Most leaders are not intentionally designing their lives or their leadership. They are repeating patterns they have never questioned. It’s time to stop living by default.
As a new year approaches, it is easy to jump straight into goals, plans, and resolutions. But when those goals are created by the same unconscious patterns that shaped the year before, you do not get a new year. You get a repeat.
This episode is about interrupting that cycle.
Episode overview
This is Episode 1 of my three-part Design Yourself series on creating the life and leadership you want in 2026.
This episode focuses entirely on self-awareness. Not the kind that feels good, but the kind that is accurate. Because you cannot change what you cannot see.
We explore why self-awareness is one of the rarest leadership skills, why most leaders overestimate how self-aware they actually are, and how default stories quietly shape how we lead, decide, and show up under pressure.
I also share my own default story, the belief that I was not enough as I was and had to constantly prove myself, drive outcomes, and earn my seat at the table. That story fueled success, but it also created exhaustion, pressure, and a leadership style that no longer reflected who I truly am.
This episode will help you recognize the unconscious stories running your leadership, understand the cost of living and leading by default, and begin seeing yourself clearly enough to create real change.
Research highlight
Research published in Harvard Business Review shows that while ninety-five percent of people believe they are self-aware, only ten to fifteen percent actually are. That gap matters, especially for leaders.
Key takeaways
• Self-awareness is not insight. It is accuracy.
• You cannot change what you cannot see.
• Default stories often masquerade as strengths.
• Unexamined patterns quietly shape culture, trust, and performance.
• Self-awareness allows you to respond instead of react.
Mic drop moments
• Self-awareness is the ability to separate who you are from how you learned to survive and succeed.
• If you do not examine your patterns, you will repeat the same year with different tasks.
• What you do not see in yourself becomes the environment others have to work in.
• Self-awareness says, “That’s interesting,” instead of “That’s wrong.”
• Awareness is where ownership begins.
In Episode 2, we will move from awareness to identity and talk about how to consciously choose the leader you are becoming instead of defaulting to the one you have been rewarded for in the past.
If this episode resonated, share it with someone who is ready to stop living and leading by default, and subscribe to Reflect Forward wherever you listen.
