we have the capability to be so many different things, it becomes understandable that some of us just don’t fit in.

Holly: I was doing one of those, this ad came up in my Instagram or something for this women’s metabolism thing and I was like metabolism, fascinating! So it was like: what metabolism type are you as a middle aged woman? {laughing} I know, but you know I am addicted to these things! I was going through this survey and I was like: so many of these don’t apply to me. And when I got my metabolism type when it came in, I just deleted the email when it came in and I unsubscribed because so many of the questions none of your answers applied to me, so now I don’t believe in your and I have to pick the closet thing which really didn’t apply.

Joanna: That’s another option that none of the options apply or all the options can apply. I see this in myself a lot. For example, just simple things like: what kinds of clothes do you like? What do you wear? What are you most comfortable in? Most people will identify with some kind of look, you know, they wear more or less of the same style everyday, right? Or most of the time, maybe you will have a work persona and a home persona, but I always thought, I always judged myself for not being like that. I like all sorts of different looks and I feel very comfortable both as a goth in total black, with fake dreadlocks and really heavy black makeup as I do in a cocktail gown, as I do in a top and a string of pearls and I used to really judge myself on this that I shouldn’t do that.

Holly: Pick an identity! Pick one and stick to it!

Joanna: Yeah, be consistent, until I realised but I don’t know some days I feel more like this and this is more of an expression of myself and sometimes I feel more like tis and I want to wear pearls and that is okay.

Holly: And that is interesting because like I remember being in high school and not knowing what my style was, I wasn’t comfortable in anything so eventually kind of picked one ting and went with it, but I just remember feeling I did not know myself in high school, I did not. I was really disconnected from myself and it was so, I remember feeling so uncomfortable, because I didn’t know what to wear and I had this whole closet, full of clothes, and I would wake up half an hour early to sit and stare at my closet and think about what I was going to wear, because I was so uncomfortable.

Joanna: So none of the options fit for you, that is a pattern for you.

Holly: That is a pattern for me and the pattern for you is the opposite, I think that is really interesting that we have different perspectives. So what does it look like when you don’t really know yourself, how does that manifest in your life, how can you tell that you don’t really know yourself?

Joanna: Based on my own experience, you are unhappy in the end, right? You are doing stuff that doesn’t bring you joy, you are doing stuff that is misaligned, you are setting goals that are not actually your goals, you are aiming for things that even when you achieve them, they don’t satisfy, so you are basically living someone else’s life, and the typical example of this is your parents, right? Are you living your life in the way that really works for you, or are you just living out their aspirations?

Holly: Exactly, you are making the wrong decisions for yourself, you are maybe making decisions based on what your friends or your family want you to make.

Joanna: And I think the really difficult thing is that you don’t know, you don’t know that you know yourself and that is the problem, you just can’t figure out why Johnny did the same things and he is super happy, and you did those same things and you are not, and so you judge yourself. A lot of women, I don’t know why I choose Johnny as my example!

Holly: {laughing} How old is Johnny?

Joanna: I don’t know, but actually my example is a hypothetical woman, because women have this problem with self-judgement you know, and guilt and all this stuff. So a lot of women will be doing the same thing as other women: the house and the children and the family and all that kind of thing and not be happy and then assume that there is something wrong with them. How ungrateful that I have all these things that everybody else wants, that everybody else is satisfied with, and I have those same things and I am not satisfied, there must be something wrong with me, rather than looking at was this what I ever wanted? {laughing}

Holly: Exactly, did I just go into the life partner, two and a half kids, dog, cat and big house, bigger house whatever, or did I stop and think about: are these things that I want to experience in my life? And I think a lot of people automatically choose that path because that is what everyone is doing.

Joanna: That’s what we are taught to want, from day one, when you get your first reader at school, what are the photos? In Poland, certainly they haven’t updated the photos, so the photos are still of the mummy staying at home and taking care of the children and the daddy comes home with the briefcase. So you have this image of what life is like and what happiness looks likes and everybody is always smiling in these pictures you know? And so of course you grow up with that, and you think that that is the only way to be happy and there are actually lots of ways to be happy.

Holly: Yeah, absolutely.

Joanna: And you have to find yours.

