your ‘getting to know yourself’ toolkit

In past podcast episodes and blog posts, we have discussed a lot about knowing who you are - but what if you aren’t really sure about who you are? This week we are going to examine some tools we can use to help us to unpack our identity, our values, our personalities and heaps more.

I love a personality test, or any kind of test that will tell me more about myself. I blame Dolly magazine and its quizzes from the 1990s but equally Facebook and the quizzes about dog breeds, cheese, Pokemon etc. But I don’t do these quizzes so that I can tell the world what the outcome is, I do them to learn more about myself, so that then I can look for the opportunities to choose me and the options that serve me best, rather then those I have been conditioned to select (often for the comfort of others).

The first is the VIA Character Strengths Survey where you can learn more about your strengths. You may think that you already know what your strengths are, and I can admit, I wasn’t especially surprised by my results here, but it has confirmed some stuff for me and I don’t think any of this learning is ever wasted.

You can also do any number of personality tests such as Personal Values Assessment at gyfted.me personal values assessments at Personalvalu.es - again not super surprising overall, but was good to confirm some of the values that I know I am not living in each day, which can lead to frustration, feelings of being lost or not where you should be. This discover stuff is such an important step in getting to know yourself and being able to formulate a plan on what some next steps can be for you.

In addition to any personality/character assessments, I have absolutely fallen in love with Human Design. This was introduced to me by a wonderful lady I used to work with, and it has been the single most transformative system for me to both get to know myself and to understand why I was feeling so stuck and unhappy.

Your Human Design profile is based on your birth chart, and you have to know your date, time and location of birth. Once you have this info you can head over to Jovian Archive to have your Human Design chart drawn up. If you don’t know the time of your birth, you can use a tool like astromix.net to find the approximate time of birth - but only use if there is no way that you can find your actual time of birth. A word of warning though re: Human Design - it is HUGE! Please do not expect to know everything about your Human Design in a few hours, even a few days. This is like trying to read a full set of encyclopaedias in one go - even if you manage to do it, your brain will be absolute mush. I would suggest starting small, use the huge selection of tools available on the internet and my biggest tip is to focus on your own profile, rather than trying to get to know everything about everything in the first instance. I started small and slow and kept a notebook with all of the Human Design stuff specific to me, but I also connected with the fabulous Lucy Ellis who has helped me in so many facets of my life, especially with Human Design and understanding my dreams and healing some old wounds. Once I had a good understanding of the deeper facets of my own Human Design, she also helped me explore the Human Designs of my husband which has been super helpful for me to help understand some of his quirks and traits better.

This is not a complete or absolute list of tools to use, it is just the start. The more you get to know yourself, the more you can determine if your current life is allowing you to demonstrate or use these strengths, values, skills etc. It is all a starting point and it is all learning and everyone will join this discussion at different points. Some may be mostly in alignment, others may not be in alignment at all. This is your journey and you get to move through it at your own pace and via whichever tools or methods you see as the best fit for you and your life.

Remember you can find me on social media at @um___life on instagram and @um__life on TikTok. There is also the um…life podcast feel free to like, share, listen, etc.

Krissi x