Episode 83: One Step Closer to Freedom: Using the True Self Assessment with Intention

Summary

Podcast Summary: Shed and Shine

Episode 83: One Step Closer to Freedom—Using the True Self Assessment with Intention

Hosts: Gino Wickman and Rob Dube
Date: October 8, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In Episode 83, Gino and Rob dive deep into the True Self Assessment—both its philosophy and practical application—as a recurring tool to aid driven entrepreneurs in freeing their true selves and unlocking authentic entrepreneurial freedom. They share personal anecdotes, community stories, and actionable advice for integrating the assessment into a regular self-development cadence.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

What is the True Self Assessment?

• A tool of personal reflection:

  • 20 questions: 10 focused on the “10 disciplines”; 10 probe deeper, philosophical aspects of freeing one’s true self.
  • Simple and quick to take—about five minutes.
  • Designed to shine a “flashlight” on areas needing attention (00:36).

• Regularity drives results:

  • The assessment is most effective when done every 90 days, acting as a quarterly check-in and progress marker.
  • Both hosts advocate for integrating it into regular routines, such as quarterly planning.

Why the Assessment Matters

• Objective & subjective balance:

  • Gino describes its duality: it measures both tangible behaviors and deeper, intangible qualities on a 0–100% scale (01:47, 06:55).
  • Offers “a beautiful tap on the shoulder reminder” to reflect and recalibrate on what truly matters (02:48).

• Measuring movement, not perfection:

  • The focus is on “moving the needle” and progress—not achieving a perfect score (01:47, 09:58).
  • It is normal and productive for scores to fluctuate, prompting continuous self-improvement.

Personal and Community Examples

• Hosts’ personal experiences:

  • Gino: Shares about slipping on the “prepare every night” discipline despite years of consistency, highlighting the tool’s power to catch drift before it spirals (03:21).
    • “All of a sudden, things just got a little loose with it… it was just a great little tap on the shoulder, and I recommitted.” (03:21)
  • Rob: Talks about his ongoing journey with being comfortable in all settings and healing past wounds, noting how different questions are deeply interconnected (08:10).

• Mastermind group anecdotes:

  • Member 1: Low score on organization led to practical changes—now always keeps his “one place” system for commitments (05:00).
  • Member 2: Low scores in boundary setting and presence made her realize impact on relationships; she recalibrated and planned time to reconnect with her husband (05:52).

Tactics for Ongoing Application

• Setting reminders and accountability:

  • Suggestions include:
    • Calendar reminders (07:28, 11:24)
    • Integrating with quarterly business or team planning
    • Having an executive assistant schedule and track results (11:24)
    • Maintaining a spreadsheet of scores for visualizing progress

• Community and sharing best practices:

  • Send the assessment to friends who might benefit, particularly those “whose souls are being pinged” or who may be struggling visibly or internally (07:28).

• Celebrating progress, not perfection:

  • Regardless of the score (even if it’s a 35 or a 92), the important thing is to celebrate small improvements (09:58).
  • Both hosts echo the sentiment that shedding pain and trauma is “an ever-expanding progress,” and there is no endpoint—just deeper awareness (10:27).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Gino Wickman (01:47):

  "Take the true self assessment to find out how free your true self really is… gives you a checkup, a starting point, a baseline."

• Rob Dube (00:36):

  "You take the true self assessment every 90 days... your scores act like a flashlight. In about five minutes, the light is shined on areas of your life that are needing attention."

• Rob Dube (08:10):

  "I always thought I was comfortable, but then I realized that as I go deeper and deeper into this, I’m actually becoming more aware, and this awareness is allowing greater confidence for me in every situation."

• Gino Wickman (09:58):

  "Whatever you score, you know, scale of 1 to 100, let’s pretend you score a 35. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or if you score a 92. So it’s a baseline. And the idea is just to simply move the needle, celebrate where you are, whatever that is."

