You've already met the version of yourself you're trying to become.

The conversation where you stopped managing yourself and just told the truth. The decision that cost you something but felt clean all the way down. The morning where nobody needed anything from you and for an hour you were completely, unmistakably yourself.

That wasn't a fluke. That was the signal.

In this episode, Jason digs into one of the most misunderstood concepts in personal development — the higher self — and strips away the woo-woo to get to what it actually means and how to practically use it.

What you'll hear:

• What ten thousand years of spiritual tradition — from Sufi mystics to Egyptian priests to medieval Christian mystics — actually agree on about the higher self (and why it changes everything about how you approach growth)
• The real reason the best version of you feels buried — and why it has nothing to do with effort or information
• A four-domain self-assessment that forces honesty without the spiral (and why there are no 7s allowed)
• Four questions that cut through the performance and point you back toward yourself
• The one ten-minute practice that every tradition and every piece of behavioral research points toward — and why most people never actually do it

The line from this episode:

"The higher self is not a destination. It's a direction. You orient toward it one honest moment at a time."

Timestamps:

• 0:00 — The signal you've already had
• 1:30 — What ten thousand years of tradition agree on
• 3:45 — Meister Eckhart, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Sufi mirror
• 6:00 — Meet Sarah — and the armor we all built
• 8:00 — The four-domain assessment (no 7s)
• 12:30 — Four questions that cut through
• 15:30 — The ten-minute practice
• 17:30 — The close

Resources mentioned:

• The quiz: selfawarepodcast.com/quiz — "What's Running You?"
• Full essay version of this episode: jasonrigby.substack.com
• Paid subscription (go deeper every week): jasonrigby.substack.com

The Self Aware Leader with Jason Rigby — the inner game of leadership for people tired of surface-level advice.

Self-awareness is not thinking about yourself all day. It is the ability to notice what is happening inside you before it leaks into your leadership.

In this episode of The Self Aware Leader, Jason Rigby breaks down what self-aware leadership actually means in real life: the meeting where your tone changes, the feedback you do not want to hear, the hard conversation you keep avoiding, the moment your ego gets hit, and the pattern your team has quietly learned to manage around.

This episode explores why self-awareness is one of the most practical leadership skills you can build. Not as theory. Not as vague emotional intelligence. As a daily practice for leading with more clarity, honesty, humility, and strength under pressure.

You'll learn:

What a self-aware leader actually is
Why your intention and your impact are not the same thing
How defensiveness, people-pleasing, control, and avoidance leak into leadership
Why "why am I like this?" often keeps leaders stuck
The better question to ask when you get triggered
A simple daily practice: catch the signal, name the pattern, choose the cleaner move

If you lead people, your inner life does not stay private. It becomes culture. It becomes tone. It becomes trust or tension.

The question is not whether you have patterns.

The question is whether you can see them before everyone else has to manage them.

Subscribe to The Self Aware Leader for weekly episodes on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, leadership development, shadow work, and leading with practical clarity under pressure.

You got promoted. You promised yourself you'd be different — the approachable boss, the one people actually want to work for. But six months in, your team likes you and doesn't respect you. You can feel it. You just don't want to say it out loud yet.

This episode breaks down the people-pleasing trap that quietly destroys new managers. Jason Rigby explains why what feels like empathy is actually conflict avoidance — and why your "niceness" is costing you your best people.

You'll learn: • The difference between being kind and avoiding conflict as a first-time manager • Why your highest performers lose motivation when you won't hold standards • The one question that shifts people-pleasing leadership into real clarity • Exactly what to say when someone misses a deadline, turns in weak work, or challenges you publicly • Why the discomfort you feel after setting a boundary is growth — not a mistake

If you're a new manager, a millennial manager, or any leader who secretly knows their standards are fuzzy — this one's for you.

Go deeper: jasonrigby.substack.com — free essays on the inner game of leadership, self-awareness, and the struggles no one talks about in management.

The Self Aware Leader is hosted by Jason Rigby — Marine, Trader, Philosopher. New episodes weekly on leadership, conflict avoidance, setting boundaries, self-awareness, and the inner work that makes everything else work.

Subscribe free at jasonrigby.substack.com