But Who Are You at Your Core: The Work (Part 1)
We all know we need to spend more time with ourselves, quiet moments to reflect, listen, and understand. But life rarely makes room for it. There’s always something else: building a career, taking care of others, planning, achieving, wanting more. Distractions come easily. Responsibilities feel endless. And somehow, everything else seems to come before truly knowing ourselves.
So we put it off. There’s never enough time. Or we tell ourselves there are more pressing things to get on with. But the truth is: without doing this inner work without understanding who we are at our core - everything else begins to feel a little misaligned, no matter how well it’s going on the outside.
We explored why this matters in But Who Are You at Your Core. Today, we explore how: the actual work of it. Not surface-level questions or quick fixes, but the slow, deliberate process of turning inward.
This isn’t about finding quick answers. It’s about creating space. About doing the deeper work that allows you to meet yourself fully and honestly.
1. Reflect on Where You’ve Come From
There’s often a tension between looking forward and looking back. Some will tell you to focus only on the present or the future, that the past no longer matters. But that’s not entirely true. To understand who you are at your core, you have to understand where you’ve come from.
Our childhoods leave deep imprints: how we were raised, the environments we grew up in, the things we loved, feared, or longed for - all play a quiet but defining role in who we are now.
Take time to remember. Even gentle reflection can reveal patterns, beliefs, and parts of you that still echo today. It’s not about staying stuck in the past, it’s about tracing your own story with compassion.
2. Define Your Core Values
Your values are your internal compass, guiding decisions, boundaries, and relationships. Yet many of us move through life without consciously defining them. We adopt the values of those around us and never pause to ask if they truly belong to us.
Coming home to your truth means identifying what really matters to you. When you do, living in alignment becomes natural. Your values become a foundation, not a performance.
3. Know What You Love and What Brings You into Flow
Some experiences pull you so fully into presence that time disappears. These moments of flow are clues to what makes you feel most alive. They might not look impressive to anyone else, but they speak to something essential within you.
Noticing what you love, what energises you, and what grounds you is part of returning to your core self. Even if no one else sees it, even if it doesn’t lead anywhere, it matters that it moves you.
4. Identify Your Strengths
Many of us struggle to name our own strengths. We minimise them or assume they don’t count unless they’re extraordinary. But strength is often quiet, often personal, it might be patience, adaptability, listening, or holding hope for others.
This isn’t about making a list to impress anyone. It’s about recognising what’s already within you, what’s always been there, even when you didn’t realise it.
5. Meet Your Weaknesses with Compassion
This part can feel uncomfortable. Naming the parts of yourself that feel fragile, uncertain, or underdeveloped takes honesty and tenderness. Most of us avoid our weaknesses or judge ourselves harshly for them. But neither leads to growth.
The real work lies in meeting these parts with softness. Seeing them clearly, without shame. Weakness doesn’t make you broken; it points to where care and healing are needed.
6. Understand What You Find Challenging
Not all challenges are weaknesses. Sometimes they’re circumstances, wounds, or patterns we still carry, grief, instability, illness, anxiety, or simply being sensitive to the world.
This is about acknowledging what’s been hard, without rushing to change it or turn it into a lesson. Simply allow yourself to recognise the weight you’ve carried, and the strength it took to keep going.
7. Consider How You Think Others See You
We often learn about ourselves by noticing how others reflect us back. Sometimes we see our light more clearly when someone else names it, strength, compassion, insight, joy. Other times, we’re surprised by how different their view is from our own self-perception.
This isn’t about shaping yourself to please others. It’s about staying curious, noticing which reflections resonate, and which you’ve outgrown.
8. Notice What You Fear Others See
This is the shadow side, the quiet fear that we’ll be judged, disliked, or misunderstood. These fears reveal the parts of ourselves we’re still hiding, the parts we don’t think are lovable or enough.
Naming these fears isn’t easy, but it’s powerful. Once you name them, you can question them. You can begin to see how much of your inner dialogue is based in fear, not truth.
9. Assess the People You Surround Yourself With
The people we surround ourselves with shape how we see the world, and how we see ourselves. Some relationships expand us; others shrink us. Sometimes we cling to connections because they’re familiar, not nourishing.
This work isn’t about making immediate changes. It’s about noticing: Who helps you feel more like yourself? Who do you soften around? Who makes you feel like you need to perform, explain, or shrink?
10. Observe the Patterns of Your Mind
Your thoughts are not you, but they are part of your landscape. Where does your mind tend to go? When does it spiral? When does it soften? What does it fixate on, and what does it avoid?
The more familiar you become with your mental patterns, the easier it is to step back and see them clearly. You begin to notice the difference between your thoughts and your truth, between your mind and your core.
The Ongoing Work
This work isn’t something to tick off a list or complete in a single sitting. It unfolds slowly, over years, quietly, honestly, repeatedly.
It’s about showing up for yourself, again and again. Asking hard questions, sitting with discomfort, listening deeply, and trusting that you are already whole, even as you’re still learning who you are.
This is a practice. Over time, it allows your life to become more real. More aligned. More yours.
Because you are you. At your core. You are always becoming. You have always been enough, more than enough. And the more you know that, the more everything else slowly falls into place.