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:36] – Intro to the True Self Assessment & how it works
• [01:47] – Gino on setting a baseline and tracking progress
• [02:48] – Gino shares his own quarterly application and fluctuating score
• [03:21] – Gino’s personal “prepare every night” discipline story
• [05:00] – Rob’s mastermind stories: organization and “one place”
• [05:52] – Mastermind story: boundaries, presence, and relationships
• [06:55] – Gino: The balance of tangible and intangible progress
• [07:28] – Encouraging listeners to share the assessment with others
• [08:10] – Rob on interconnectedness of assessment questions and personal growth
• [09:58] – Celebrating movement and progress, not perfection
• [11:24] – Integrating the assessment into routines (planning, EAs, spreadsheets)

---

Takeaways & Actionable Advice

• Commit to a cadence: Take the True Self Assessment every 90 days.
• Measure & celebrate progress: Don’t focus on perfection; celebrate small milestones and shifts in awareness.
• Leverage support systems: Use tools (calendars, assistants, community accountability) to maintain consistency.
• Share the journey: Invite others to join, whether by sending the assessment to a peer or joining a mastermind group.
• Keep the ten disciplines visible: Physical reminders like stickers can help keep commitments top of mind.

---

Final Words

The hosts wrap up with encouragement to take immediate action:

"Go do your true self assessment and do it right now while it’s fresh on your mind… The more light you shine on these areas, the clearer your path to freeing your true self becomes." (12:18)
And a gentle reminder: progress is an ongoing journey—stay focused, and let your true self shine.

Transcript

[A]

And so the beauty of the assessment is you get that balance of both. So you're getting both the tangible and kind of the intangible. And both you can score, and both you can see how you're progressing.

[B]

Hello, everyone. My name is Rob Dube, and I am here with my good friend Geno Wickman. What is happening today? Geno, how are you?

[A]

We are happening today, Rob. We are happening.

[B]

Okay, I'm good. All right, so as always, I'm going to start with some context to get your gears turning on our topic today, which is our true self assessment. And so over the last four years, what's happened is we've discovered this very simple way to keep high performers driven people on track towards freeing their true selves. And it's simple. You take the true self assessment every 90 days. Now, you can find that on our website at the 10disciplines.com. And so for those of you that aren't familiar, the assessment is 20 simple questions. 10 are focused on the 10 disciplines, and 10 are focused in the deeper philosophies of freeing your true self. And what ends up happening when you do this is your scores act like a flashlight. In about five minutes, the light is shined on areas of your life that are needing attention. And when one score dips, you know exactly where to course correct before things get out of control. So it's very valuable. And I'm gonna pause here, Gino, cause I'm curious, what's coming up for you?

[A]

Well, here's what's coming up. The way I always like to describe it is I always say, you know, take the true self assessment to find out how free your true self really is. So that's what this is about, is just getting a sense of where you are. You know, it gives you a fun little score in a scale that you don't have to get too caught up in. But it's basically, where are you on a 0 to 100% being fully free? And just gives you kind of a checkup, a starting point, a baseline. And then the idea is you do that checkup every 90 days, and you're going to just see certain areas that you can improve on. And so in my mind, it's always about moving the needle. And so we just want to help these people just move the needle toward freeing themselves. And ideally, you just pick one thing per quarter each time you take it to work on, and you do that, all of a sudden, you look up 2, 5, 10 years from now, and you're a lot freer than when you.

[B]

Started okay, so you know that saying, eating your own dog food? So are you eating your own dog food?

[A]

I am, yeah. So definitely every 90 days. And we're kind of forced to with our mastermind because we do it with them. But it's. But it is absolutely my nature. And, you know, my score. It's interesting. It fluctuates, but I'm right around a 94. Sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower, but it's just a beautiful tap on the shoulder reminder. And I do the same thing, and I pick one thing, and I just work on that for that quarter.

