Episode 44: Feeling Lost? Start Here. (Self-Knowledge Changes Everything)

What if the problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do…
but that you’ve never really been taught how to know yourself?

Let’s talk about self-knowledge—the kind that quietly reshapes your decisions, your relationships, and the direction of your life.

Because most people aren’t actually lost. They’re just disconnected from themselves.

#selfknowledge #feelingstuck #findyourdirection #personalgrowth #selfdiscovery #innerlife #emotionalintelligence #mindsetshift #lifedirection #clarity #purpose #knowyourself #growthjourney #midlifereflection #authenticliving 

***

For insider information & spilled tea, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter, The Unicorn Dispatch, here: https://sara-causey.kit.com/2d8b7742dd

Sara's award-winning biography of Dag can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Her forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will release globally on July 29th! ✨

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos! 

Sara Causey discusses the importance of self-knowledge in her podcast episode, emphasizing that understanding oneself connects us to humanity and helps achieve personal goals. She references Dag Hammarskjold's belief in leading an examined life and Joe Jackson's quote, "You can't get what you want until you know what you want." Causey argues that self-awareness is crucial for building a meaningful life, avoiding reactionary behavior, and maintaining integrity. She highlights the impact of self-knowledge on relationships, decision-making, and overcoming midlife crises. Causey advises following one's energy and emotions, experimenting, and listening to the quiet voice within to achieve clarity and authenticity.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Self-knowledge, Dag Hammarskjold, examined life, humanity connection, personal growth, self-awareness, proactive living, midlife crisis, integrity, emotional compass, authenticity, relationships, personal direction, journaling, meditation.

Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in. Today, I'll be doing a crossover episode. So this will be episode 44 of decoding the unicorn the podcast, and just my general April episode for the Causey consulting podcast. I think that this topic will have some good resonance for both audiences. So I wanted to cross pollinate. What I'll be talking about today is why knowledge of the self actually matters. If you know anything about Dag Hammarskjold, then you're probably familiar with his journal, which was posthumously published as markings. He absolutely believed in leading an examined life, and he also felt that by examining his own emotions, his own pluses and minuses and things that he was struggling with, it also helped him to connect deeper to humanity as a whole. I was thinking about this earlier because it's like what I've said on the Causey consulting podcast, in particular, if I'm going through something, somebody else is too. It's not like I'm the first person that's ever had this thought, or the first person that's ever experienced X, Y and Z emotions. If I'm feeling it, somebody else is too. And whether it helps somebody five minutes after it's released, or it helps somebody five years after it's released, I firmly believe that the right episodes will find the right people at the right time. Maybe that's idealistic of me, but I really believe that's true. So I want to talk about knowing thyself and why that's important, how it connects us to humanity as a whole. And as Joe Jackson says, You can't get what you want until you know what you want, and that comes from knowledge of the self. Stay tuned.

Just a reminder, Sara's award winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next nonfiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th. To learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com. Now, back to the show.

