To Find Yourself, Think For Yourself
The greatest and most important adventure of our lives is discovering who we really are. Yet, so many of us walk around either not really knowing or listening to an awful inner critic that gives us all the wrong ideas about ourselves. We mistakenly think of self-understanding as self-indulgence, and we carry on without asking the most important question we’ll ever ask: Who am I really? As Mary Oliver put it, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Finding yourself may sound like an inherently self-centered goal, but it is actually an unselfish process that is at the root of everything we do in life. In order to be the most valuable person to the world around us, the best partner, parent etc, we have to first know who we are, what we value and, in effect, what we have to offer. This personal journey is one every individual will benefit from taking. It is a process that involves breaking down – shedding layers that do not serve us in our lives and don’t reflect who we really are. Yet, it also involves a tremendous act of building up – recognizing who we want to be and passionately going about fulfilling our unique destiny – whatever that may be. It’s a matter of recognizing our personal power, yet being open and vulnerable to our experiences. It isn’t something to fear or avoid, berating ourselves along the way, but rather something to seek out with the curiosity and compassion we would have toward a fascinating new friend. With these principles in mind, the following guide highlights four of the most universally useful steps to this very individual adventure.
1. Make sense of your past: In order to uncover who we are and why we act the way we do, we have to know our own story. Being brave and willing to explore our past is an important stepping stone on the road to understanding ourselves and becoming who we want to be.
2. Differentiate: Differentiation refers to the process of striving to develop a sense of ourselves as independent individuals. In order to find ourselves and fulfill our unique destinies, we must differentiate from destructive interpersonal, familial and societal influences that don’t serve us.
3. Think about what you want: There’s a tendency in life to focus on the negative. Many of us fall too easily into victimized thoughts and complaints about our circumstances and surroundings rather than orienting ourselves toward positive goals, strategies and solutions. Put simply, we think a lot about what we don’t want instead of concentrating on what we do.
4. Recognize your personal power: When we know what we want, we are challenged to take power over our lives. No longer are we engaging in a spiral of negative thinking that tells us all the things that are wrong with the world around us or all the reasons we can’t have what we want. Instead, we are accepting ourselves as a powerful player in our own destiny. Harnessing our personal power is essential to both finding and becoming ourselves.
Tags: Honesty And Transparency Know Yourself Living Your Truth The Privilege
