The Mirror Maze: How I Learned to Stop Being a Mystery to Myself

For years, I thought I was really self-aware.

I could analyze complex situations, dissect problems, and offer insightful advice to anyone who asked. I was the friend everyone turned to for clarity, the colleague known for my strategic thinking.

But when it came to my own life? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

"I'm self-aware as f*ck," I'd claim, with a touch of smugness, while simultaneously spinning my wheels, lacking any real clarity on my vision, my goals, or even my own motivations. This disconnect between intellectual understanding and lived experience was deeply unsettling. I felt like a fraud.

Knowing Me is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I'd analyze and overthink, trying to understand my own behaviors, my own reactions, but it felt like I was constantly hitting a wall. I could see the individual pieces, vaguely, but I couldn't assemble them into a coherent whole. It was like trying to navigate a fog-filled maze with a flickering flashlight.

I'd feel this gnawing frustration, this sense of being a "witness to my own crimes," aware of what I was doing, yet powerless to change it. This feeling of being disconnected from myself, of not truly understanding my own motivations and patterns, eroded my self-trust bit by bit.

What I eventually realized – and this was a hard-won lesson, folks – is that I was trying to solve the puzzle from inside the puzzle.

I was trying to understand myself with a limited data set.

When I looked at others, I had a wide-angle view of their lives. I could see their context, their history, their interactions. But when I looked at myself, it was like looking in a mirror – it lacked depth, range, and honestly it was a bit smudged.

It wasn't that I was incapable of self-understanding. It was that I needed to change my perspective. I needed to find ways to gather more data, to expand my field of vision. I had to learn to step outside the mirror maze and see myself with greater clarity.

But how the hell do you do that tho?!

Yeah, yeah. We love the action. And you know I don’t gatekeep.

Here’s the dealio: we can get better and better at this AND it can be really joyful to do it in connection with others. So this is why I do what I do because I can hold BIG SPACE for complex thinkers and deep feelers like you and me. That means doing all the below actions comes with much more ease, safety, and honestly fun. And if you vibe with that, hop on my calendar.

Onwards to the actions. Here’s where I’d start:

Externalize your internal world:

Your thoughts and feelings are powerful, but they can also be incredibly elusive when trapped inside your head. Getting them out – through journaling, mind-mapping, artistic expression, or simply talking to a trusted human – creates space between you and your thoughts, allowing you to see them more objectively. Make the implicit, explicit.

Troubleshooting: Sometimes the sheer volume, intricacy, and intensity of our inner worlds causes us to take the lid off and then go, “OOPS NOPE NEVER MIND.” That’s normal for folks like you and me. Ease in. Go forth with a friend (or me!). Find your way back to safety often.

Seek external mirrors:

Just as you offer insights to others, allow them to offer insights to you. Ask trusted friends, family members, or a coach (like me!) for their observations. Remember, others see you from a different vantage point, and their perspectives can offer valuable clues to understanding yourself (and them, to be honest).

Troubleshooting: This can feel like a BIG YIKES with rejection sensitivity. So if you don’t feel safe with others, this may be a time to hire a human you do feel safe with as a contained, boundaried, lower-risk starting place.

Experiment and reflect:

Life is a laboratory, and you are the scientist. Try new things, explore different avenues, and pay close attention to your reactions. What energizes you? What drains you? What resonates with your core values? Reflection is key here. Extract those learnings after you act. What did you learn? How can you apply that knowledge moving forward?

Troubleshooting: The key here is to partner experiencing your life and analyzing it. Often we’re either too much in one or the other. We can’t spend all of our time in our minds. That creates chronic pain. But we also want to use our brilliant minds to mine for learnings so that we don’t spend energy and time learning the same thing twice.

So, there you have it. My journey from self-aware-ish to genuinely self-connected.

It wasn't about achieving some static state of perfect understanding. It was about building the capacity for self-understanding, brick by painstaking brick.

It was about learning to navigate the mirror maze, to gather those missing pieces of myself, and to finally see the whole picture, smudges and all. And what’s made it a hell of a lot more fun (and sustainable) has been making it into a dance. I try my best to keep it as a continuous unfolding, a constant evolution.

It's about learning to trust the process, to embrace the messy, imperfect, and beautifully alien-in-a-human-meatbag journey of becoming who you're meant to be. And if you're ready to join the dance, if you crave more ease, meaning, and connection along the way, well, you know where to find me. Let's waltz.