Holly: Absolutely. I think it can take a lot of courage to not go with the flow and stop and ask yourself: Do I want this? Do I not? For me with the whole children thing, like that, I knew from high school that I didn’t want kids, but I didn’t have any examples of women in my life of women that didn’t have kids, so I didn’t realise that was a valid life decision. And so I spent my whole life, thank God not having kids, like I knew enough not to do it because it wasn’t right for me, but I felt like that that was wrong, that it wasn’t a valid choice that there was something wrong with me, should I want them? How could I get myself to want them, you know?

Joanna: There are so many examples, whether you want children or not, then after you have children with breastfeeding, not breastfeeding. I had that for example, because I didn’t want to breastfeed, the idea of that really, really, freaked me out, I would have nightmares when I was pregnant, and yet what I was supposed to push through? I didn’t push through I decided from the start that I didn’t want to even try it. And to this day…

Holly: People are going to judge you for that.

Joanna: If you are listening to this and you disagree with that there is no need to email me.

Holly: {laughing/joking} Because we don’t give a shit!

Joanna: I know that people will disagree, and they will have different opinions and that is fine, but I have my own opinion and needed to do what was right for me in an already difficult situation. All sorts of things you know, and you just have to have that discipline to just pause, pause and ask yourself, what do I really want here? And it might not be obvious, people always are very surprised when I say I never spoke Polish to my son, so.

Holly: I am surprised too because he understands Polish. Where did he get that from?

Joanna: He does, and we speak it occasionally now, when he was small I didn’t. What you are supposed to do if you have a language that’s basically give as many languages as you can. Plus he wouldn’t have my language which is an identity thing and people are always really surprised but for me it wasn’t the right choice because it was really difficult for me to be a new mother I was really in a bad place and I didn’t handle being exhausted very well. It was too much, like, not to mention the fact that I don’t speak Polish in the same way I speak English, when I speak Polish I am basically using all of my mother’s expressions because…I am basically my mother because I don’t know how to be Polish beyond that. That’s all I have ever heard, I don’t have Polish friends so the language is just what I have heard in my parent’s home and so it felt really weird to me when I was speaking Polish to Shane, when he was smaller, it felt like I was being my mother instead of me and so it was too much and so I decided not to and so his Polish isn’t great. And sometimes I think that maybe that was the wrong choice because I would love for him to have that language now. But whatever, that was really right for me in that moment, during that time and that has to be okay.

Holly: Yes, and I think that is really interesting what you said about you feeling like your mother when you speak Polish, I have also was said that when I speak Spanish I am different person. Obviously I am not a different person, but it brings out very different things in my personality. I feel very different when I am speaking Spanish to people than when I am speaking English to people and I remember years ago, when I lived in Spain, I had these two Greek room mates and we were meant to be speaking Spanish to each other because we were all learning Spanish, and then I had my friend Laura come to visit me and she was staying with me for a week and so we were speaking English, for a week and when my friend Laura went back to California one of my room mates said to me: you should never speak English you are really boring when you speak English. {laughing}

Joanna: {laughing} That’s so unfair! You only speak English to me, so I get boring Holly?

Holly: You get boring Holly; you don’t get Spanish Holly! {laughing}

Joanna: Okay I am going to learn Spanish!

Holly: Imagine how much funI could be if you spoke Spanish, it would be a party 24/7! {laughing}

Joanna: Oh my God! Okay, one of the listeners must speak Spanish, reach out to Holly…

Holly: And have a conversation

Joanna: I would be curious to know if that was still true though because that was when you were much younger and didn’t know yourself as well and therefore you weren’t as grounded and rooted in who you really are. I would be really interested to see if that is still the case.

Holly: And I would be too, because I remember years later in my first business I was running my business in Spanish because it was based in three Spanish speaking countries and all of my employees were native Spanish speakers, but then this one day we had this business meeting, I hope we are not getting too off track here, we will get back on track after this story, but we had business meeting where these Americans were invited so we had to do the meeting in English. All my staff were bi-lingual so it was perfectly fine to run it in English but I remember afterwards my marketing manager coming up to me and saying: I can’t believe how articulate and how professional…she was super impressed with my participation in this meeting but she hadn’t ever heard me speak English before so I think it was just that I sounded so much more confident, even though I am fluent in Spanish, I obviously come across differently in English.