[B]

I'm curious, is anything coming up for you these days? Do you have any recollection of your most recent?

[A]

The one that's coming to me might have been the previous quarter, but this is the one that's flashing into my mind first. And it was how I got away from the prepare every night discipline. Not entirely, but it was shaky. And if you remember, the reaction from the mastermind group was, you know, that I'm normal. You know, it's. It's like, so I'm not perfect with these things, but. But I realized, though, I noticed the difference in the impact. So just this beautiful tap on the shoulder. Because I've been fanatical about that discipline for at least two decades, maybe three now, because my mentor taught it to me in my 20s and so great for decades. And then all of a sudden, things just got a little loose with it. And so it was just a great little tap on the shoulder, and I recommitted. And so that's the one that comes to mind.

[B]

I love that. And you've mentioned the true self mastermind group that we host monthly. It's a great group. So go onto our website at the 10disciplines.com and check it out. You can apply to come into the group if this is something that pings you. And this is one of the things that we do, among many things in terms of freeing your true self. You brought up the mastermind group, and I was thinking about, well, I wonder how this has showed up for. For some of our members. So I thought back, and obviously, I'm gonna keep things confidential, but I wanted to share a couple of experiences our members had. So we had one member who scored a three on question number eight, which is, I am organized, consistent, and never dropped the ball on promises or commitments made to others. So this person was super busy, just like you, listening. All good stuff. All the busy stuff was good stuff. But what was happening is he was becoming scatter, and he was Losing track of things. And now this question relates to putting everything in one place. We talk about this in the book. And having your one place. And the previous time he took the assessment, he was a four. So that was because he's part of our mastermind. And he's taking the assessment every 90 days, like Gino said. And what he started to be able to see was this feeling that he was scattered and. And he got quickly back on track. So now every time I see him on Zoom, he actually holds up his one place to me, and he goes, see, I have my one place right here. So that's like, just a really simple example of getting back on track. It's kind of similar to what you were saying around preparing every night. And let me just share one other story, and then, Gino, whatever's coming up for you, I want to hear. Another member scored a three on question number six, which is, I know what to say no. To say no often, and set effective boundaries. So that's all about saying no. And also scored low on question 17, which has to do with the deeper philosophies of the true self. And in question number 17 is, I am fully present, aware, and connect to the people around me at every moment. So both of those were three. And she immediately realized this was affecting her relationship with her husband. And with that awareness, she recalibrated. And the next thing we knew, she was planning a getaway for the two of them to reconnect and go to a deeper level in their relationship. So it's really cool just the way these things come about, just through this regular rhythm of taking the assessment.

[A]

Yeah, it prompted two things. One is we started out with some very tangible examples of lower ratings. I had my aha. About preparing every night. And so my mind went to. In addition to the very tangible stuff with the disciplines, then there's the kind of heavier, deeper, more complex stuff with the discoveries and freeing your true self. And so the beauty of the assessment is you get that balance of both. So you're getting both the tangible and kind of the intangible. And both you can score, and both you can see how you're progressing. The other thought that came to mind is, you know, so hopefully everyone out there has already taken it once by reading the book. This is, if nothing else, a tap on the shoulder to make sure you're doing it every quarter. Put a reminder in your calendar. Just have a prompt show up, and then I would urge you to send it to a friend. So think about somebody in your life right now. That you feel like is their soul's kind of being pinged, they're ready to start to have this conversation or somebody who's on your mind that is maybe struggling with the tangible stuff, being more efficient, their outer world stuff, maybe struggling with some inner world stuff. Send them the true self assessment. You're probably going to help them out a lot.

