Fiona Murden
Becoming who we are.
We all do our best with what we know.
But learning how to be human?
That’s the part no one really teaches us.
We’re expected to navigate emotion, relationships, pressure, identity, and change as if these things are instinctive.
They’re not.
They’re learned through trial and error, mostly without guidance, and never really updated.
How We Learn
Most of what shapes us comes from the people around us, how we grow up, and the roles we end up playing.
Over time, these experiences settle into patterns, ways of thinking, reacting, and relating that start to feel automatic.
Once we can see those patterns, we’re no longer stuck with them.
Why This Matters Now
As life gets faster, noisier, and more demanding, those patterns matter more, not less.
They shape how we decide, relate, lead, recover, and make sense of ourselves, especially under pressure.
Making human skills learnable
My work is about taking the parts of being human we usually pick up by accident, and making them visible, understandable, and learnable.
So that you have more choice in how you live.
That’s where Discovering You comes in.
Discovering You is a psychologically grounded framework designed to help you understand how you become who you are, and how that keeps changing over time.
It helps you make sense of your experiences, build confidence, navigate relationships, and take action in the world, without treating you as a fixed identity.
Instead, it works with you in motion, shaped by experience, context, and the people around you.
Discovering You grew out of my work in my books Defining You and Mirror Thinking, and more than two decades of applied psychology. It’s been shaped and reshaped through real work with young adults, early-career professionals, and leaders and it continues to evolve as the world changes.
At its core, Discovering You gives you a personal framework you can return to and update as your life changes.
Explore the Discovering You program
As featured in
I’m Fiona Murden,
A psychologist and author deeply interested in how people become who they are.
For over twenty years, my work has involved watching how humans develop in real lives, real systems, and real relationships. I’ve profiled and worked with people across leadership, sport, medicine, the creative industries, and education, paying attention to the patterns that repeat regardless of context.
What those years have made clear is this: we place enormous demands on people, to decide well, relate well, adapt, lead, and create, without ever teaching the human capacities those demands rely on.
This work turns human capacities into learnable skills, shaping how we live, work, and build the future together.
Discovering You sits at the centre of this work because it gives people a stable way of understanding themselves over time.
By holding this work in a single, coherent framework, people can access it more easily, remember it under pressure, and apply it across life, work, and change. It becomes something they return to, not something they complete.
Just exploring? Start here…
Podcast – Dot to Dot
Real conversations with psychologists, thinkers, creators, and everyday people about the connections, challenges, and stories that make us human.Books – Defining You & Mirror Thinking
Practical psychology to help you understand yourself, connect with others, and reach your potential.Substack & Blog
Reflections, tools, and stories on what it takes to feel whole and live well under pressure.Speaking & Media
Contact us for more info.