Are old patterns running your life? Self-Awareness & Personality with Arky Jones

Notes from the Edge

In this episode of Notes from the Edge, host Lisa Lacey sits down with Arky Jones, creator of Personality Peek, to explore how self-awarenes

Key takeaways

Self-awareness begins with observing your patterns—once you see them, change is possible.
Personality should be a mirror, not a label; it reflects habits shaped by experience, not fixed identity.

Main topics

Breaking free from inherited behavioral patterns
Using self-awareness as a tool for intentional living

Notable quotes

"If you ain't seeing them, they're not going to change."

"Where I put my attention was the direction I went in."

Conclusion

Arky Jones and Lisa Lacey conclude that true transformation begins with self-awareness,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir, Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge. Speaker 1 (0:34) Hey, my friends, welcome back to an episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. You ain't talking about it. So we're gonna today. And my guest today is Arki Jones. Arki is the creator of Personality Peak, a platform, has his own platform, focused on helping people understand themselves beyond labels through personality insights, self-awareness, and practical personal growth. And I like that practical personal growth, stuff that works, stuff that can be applied right away. Drawing inspiration from psychology, emotional intelligence, stoic philosophy. We love both. Both of those. He believes that personality isn't meant to put us in boxes. We don't live in boxes, guys. But a mirror to recognize our patterns. Because, guys, if you ain't seeing them, they're not going to change. So he wants you to understand yourself more deeply and make intentional choices. Not work on autopilot. And his philosophy is the better you understand yourself, the better you can lead yourself. And I love that, Arki. Welcome to Notes from the Edge. How are you today, my friend? Speaker 2 (1:48) I'm superb and I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1 (1:51) Yeah, I'm excited. Welcome back to the game. Welcome back to the game. So one thing that I appreciated about your work is you said we talk a lot in here about labels, identity, personality, and you think that personality shouldn't become another label. I hate label. Boy, I haven't. I went into inpatient rehab thinking I had a slight drinking problem and a bad marriage and I came out with a chart this thick. I was like, if there was a label, they gave it to me. So I'm not a big fan. So what's the difference and why should we avoid doing that to ourselves? Speaker 2 (2:27) Yeah, so where I've come from is my entire life, I kind of was always in the earlier days. almost living to please other people. And it was as I as I developed into kind of I had children early, but but before they were born, there was like a small window where I was beginning to have insights. And I realized that many of my decisions, so my very core decisions were actually driven by external factors that were beyond my control. So I was living a life that I didn't actually have full authorship of. But this will lead in, because this is 20 plus years ago now. I was living life that I didn't have full authorship of. And as these children were born, which was a gift from the universe, I realized that I had to steer a ship, but I didn't quite have words to put onto it, that was going to give them the best opportunities in life. And then as I developed, probably around about... 10 let's say 14 years ago i would have been maybe 30 at the time i um i started i started to get into stoicism a little bit and that happened again again obviously that the universe brought these children into my life they brought me a book from marcus aurelius and i had a hangover on my 30th birthday and i put it to one side reach reach for the luke the lukewarm water and two panadol and was like go away children and then they had this book for me and and it was it was one of those uh points you know in your brain you have like these kind of neurons that all fire and stuff and it just forged this new path now it's just like what the hell am i doing so fundamentally reorientated but to to answer the question each what what i will say is that personality It is, in my opinion, and this is with a lot of research, is one, is there are some innate traits that are given to us from our ancestors that are from millions of years ago, from the beginning of time. But there is also the experience of your life and where you focus your attention. And the key I found is to answer this. The key I found is that where I put my attention was the direction I went in. And so therefore I realized that the personality was, was something that could be molded with the correct attention. And for me, what that meant correct attention, just to be absolutely crystal clear was focusing it on things that would bring me up and bring other people around me up. Speaker 1 (5:11) I love that. I love that. And, you know, I've noticed, observed, and observation is not neutral, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, my friends, the minute you observe this stuff and these patterns, you've already started to change them. And that's really cool. But I've observed a phenomenon that when we start just working on ourselves, the toxicity takes itself out kind of on its own sometimes. And then you get filled up with. people that are on this newer vibration and the people around you kind of rise up. Have you had the same phenomenon kind of happen for you? Speaker 2 (5:43) So it is almost certainly, the thing is that when you use the word quantum physics, I love that word, but it is, I believe exactly what you've said to be true. So there is no doubt in my mind that is true. But at the same time, it is unquantifiable. So where I don't like is when you see podcasters saying. You saying like oh if you do this and you spend this and then you go to this queue You'll bump into the next millionaire who's going to give you this next contract Speaker 1 (6:19) Yeah. No, no, no. You get hospitalized. Like I was hospitalized. No, life still happens. And you still have bad days. The bad days still happen. So. Yeah, absolutely. But where do you think the line is between personality as a tool for self-awareness and allowing it to become something we hide behind? Speaker 2 (6:51) So you see, you see that it's very easy to allow society to attach a label to you. It's incredibly easy Speaker 1 (6:58) to Speaker 2 (6:58) do that because it's passive. And one thing that I find very, very interesting in the modern world is that when someone says that happened to me as if you're a passenger. And the thing is that if you allow yourself to be a passenger, people will attach labels to you. And a good way is let's just take a train, for example. There is first class, second class, third class. And by the very fact of where you sit, people attach a label. