Self-Reflection Is Key to Unlocking Deeper Personal Growth

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” — Ralph Ellison

As I pushed open that mystical door to the long and jagged path of transformation, I didn’t have a clue as to what authenticity was; even though back then, at the turn of the 1990s, we were starting to witness the expansion of the self-help and new age movement.

Back at the beginning of 2017, when I first started to flirt with life coaching, over the few sessions I had with the newly trained coach, I was asked if the stories I told myself served me.

‘Stories! What stories?’

That’s the thing: when you unconsciously walk this Earth without the edges of self-inquiry, you’ll struggle to envisage how you hold a powerful potential to change — by the proclaiming of your objections — to why you do, think, and feel, as you do, and have always done.

It just is what it is, right?

Life will always appear as black and white as if you’ve been jammed tightly into a stereotypical box. Life will feel like everything is fate.

And to be truthful, most of us don’t enjoy the idea of possessing self-knowledge, it’s too icky and uncomfortable to look into our nooks and crannies, asking ourselves deeper questions.

We don’t always want to think about others by walking in their shoes, or bear any blame — our perfectly imperfect flaws and unconscious biases don’t want accountability, for they stabilize us with a false sense of safety. And not to mention, feelings of superiority that fix a fragile ego or two.

Still, for me, my transformation was (and is), a slow burner, and so it needed a few more years of introspection and accountability, for me to fully grasp the concept of stories, and how we really do — unwittingly—stick to the ones that have been dealt to us; seldom understanding, we have the choice to not need live by them.

‘Am I empowered or am I choosing to stay a victim? Am I stuck where I am, or am I choosing to push forward, and love and accept who I am? I can change my life, and understand change will come with small, but consistent steps.’

I had been writing down my thoughts through journalling, and morning pages on and off for a good amount of decades, and so my curiosity as to who I was, and where I was buried, started to break through the hardened layers of my family’s dysfunctional heritage.

We are talking about the smallest slithers of layers here, but I began to trust and acknowledge that there really was an authentic part of me hidden in between the complexities of my ancestral dynamics.

To witness the bonds of old paradigms crumbling away, by the powerful demolition of self-awareness, has been the start to the rebuilding of a new fortress — a new paradigm. It was the key to turning the stubborn lock into a new, uncharted but meaningful dimension.

Without self-awareness, I wouldn’t have seen a horizon beyond my limitations, or recognised that not only could I now discern these old patterns, but also possess the authority to confront them with self-inquiry.

My thoughts swam in outmoded ways of thinking that churned: all is what it seems, and who I am is irreversible, I am always going to feel trapped and stuck.

Stuck in fear, stuck in ego, stuck in being a victim. My core ached to get past those restricted and rigid identities, as I peddled like a slave, on a proverbial wheel, spinning round and round and round.

Encompassing self-inquiry is the key that will help unlock who you truly are: your path, your self-compassion, fulfilling relationships, humbleness, and healthy boundaries. These jewels lovingly sit on the other side of self-awareness.

We are what we think we are, and so leaning in and objecting to our critical lifelong thinking will be as hurling spanners in the works.

Embracing self-awareness opens up our eyes to the damaging stories and, hence, self-sabotaging, which holds us back in life, as we call it out as destiny or just bad luck. Self-awareness elicits an uprising power that can push hard against inherited beliefs, which have more often than not been handed down to us as a baton.

As we observe our thoughts from a place of self-compassion, we can gently pull back on the reigns, push our foot into the mud, and call them out:

‘Okay, so you told me all my life I can’t do this — BUT I know you’re just a limiting belief, you’re not real. You are a made-up hand me down!’ ‘The ugliness I see in the mirror is what some jerk told me — my father’s inability to love me or see me, or the bullying I experienced at school.’

An inherited belief, or thought pattern, takes a lot of breaking down. You need to anticipate you are going to have to keep repeating yourself over time, across many months. Our thoughts, which appear to us as the categoric truth, will keep telling us we can’t do something because we are too stupid, or too old, or too this or that, yet we have to keep charging forward against the old limiting paradigm.

And that means even when we are struggling in our bodies to encapsulate the healthier and empowered ways we are now choosing to live by, it just takes time for these new foundations to settle in and feel like us.

So much of what we have witnessed and taken on, to fit in and survive as a child, is called conditioning. To me, I see it as my wearing a straitjacket; nonetheless, even straitjackets can be unbuckled.

And I acknowledge that I haven’t reached the powerhouse of strength to have kicked out all of the inherited lies, as it’s more of the stoic journey of a ‘steady as you go,’ to undress an entire lifetime of conditioning.

Nonetheless, cradling inquisitive self-inquiry will open up possibilities for change, growth, and healing to a more empowered and peaceful you.

Isaiah 43:19

“See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland.”

© Chantal Weiss 2025. All Rights Reserved