So we've heard these cliches like, know thyself and to thine own self be true. But why does that matter? Number one, you cannot build a life for someone that you haven't met yet or someone that you don't even know. It's become fashionable to talk about people as NPCs or non playing characters, and what that really refers to is someone who sort of floats through life as a background figure, instead of being the star of their own show and really saying, This is my life, and I want to do with it what I feel compelled to do, or I want to follow my passions, they just kind of float around. Maybe they work the same old job and they don't even know why, or they date the same person and they're not really happy, but gosh, it just seems like a lot of effort to break up and try to find somebody else or to be happy. While you're single, they just float through life. But you can't really build a life if you don't even know who you are or what you want. So most people are walking around living a second hand life, and it could be based on the expectations of other people, basic survival or just inertia. Self knowledge helps to break up that negative momentum, because the minute that you ask the question, wait a minute. Is this even my thought? Is this even what I want to be doing, just pausing and asking that question can change everything. Another cliche is a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. Well, that first step very often when it comes to self knowledge, is asking that question of, wait a minute, what am I doing? Why am I here? Why am I doing this? Is this even what I want, or is this something that was chosen for me? Think about that scene in The Devil Wears Prada, where Andy Snickers because she can't tell the difference between the two belts, and Miranda dresses her down, and she's like, well, you're wearing a cerulean sweater that was chosen for you by the people in this very room. You can allow Madison Avenue to brainwash you, or you can say, wait a minute, I don't want to be a mindless consumer. I want to really think about what I'm doing with my life. Number two, there's a difference between reaction and intention without self awareness. You kind of turn into the pinball in a pinball machine that's just being buffeted around from place to place. You may be reacting to fear, pressure, other people's moods. Think about this in. Work context, for example, is my boss in a good mood today, or are they in a bad mood today? And what do I need to do to just stay small, stay hidden and stay concealed if that person seems to be on a tear. But whenever you start to think about, am I being proactive, or am I being reactive in my life as a whole, then you start to notice things like, I always say yes, when I feel like I'm afraid of disappointing people, or my mother manipulates me out of guilt, and I always give in. I always shut down when I feel like somebody's judging me. I get anxious in social situations, and then I just want to hide the awareness of what's going on starts to create awareness in your brain overall. It's like you've created a gap in a way, like, if you've ever seen the tell about how to know if there's a two way mirror in the room, it's because your reflection is not really up against the mirror. There's a small gap there. Well, it's the same thing when you bring awareness to a situation and then awareness to your mind. Overall, it creates a tiny gap, and then that gap becomes your power. You can start to question, what, what am I even doing here? And why? Number three, it protects you from becoming a stranger to yourself. And this one can hit pretty hard in midlife. Sometimes it happens at quarter life, but I've definitely seen it happen in midlife. I'm not crazy about that term, but just for the sake of a handy dandy reference point, I'll use it. We get over 40, and sometimes we start looking around like, how did I get here? What am I even doing? I felt that way in my HR and staffing career, because it's not like I went to school for that. It's not like that's what I dreamed about being whenever I grew up. And I didn't know anybody else in third party recruiting that had dreamed about it, either, everybody had a story about how they fell into it, and that's what happened with me. In 2011 I fell into it, and then I just sort of always stayed because I had golden handcuffs on. But when we start to ask that question of, How did I get here? What? What even is this? And what am I doing?

Then we awaken to our own desires, our own impulses. And it's not typically because you made one big mistake. It could be because you made 100 or 1000 small decisions that more or less occurred on autopilot, as I said, with golden handcuffs. There are days when you think I really want to get out of here and do something. Do something different, but how could I make less money? What? What would I have to do? Would I have to sell the house? Would I have to sell the car? Like, well, what would I have to do to survive on less because our brain goes to scarcity, thinking we're like, Well, nobody's going to pay me the same amount of money that I'm making here, so I just have to stay and that becomes a justification for staying trapped. Number four, it's the foundation of integrity. And in this context, I'm not talking about integrity in the sense of being good, being a good boy or a good girl. I'm talking about being aligned with yourself, because when you know yourself, your values stop being theoretical. They're not pie in the sky somewhere. Your choices begin to actually match your inner world, and that is where quiet confidence comes from. Having that knowledge of the self and being true to yourself means that you need to take an unflinching look at where did these ideas even come from? Because they may have come from parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, a school bully from fourth grade. And I'll give you an example. There was a co worker that I used to work with, and she had been told in like sixth or seventh grade by some coach that was the gym teacher, that she was not a good runner and never would be. He said, You're tall and awkward and gangly, so if you can get over some of the awkwardness and improve your hand eye coordination, you could be a basketball player, but you're not ever going to be a runner. You're just too tall and thin and spindly. But she really wanted to run, and it wasn't until she was in her early 30s that she finally joined up with a group where they would, they had, like, a running club, and they would take people from, like, couch to 5k and then if you wanted to go further, you could go, like, from 5k to 10k 10k to marathons and so on. And she joined up with a running club, and nobody was like, well, you're tall and spinley, so forget about running. We don't want you here. Get out of here. In fact, they were all like, that gym teacher should be horsewhipped for telling you that stuff. And then you had that programming in your head that somebody who is an athletic coach said, I'll never be a runner. But yet, even now, that's been, gosh, I don't know when we work together, 1518, 18 years ago, she's still a runner, but this idea she had in her head did not even come from her. It came from a gym teacher from middle school. Number five, knowledge of the self helps to make relationships real instead of performative. When you don't know yourself, you have the tendency to show up playing a role, the Helper, the agreeable one, the good child, the naughty child, the over achiever, the underachiever, the slacker. But when you do know yourself, you can actually be seen authentically. And then the connections and the friendships that you make no longer feel like work. You don't feel like you're having to wear a mask to accommodate the other person. An uncomfortable truth in all of this is that there are a lot of people that don't actually lack direction. You may be coaching them or even just having a friendly discussion, what do you want? I don't know. I don't know. I'm just satisfied. I'm not happy, but I don't know. I don't know. Very often it's not that they don't actually know, it's that some part of them is withholding permission. They feel like they're not willing to give themselves permission to admit what they already know, or to want what they already want.