Joanna: Interesting! Anyway {laughing}

Holly: Anyway getting back to knowing yourself and having different personalities in different situations. So why do you think some people don’t want to know themselves? Because it takes work and I think a lot of people are resistant to this?

Joanna: I actually think that is a self love thing. I think people don’t want to know themselves because they are afraid what they are going to find. I have actually had people say this to me. I used to run workshops called: the magic in me, find your passion, find your path, they all relied on the tools I had then to help you to get to know yourself and what you really want and all that stuff and people didn’t really want to know, and when I asked several people told me because they were afraid of what they will find, because they assume that they are horrible people. Like, a lot of us, have these really damaging assumptions and that there is something wrong with us and we are spending our whole lives hiding the fact that we are frauds, that there is something wrong with us, that we are mean, whatever those things are that we are hiding the shadow side basically.

Holly: Yeah.

Joanna: So people don’t want to know themselves because they are afraid.

Holly: yeah they are afraid that the shadow side is going to outweigh the light side.

Joanna: They are afraid that if they get in there they are going to find out that they are horrible people and isn’t that, I have always found that so sad. They just don’t associate that with something positive.

Holly: And you can’t really love yourself until you accept the shadow side because that is a part of you, it is an important part of you.

Joanna: Oh yes, for sure, you can’t love yourself until you know yourself, what are you going to love?

Holly: Exactly, you love the mask that you have created for yourself.

Joanna: And that is why people find self love stuff really difficult, I don’t think you can jump from nothing to self-love, you have to get to know yourself – this is the way I teach it anyway – you get to know yourself, you have to accept who you are, then maybe you start liking yourself and spending some time and then that moves to love, I don’t know why in every other relationship in the world we would expect to go through that progression, but with ourselves we set ourselves up for failure and judgement because we think we should be able to just love ourselves out of know where and then we can’t and we are like: what is wrong with me? When you think about it it makes absolutely no sense.

Holly: I agree. And I remember years ago, one of my first PK clients, came to me for a two our session because she wanted to know herself because she had problems knowing herself and she had a lot of self hatred going on and we did a bunch of work on it and she had already come to me having done a ton of work on it, and therapies and treatments and she still didn’t now herself. And afterwards I remember following up with emails with her and she has stuck in my head as this person tat I couldn’t help, I didn’t help her get the results that she wanted and it makes me feel so bad because self love is so important to me, and it is so important that other people experience it that I still have this feeling really bad about it. Now that we are having the conversation I just want to send her the link to the episode.

Joanna: Do that!

Holly: I probably will actually if I can remember her name! I wonder if there were things that she wasn’t able to see about herself or didn’t even know to go on that path to know yourself, like yourself, accept yourself and then love yourself.

Joanna: I think a lot of people don’t consider a lot of the stuff that goes on underneath. Holly, that even that we were just at together, at Ann Wilsons financially free you or something and Ann talked about this experience that she had, she had just finished filming a TV show. I really, really, loved the way that she phrased this, she kept talking about: how long does it take to have the last 23 minutes? How long did it take for them all to develop that episode so that we as the viewers could see that 23 minutes of the episode and it was a really, really, long Tim. She kept talking about this concept that we are a society that values that 23 minutes, that end result, and nobody wants to know about the stuff that comes before. When we think about these things we want to be able to come up with 23 minutes in no time, to be the person for whom it is suddenly really easy to stand in front of the mirror and declare undying love and all those affirmation things that we are meant to do in front of the mirror and that is very difficult for someone who has ever considered whether they are happy in their life or not. How can you make that jump? It is just not possible. Consider all that stuff that goes into that 23 minute episode, they started making three years ago.

Holly: Yeah we expect it to go super fast for ourselves whereas we understand that it takes time with other people, so if you have a significant other, or a best friend, think about what that journey was like to where that relationship is now. You met them, you got to know them, you got to accept the stuff that they like, you accepted the stuff that you maybe didn’t like as much, you just realised that you liked them and then you fall in love with them. How long did it take? It took dates, it took hanging out with the person, it took…

Joanna: It took focus and consistency, you wanted to get to know that person, to see if it is someone you would like to spend the rest of your life with, that is why we date.

Holly: Exactly.

Joanna: It is like one long interview.

Holly: Exactly, so what is your interview with yourself going to be like? Just because you are with yourself every day doesn’t mean that you are actually focussing on getting to know yourself.

