“This above all: To thine own self be true; and it must follow as
the night the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man.”

~ Shakespeare ~

It stands to reason that we cannot be true to ourselves unless we know ourselves truly, and most people don’t. That statement might lead some to wonder, “How can I not know myself?” That’s a logical question considering that we’ve have been keeping ourselves company our entire lives. Surely, we know our own selves. Right?

At the deepest, most authentic (and most important) levels, for most people, the answer is “no”. Most people can describe themselves at a surface level; surface wants, needs, perceptions, actions, behaviors, etc. Yet, for most people, huge amounts of vital information that allow them to access their most valuable traits are hidden far beneath their conscious awareness. Many people believe that any greatness they might have once had is now missing, but that’s just an illusion. In truth, nothing is missing. And when we are able to get past the illusion; past the stories fashioned by others through years of opinions and judgments, and get to our unique truth, we all love what we find. We discover that nature has provided us with everything we need to be just who we want to be, and to create exactly the life we long to live.

When the authentic self is hidden beneath layers of conditioning, people tend to feel like “something” is missing. And they feel compelled to keep searching year after year to figure out what it is and claim it. But, when we don’t even know what’s missing, how can we know where to look? The short answer is, we can’t.

Even people who do know what’s missing often don’t know where to look because there is so much misinformation out there that finding our authentic self can be tricky. People spend years of their life and thousands of dollars looking for answers. But books, programs, coaches, therapists, assessments, and all the other things people typically invest in can’t help you find what neither you nor they know to look for. Therapists and coaches who ask “high value questions” can’t help you because, you can’t provide the right answers if you have no conscious access to them. The same is true with the hundreds of personality assessments out there which claim to identify an individual’s true self. Most assessments only reveal what an individual already believes and, if what you believe is not your truth, all those assessments do is deepen your conviction that the self you are dissatisfied with is your true self.

When a lifetime of conditioning has moved your authentic self far beneath your level of awareness, you can’t possibly report it. But it’s there. It always was and always will be, and it’s always trying to express. But when we put on a mask of conformity as a child, as most of us do, we don’t even know our real self, much less how to express it.

Like so many others, I was conditioned away from my authentic self as a child… far away. In fact, the self I adopted to comply with the expectations of parents, teachers, preachers, siblings, society, and all the other people who told me what I needed to be, was the exact opposite of the self I was born to be. I lived the first 32 years of my life shy, afraid, and very unhappy with myself. Although I resented it, I let others tell me what to do; how to live my life; how to think, how to act, and how to be because I lacked the self-direction to be able to call my own shots.

It was in studying personality and non-verbal communication as a psychology student that I discovered how vital knowing one’s true self is, and how ineffective most forms of therapy, and most assessments are in helping people take off that mask of conformity, and discover their authentic self. Discovering a way to do that changed my life, and has done the same for thousands of others.

Non-verbal communications are extremely accurate and reliable; far more accurate than our verbal communications and self-concept, so when I began my study back in the early 80’s, I was amazed to find that more than half of the people I gave off-the-shelf assessments to (54%) reported something altogether different on the assessments than they were reporting non-verbally. When that happened, I questioned them. Almost always, they would state that the report was an accurate description. Then I asked the next question, which apparently no one else had bothered to ask… “Are you happy with that?” And almost always the answer would be “No, not really.”

Everyone is thrilled with the self they were born to be. I have never seen a single exception, so when those people who were telling me a different story non-verbally reported that they weren’t happy with being who they believed they were, I kept searching. I wanted to know why they consciously believed one thing when their subconscious communication was reporting something else.

I eventually combined two different types of assessments; one that measured self-perception and one that measured behaviors, to see if the disconnect would show up. It did. Almost always, when non-verbal communications didn’t match what the people in my study reported on paper, there was incongruence between the assessment that measured self-perception and the one that measured behaviors.

With the help of an expert team, which included my daughter, Gina, and my son, Ron, that early assessment evolved even further over the next few years into the life-transforming miracle is it today. We hear the word “miracle” a lot from people when, in the space of an hour or so, this amazing tool has set them free from a lifetime of constraint and given them the clarity and freedom to become their finest self.

Besides a marvelous sense of freedom, the result of discovering and claiming one’s authentic self is a deep sense of contentment, increased energy, greater effectiveness in life and relationships, and complete happiness with who we are. And authentic self-awareness lets us get clear on the path we want to take through life, and call on the strengths and talents nature gave us to take that journey successfully.

The life-transforming assessment I refer to here is the CORE Multidimensional Awareness Profile (CORE MAP). CORE MAP takes a "whole brain" approach and recognizes that we have the ability to be or do anything we choose. It is not whether we can do something, but how much energy or effort it takes to maintain what we are doing. Some behaviors and tasks are draining, and some are energizing. The goal is to know what naturally motivates and energizes you so you can spend most of your time in that space. When you are doing that, you have more energy to manage whatever comes up, and are far more effective overall.

CORE MAP is an integrated system that measures behaviors across the entire spectrum of human behaviors and reveals how effectively or ineffectively traits are developed, and how they are currently being used. It’s designed to provide deep, highly accurate analyses of where you are now and exactly what to develop (and in what order) to reach your absolute highest potential, both personally and professionally.

Unlike other assessments, CORE MAP doesn’t stop with observable traits, currently held preferences, or other surface measures. Surface measures cannot provide analyses of the factors most critical to success, such as traits development, emotional intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, coping abilities, motivators, drivers, energizers, and areas of natural strength and resistance.

CORE MAP measures from many angles and integrates all the measures to form a complete and accurate picture, not of who an individual believes he or she is, but of who he/she came into the world to be. We frequently hear that CORE MAP has the perfect name because it literally does provide a map to the core of an individual’s authentic self.

Since 2001 we have trained and certified coaches and brief therapists (therapists intent on getting really fast results) on CORE MAP facilitation. It’s a facilitated assessment because, after years of trying to computerize it, we found that no computer has the ability to effectively get past years of conditioning to reveal the authentic self.

People develop far faster when they focus on optimizing their natural strengths and abilities as opposed to trying to eliminate problematical traits. But before natural strengths and abilities can be optimized, they must be recognized and developed, and that’s where CORE MAP trained coaches and therapists shine!

You can find a CORE Coach on this site under “Find a Coach” or, if you are a coach or want to become one, you can find out how to get trained and certified under “Coach Training”.