So whenever somebody says, I want change, but I don't know what kind of change people can get stuck there. But is it confusion, sincerely, or is it noise plus fear? So if you find yourself in that boat where you're like, hey, I want to get what I want, but I don't know what I want, or do I start with contrast, not always with clarity, because people will think they need a vision or a vision board. They need to go make a collage with cool magazine images, and if you want to do that, knock yourself out, it can be a lot of fun, but it's not a must have. You have to be honest about what's not working, what drains you, what feels heavy, what feels forced, what feels performative? Where do you go in life that makes you feel like you're acting and you're putting on a mask? Is there a place that makes you feel like the proverbial coyote in the trap that would rather gnaw his own arm off than stay that can be your first signal? Esther and Abraham talk a lot about contrast. Contrast helps you to launch that rocket of desire, to figure out that which is wanted, and sometimes in life, figuring out that which is not wanted, being able to look around and say, hmm, I don't like having a low bank account. I don't like going to a job with people that I strongly dislike. I don't enjoy the house I'm living in or the apartment. I don't enjoy the neighbors I don't enjoy the current dating relationship that I'm in having that awareness can then serve as a catalyst for launching a rocket of desire for what you do want. The next thing I will say is to follow your energy, follow your emotions, and not necessarily your logic, because your logic is cold and it's clinical and it's typically geared in that root chakra space for basic survival. So your cold, hard logic will very often keep you trapped in the same old life, but your energy and your emotional compass, like that gut instinct or that feeling in the pit of your stomach that has the tendency to tell the truth faster. So what makes you feel lighter? Airy, breezy like, yay. I could sit here for hours and do this and I wouldn't hate it, versus what makes you feel like, if I have to sit here for five minutes, I'm just going to tear my hair out. What do you naturally lean toward? What kinds of things do you lose that track of time doing even if it seems impractical, or your little inner Gremlin is like, you can't make money doing that. Nobody's going to pay you for that. Put all of that to the side for a minute and just collect it as data. You're just collecting data. You're not blowing your entire life up at this point. Anyway, you're just collecting the data, then you can shrink the question. So instead of getting into this really, really big existential stuff, like, what should I do with my life? What is the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of any human life, you could condense that down, like the cliche about, how do you eat the elephant? Well, you do it one bite at a time. You don't try to eat the entire elephant in one sitting. So you can ask yourself, what feels more like me than what I'm doing right now? And that tiny shift can help to reveal a direction to go in next. Give yourself permission to experiment, instead of deciding like a judge banging a gavel Order in the court. This is what we have to do. Look at it as running an experiment. People freeze when they think they're making a do or die choice that has to last forever, forever, forever. But reframing is I'm going to try this for a week or two. I'm. To explore without a firm commitment. I'm going to treat this like research, like I am a scientist in a lab conducting an experiment and not changing my entire identity just yet. You're not signing a blood oath contract. You're simply gathering clues. Like my co worker, she got some running shoes and joined this running club, but she felt like, if this doesn't go well, I can quit. She didn't tell them, I'm giving you my immortal soul. She just started turning up. The people were nice to her. They were supportive, and she liked what she was doing. So she kept going. But had she gotten there and said, You know what? Actually, I hate running and I don't want to be here anymore. She wasn't obligated to stay another good trick is to notice what triggers your jealousy. What do you feel envious of with other people? Because envy itself isn't just the green eyed monster, as we like to say, it's also information. It's Intel. So when you see somebody and you're like, Well, I wish I could do that. Why does she get that? Why does he get that? Why did they have that? Just take a second, because this can also be part of your shadow self, or some part of yourself that you have repressed that's trying to get your attention.