Joanna: I feel like we should give people some tips on how to get to know themselves, where do you even start? Do you have anything? Can we provide any direction here?

Holly: Yeah I think so. For me, I really like those things like value exercises, like what are my values? What are the things that I like doing? What are the things that I don’t like doing? What am I afraid of and what am I not afraid of? Like, what is important to me? What are my priorities in life? I think that looking at that stuff, asking yourselves those questions is really, really, important and maybe leave a space in your journal for each of those things because maybe you can only write down one or two things today but if you come back to it next week, next month, next quarter, you hopefully will be able to add things to those lists the more you get to know yourself. Don’t expect to be able to write three pages of who I am today.

Joanna: That’s a really good one actually and I love journalling for self-exploration, it is really powerful and the way I stated was intuitive art, even if you did something really simple like a collage, like a dream board collage type thing, on various topics like how do I feel about me? And then do a collage on that and see what images you are drawn to. Or, me, can you make a collage that is you, that symbolises you: the stuff you like, the stuff you find important, I would be really curious. I might run this actually as a separate event because I think this is a really nice idea to see what comes up when you have to define yourself in a variety of ways. There is no limit, I think it is a really interesting exercise to allow intuitive art adds something to journalling because journalling comes from the head space,and some people can let wisdom through but a lot of people find it easier to do art in order to let art and that underlying wisdom to come through because it gets the mind out of the way, you are doing something different with your hand and it is just a different process.

Holly: I think so. What would you say: once you start on this path to getting to know yourself and it is a journey don’t expect it to happen the first day, week, month, year, I have been on this path since 2011, or even before that 2010?

Joanna: You have been on this path your whole life!

Holly: Of course! But I have been consciously on this path since 2010 but thank you for pointing that out. {laughing} What are the benefits of knowing yourself well? What does it give you? Why should we dedicate our time to this?

Joanna: Well it helps us to create a more fulfilling, more satisfying life. If you know yourself you are going to choose the things that make you happier that fulfil you more, that bring you that deep sense of joy and satisfaction. You can’t do that if you don’t know yourself right?

Holly: Exactly. You can’t create the life you want to live, you can’t manifest the stuff that you want to manifest, unless you know what is right for you.

Joanna: Well yeah it all depends on the energy. I wasn’t really expecting it to happen this way and it is only in retrospect that I see how it all works, but when I started that intuitive art course myself when they were doing all these things where I had to get to know myself better and all the stuff that I found really boring. What I wanted was the spiritual connection, I wanted to have a spirit guide and I didn’t understand, I was like: why aren’t they coming? Why doesn’t it appear but you can’t open yourself up to soul connection, that is another layer of you, you can’t build that relationship with that part of you until you are actually living a more authentic life, until you know who you are, to a certain extent. You have to know who you are and be comfortable in your own skin almost? Comfortable enough to make contact with another part of you because if you are spending your entire energy on denying who you really are and your real needs and wants pretending to be someone else, then your higher self is your true core self xxxx from that space of lying to yourself you can’t make a connection with the rest of you.

Holly: Exactly, exactly.

Joanna: I wasn’t expecting that! I would never have said when I was starting that those things are related and would easily have skipped that first module.

Holly: This is why you don’t skip the modules, there is foundation stuff that is really valuable even if you are not interested. It is like Intuition too, all those years when I was so disconnected from myself I had no intuition, I didn’t know myself, I had no intuition and I always thought Intuition was something that you were born with, or you weren’t and then once I started on this path to consciously knowing myself I realised that the more you know yourself the volume gets turned up because you can tune in.

Joanna: Because you are aligned.

Holly: yeah, you are totally aligned.

Joanna: Completely, that has to come first. It doesn’t have to come first necessarily in a linear fashion, I am sure there are more people like me who want to skip over that part and get to the good stuff right? But it has to at least happen in parallel.

Holly: It is like a spiral, we kind of take these steps, I always talk about the spiral staircase, but you are taking steps, you are doing this work, you are doing this work, you get to new levels, you keep doing the same stuff, you get to new levels, it is like the spiral staircase of life and personal development work.

Joanna: Totally, totally.

Holly: So another thing that I feel that getting to know myself has done, has helped me make better decisions for myself and we have kind of hinted at this in the last 40 minutes, but I really feel like I am making much better decisions for myself because I know myself and I know what I want and I know what I don’t want.