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not, but that's an external thing. What I found is that by being mindful about where you put the attention, what your personality then means is that the things you put your attention on, you can then take ownership of. And then this is where I seeped a little bit into the stoicism, were that owning the loci of control. So I guess what that means is that if you have... something that you identify in your life that needs to change. If you start pointing fingers all over the show as to why it's not there, it is never, ever going to change. But if you look at the bits that you can do, so let's, let's actually think of some kind of real world example here. Speaker 1 (8:17) What if somebody has a job, like they're stuck in a job, they're stuck in a job that they don't like, right? And they're blaming everybody. Oh, my boss is toxic. My coworkers are toxic. Like what? And, but they stay. Speaker 2 (8:30) That's actually a really good one. Thanks. So no, no, it's really good one. So what we, what we need to be, what, firstly, let's be absolutely honest. Okay. So firstly, we have rent to pay or mortgage to pay children to feed. If you've got children, car payments, if you've took car payments, that's a different story about debt and all that, but let's, let's focus on that. Let's say that you, so. You must ensure that firstly, your immediate needs are met for the basic survival in a Western society. And so therefore, the first thing I would do is look for something that you find that gives you an inkling of joy in that job. Find something very small within that job that gives you an inkling of joy and do that incredibly well. So, yeah. Speaker 1 (9:19) Yeah, I like that. That Speaker 2 (9:22) triggers your dopamine system. It triggers your serotonin system. You start getting small rewards within that job. But in doing so, you've set the intention to the universe that you are on a path of personal growth. You are going to make the best of the hardest situations. And there is that old saying, when you're in hell, you know, keep moving forward because that's all you can do. But by setting those intentions with those small tasks and doing them incredibly well, what you start doing is you start building things to put into your CV. Now, as you start building those activities and you start doing them, well, you start building a CV, start building a portfolio. Then as... Every week as you apply for new jobs, there's a new thing to put in that portfolio that you did incredibly well. You went above and beyond on. And then by the time you've made 10 of these weeks where you've done something above and beyond, you've been in tension and you've genuinely enjoyed it because you will. There are small things in life that we can all take pleasure in. Like, for example, I take a lot of pleasure. And this is a silly thing, but I take a lot of... pleasure in having a calendar that is well articulated so I know where to be at what time. And it's a small thing, but then if you think about how I can word that on a CV, it is something that most organizations want. Speaker 1 (10:41) Yes, absolutely. Well, funny story about me. I love office supplies. I love calendars. I love all the stickers. I love pins. I love folders. I love Office Max. It's so weird. And it's a long story why. My mom was a medical records coder and used to bring me home all the stickers and stuff like that. So I love that, though. So friends, I'm just going to reiterate what Arki just said. If you're miserable in your job, do the opposite of what you're doing. Don't bitch about it. Find the one thing. Because there's always going to be one thing, right, Arki? Always one thing we can find? Speaker 2 (11:21) There has to be. Otherwise, you wouldn't be there because it would be so intolerable. You would have broken. So there must be something that brings you back. And even if that something is just the money. It is then, okay, so why am I willing to do this to get money? And then that becomes your reason. But let's hope there's something more than that. There is always something. Otherwise, you wouldn't be there. Speaker 1 (11:46) Well, and what I love about what you just said, too, is you're asking better questions. We talk a lot in here about asking better questions to yourself, asking yourself better questions. So, yeah, a good question to ask is why am I still here, right? It's a good question. What? Because you're getting something out of it. And it's usually more than just the money. So find that thing. I love that. I love that as a tool and it can be done absolutely immediately. And then according to your philosophy, that's where your focus is on that thing that brings you joy. So then you're going to build on that and you'll have more of it. You'll feel less stressed at work. you'll probably be a little nicer to the people you were calling toxic and then your finger is pointed inward right because you're working on you instead of so busy doing the blame game thing i love it i love it so um i'm a big fan of of of patterns and talking about patterns and why we repeat patterns and how to break patterns so um from your perspective why do intelligent people because I did it for 20 years. Why do intelligent people keep repeating the same self-sabotaging patterns over and over and over? Speaker 2 (13:01) Well, it's a tricky one in that, so that pattern at some point, you learnt it because it was useful in that moment. It might have been when your father locked you in a cupboard as a child. It might have been when you were deprived of food. It might have been when you were told you didn't matter, your opinion didn't matter. And so you developed an internal narrative or you start looking for external. validation for things that was because because internally you didn't have the minerals the tools at the time you were never taught to deal with it so as you grow those small things you can develop it later in life but a lot of it comes back to these these very early frameworks and these these kind of core identities um what we can what we then do is we at some point that that now tool that is broken so it's a hammer with with no handle um is was useful to you and so remember that even these habits that we've developed i mean even even we can take alcohol uh we can we can take um nicotine at some point that would have made us feel a little bit better otherwise we wouldn't keep doing it it's like you might say to me why don't you keep hitting your face with a hammer and it's like because it doesn't feel good ever you know no matter when you did it and so and so I like that ever. It Speaker 1 (14:23) doesn't feel good ever. Guys, if it doesn't feel good ever, there is the possibility to change it. So let's talk about changing patterns. Marky, how do we do it? Speaker 2 (14:37) So coming onto the chain. So once you've, once you accept that they are something that at one point served a purpose, then, then you can ask the question of, okay, so what is this getting me now? And it's like, let's say, let's say for example, this is just a silly one, but let's say a space suit. Yeah. An astronaut. So let's say Neil Armstrong wore a space suit on the moon. Yeah. Let's say he came back to earth and wore the same space suit. You know, it's a wonderful piece of engineering, but completely bloody useless