Listen for a quiet voice inside yourself. It's it's even like the Scripture. Listen to the still small voice. The Scripture doesn't say, I'm going to get a megaphone and bull horn. You to death. A still small voice, the loud voice, very often inside of our own head is a channel that's tuned to things like fear, worst case scenarios, acting like Chicken Little you have to be practical. What will people think? What would your mother say? What would your grandma believe about that? Whereas the quieter voice is usually calmer, more persistent, and it may be slightly inconvenient, because it may be like, hey, the work that we're in right now kind of stinks. Your boss doesn't treat you very well, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change, but that quieter voice is usually the real one, and it's usually the one that's more authentic to you. Last but not least, accept that clarity usually comes after some kind of movement that sounds contradictory, doesn't it like I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm not even clear yet, but I'm supposed to gain momentum. How does that work? This is really the part that nobody likes, because you don't think your way into clarity. That's what we're taught. We're taught that you're supposed to just a, b, c, d, e, f, g1, 234, everything should follow a very linear, highly logical, almost Vulcan type of pattern. But When does life actually work that way? Not often. So you typically don't think or reason or rationalize your way into some kind of clarity. You typically walk your way into it. You feel your way into it. If we thought about it as a flow chart, it might be something like action, feedback, adjustment, clarity, Self knowledge is not about becoming someone completely new or tearing up your life overnight. It can very much be about removing what isn't you like going out to the garden and pulling weeds, or looking at an overgrown hedge and saying, I want to remove that which does not belong. I want to trim the hedge so that everything looks nice at the front of the house. Again, you're giving yourself room to breathe. That's where the garden analogy makes perfect sense, because the nutrients from the soil, the water that's coming from the rain or your garden hose, it's also giving nourishment to those weeds, and taking that nourishment away from the plants that you want to grow. So when you get rid of the weeds and that which is unwanted, everything else, can start to breathe and absorb more nutrition.

It may sound simplistic, but the reality is, you have this life now. What happens in the afterlife? Whether reincarnation exists and you're going to get other lives? That's up to your own spiritual beliefs. It's not for me to say, but for right now, you've got this life. You're in this flesh suit, having this human experience. You don't want to float through like a phantom or a non participating, non playing character that's just hanging out in the background as filler. You deserve to be the star of your own show, which doesn't mean you have to be arrogant and flamboyant and crazy. It just means you should have your hands on the steering wheel so that somebody else is not gripping that steering wheel and taking you where they want you to go. Knowledge of the self is an important way to take back that steering wheel, knowing what you want so that you can get it and knowing yourself well in. Enough to Know This suits and this doesn't. If journaling helps you to get there, it was something that dag did and enjoyed very much. If journaling is something that helps you to get there, do it. If meditation helps, if talking to a trusted friend helps, whatever it is that will help you to suss out, here's who I am, and here's what I really want out of life. In my opinion, it is so completely worth it. Stay safe, take very good care of yourself, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others. We'll see you next time.