[B]

Yeah, that's good. You know, I wanted to share how this has been showing up for me and sort of how many of these questions can be interconnected? So the first question number three, which is, I am comfortable and confident being myself in every personal and professional situation. For me, it's hovered around four. I'd love it to be a five. So I've really placed a focus on it. And I always thought I was comfortable, but then I realized that as I go deeper and deeper into this, I'm actually becoming more aware and this awareness is allowing greater confidence for me in every situation. So part of what is happening is I'm leaning into healing some old wounds. And as a result, I'm understanding myself more and my presence is expanding. Which leads to question number 11, which is I have worked through all past trauma and left behind all feelings of anxiety, shame, or depression, which I always think, oh, I think I'm getting there, but then I'm not. So as a result of this awareness and question number three, which has to do with knowing thyself, I just keep going deeper and deeper. And, you know, wow, when I just think, just when I think I've addressed everything. So, you know, it just goes to show you kind of how these things are very much interconnected. And it's beautiful as you keep going deeper and deeper, you know, this leads me to question number 20, which is I'm completely free to be my true self always, which I would really like for that to be a five. And that means, for me, it means fully letting go. And I do feel like I'm doing more of that every day. But it's just really great to see this every 90 days and to keep bringing awareness, keep shining light on it. So, yeah, I wanted to share how those are all connected. Yeah.

[A]

And that prompted a few more things. So it's like I'm now wanting to kind of put this episode in a nutshell and say, you know, I think what this is really about, again, it's about measuring progress and moving the needle, as I said earlier. And so what's coming to me is I think the idea here is to motivate you out there, to commit to a cadence every 90 days to keep doing this so that you move the needle and whatever you score, you know, scale of 1 to 100, let's pretend you score a 35. There's nothing wrong with that. Or if you score a 92. So it's a baseline. And the idea is just to simply move the needle, celebrate where you are, whatever that is. And it's just all about making that progress. And then it made me think exactly what you just said where. Because the same thing is happening for me as I shed pain and trauma. And you kind of think you shed it all and then new stuff pops up. That's just how it works. And so to not get caught up in, wow, how is there still pain? I thought I shed it all. Don't do that to yourself. It's just this beautiful, ever expanding progress. So it's just all about making progress toward whatever. And the assessment just helps you see that progress and helps you keep moving the needle, as I said. And it's just all about committing to that cadence.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And speaking of the cadence, you had met, you, you had mentioned putting it on your calendar. I came up with a couple additional ways to maybe thinking about it. First of all, if you do quarterly planning, just make that part of the quarterly planning and do it with your team. You know, you could do it even a team health or a team building sort of exercise during the planning if you want to around it. The other one, and this relates to, don't do $25 an hour work. If you happen to have an EA, have them schedule and hold you accountable. So have them just literally send you the link and put it on your calendar and have it a time set aside to do it. And then what I've been doing is I have my ea, put it in a spreadsheet, and so I can see every 90 days how I'm progressing or not progressing in each area. So those are just a couple of ideas that you can think about. Any last words for you, Gina?

[A]

I think we've said it all.

[B]

Rob said it all. Okay. Well, as always, thank you for joining us. And we encourage you, as we've talked about this entire episode, to go do your true self assessment and do it right now while it's fresh on your mind. Go to the 10disciplines.com. There's a link right there. It's super simple. It's going to take you like five minutes. And you don't want to find yourself off track because the more light you shine on these areas, the clearer your path to freeing your true self becomes. And just before we wrap, I'd just like to say, and for those of you that are watching this, I'm going to hold up a little sticker here. We have these little stickers that people have been asking us about. The way this came about is people would say, I wish I could have the 10 disciplines right in front of me all the time. You know, like a sticker or something. So we made a sticker, and they're pretty popular, actually, and we barely ever talk about them, but when we have them, we hand them out. People are grabbing them left and right from us. So we have these stickers. You can simply email [e-mail], just put your name and address and we'll ship one out to you. And so the 10 disciplines will be right in front of you all the time. Okay, everyone. Well, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. And in the meantime, stay focused and much love.

[A]

Thank you for listening in today. We truly appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and please tune in for the next episode. Until then, we wish you all the best in freeing your true self. Stay focused and much love.