Knowing Your Inner Self Comes From Self-Awareness
Knowing your inner self comes from being self-aware. Even if you do not have full clarity of your inner self, it is likely that certain aspects of him/her are already exhibited on a day-to-day basis through how you act. For example, if you find yourself often extolling the importance of filial piety, responsibility is likely one of your values. If you feel a compelling need to always be there for your friends, reliability is probably an important value to you.
It is perfectly okay if you don’t know your inner self. Discovering and unraveling it is a life-long process. Use yourself as an example, the 10-year-old You definitely wasn’t as self-aware as the 25-year-old You or 35-year-old You. When you were in primary and secondary school, you didn’t really know who you were or what you stood for. You don’t think anybody at that age does actually. Everyone was just focused on doing what they were told. There wasn’t much introspection or self-awareness going on. We were never asked to think about who we were, what we thought, or who we wanted to be. While we had our own personalities, they were hazy at best.
As you uncover more of your inner self, you may find that some of your real life identities do not match your inner self. There’s a conflict between who you are and who you are expected to be. If so, that’s fine. It’s a first step to discover who you are. The next step is to live in alignment with your inner self, as best as you can, within the context of the situation. At the same time, start to make long term plans to ultimately live in alignment with your true self.
Every action you take should move you toward your inner self. If you have roles that do not match your inner self, there are two possible steps you can take. First, try to find the common ground between those identities and your inner self. This may involve shaping the identities to fit who you are. If this doesn’t work, the other (more drastic) option is to remove or change the role altogether.
Constantly doing these two steps has helped you become more congruent with your true self. Today, I’m at a place where my external identities are well matched with who I am on the inside. While there’s definitely still room for improvement, they are quite congruent with one another. And these didn’t happen by chance. They came about as a result of conscious effort.
Focus on finding your inner self, and then start to live in alignment with it. That’s when you start to live a conscious life.
Tags: Efforts Are Natural Peaceful Acceptance Tune With Self