Joanna: This is where the knowledge comes in and the courage because it is not always easy to do something that is different, knowing yourself isn’t a guarantee to making good decisions either.

Holly: Exactly you have got to take the actions based on what you know.

Joanna: And it is really easy when people are talking around you and everybody is doing the same thing, it is easy to ignore the feeling of: I am not sure that this is right for me, and talk yourself into doing something that you might not have done, given chance to properly tune in. And I have just done something like this, I was going to say don’t judge yourself if you do that, but I am really judging myself.

Holly: You are! So do as Joanna says and not as she does!

Joanna: Well just to show that it is a process for everyone, and we all have that judgemental streak really and we are always really, really, hard on ourselves, but it is okay. We know that just because we know the right thing for you is, it doesn’t guarantee that that is the thing you are going to choose because there are all these other things at play here too. That’s okay, sometimes you are going to make a choice that is not entirely aligned, that is just part of life, I think we have to cut ourselves some slack on this. Remind me of this later okay.

Holly: {Laughing} Okay! So also we wanted to talk about how knowing yourself helps with manifesting and what that means for you, so.

Joanna: It feeds into that intuitive soul connection piece. So I am running something next month that is called A High Vibe Experiment, and I am running it because so many people get really caught up in: I don’t know what to do, you have to raise your vibration, in order to create more of what you want and people don’t know how to do that and the only way to find out is to get to know yourself and what actually makes you feel better. For some people going out for a run will really raise their vibration and for some people it really, really, will not and for some people a video will work better than a book, you just have to be aware of what works better for you, and you have to be okay with choosing that. When I work with my own energy I don’t have to a set routine, I tried this before, I don’t do a morning routine, you must do all six things in a series, meditate then journal, then exercise, all those things, that doesn’t work for me. What works for me is to show up in the morning and check in and see what I need and that is the only thing that will work for you as well because you have to get to know all those little bits that will make you feel better and that will raise your vibration into what you want.

Holly: I have a whole menu of things that I like to do in my morning routine, but I don’t do all of them. Some days I feel like doing this, some days I fell like doing that, some days I feel like doing a couple of things. I know what things I like to do in my morning routine, but I don’t force myself to do five minutes of each thing.

Joanna: Sometimes I will force myself – force is a strong word – but I will do something that is out of my comfort zone a little bit because I know you can get a bit comfortable in your energy work as well. I know I am not a huge meditator, but sometimes I really need to meditate. So that willingness to recognise what you need in that moment and to do that no matter what everybody says, no matter if everybody is saying that I should mediate every single day for me I am saying that I will only do it if it is the thing that will be benefit me. That’s okay, even though I work in the spiritual field and all this stuff, that’s okay.

Holly: Yes, it’s okay. You have to find what is right for you and you will only know that when you know yourself.

Joanna: Right. Knowing yourself will effect your self-love, how you feel about yourself, therefore how you relate to other people. It will effect your energy, which means it will effect your vibration and your manifesting ability, it will effect your intuition and your soul connection, it will effect everything. All your choices will be coming from a point of personal power rather than not. I will get off the soapbox now.

Holly: So is there anything else you would like to add to the topic of knowing yourself, and is that actually important?

Joanna: I don’t think so except for saying if anybody is listening and thinking this is all well and good but I have no idea where to start then feel free to get in touch. I think that is the main thing because there will always be a next step and I think that it is really worth pursuing.

Holly: Exactly and you dot ave to have a whole 27-step plan to knowing yourself you can start with one thing and then move from there.

Joanna: Totally!

Holly: I have really enjoyed this conversation and I hope everyone else did as well.

Joanna: Yeah, including the tangents!

Holly: I think sometimes the tangents are useful because they give examples. I would say we are pretty far along on the path to knowing ourselves, but we still make mistakes and we are still learning. So I think it is useful to hear specific examples of how far we have come and other stuff that we are still learning. So good luck everyone on the path to knowing yourself, it is absolutely a lifelong journey, but I think the more conscious we are of this journey the faster it goes.

Joanna: Sure.

Holly: So please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this episode you can email me at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. Thank you again for listening if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe if you haven’t done so yet and next week I will be back with another solo episode. Remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/323 for the show notes on this episode.