KNOWING YOURSELF !

Importance of knowing yourself

We often go through our lives, without really giving a thought to who we really are. We tend to undermine the importance of knowing ourselves. Every day, we simply react to things that happen to us, rather than making conscious choices, about who we are, and what we want from our lives. We don’t realize, that not knowing ourselves, leads to confusion, a wastage of time, and we could lose some very important opportunities.

Self-knowledge is important for one critical reason: With self-knowledge, we give ourselves the possibilities to get maximum fulfilment and happiness in our lives. If you know who you are, it opens up possibilities of achieving things that you truly want and deserve, rather than doing things in life that others want you to do or direct you to do.

Once you know who you are, it becomes easily possible to know where you are headed, what are clearly your goals, and what is the best route towards achieving them.

So, please decide today, that you are going to work on knowing yourself. But how do you do that?

Here are a few steps you can and should work on: -

?1)???PRACTICE SOLITUDE: Most of the time, we avoid solitude, because perhaps we are scared. This is because it is only in solitude, that you will find it difficult to avoid the most important issues in your lives. Today, you must decide that you will start to practise solitude, and by solitude I don’t mean just locking yourself in a room. You need to sit by yourself, whether it is in your room, on a park bench or even in a place of worship. At this time, naturally your mobile phone must be switched off, or be on Airplane mode. You don’t need a fixed agenda for this, just be with yourself, and let your thoughts flow. Start with 5 minutes and slowly increase it till you can feel comfortable for 20 minutes of solitude, and you will start enjoying it. This is where you will start opening your mind to yourself.

?2)??DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN ‘WHO YOU ARE’ and ‘WHO YOU WANT TO BE’: We often conveniently confuse ourselves between who we are and who we want to be. For example, you may tell yourself that I am very sincere at work, but the fact may be, that you would like to be sincere at work. So, make a list of things you are, and the things you want to be. Here we are talking about personality traits, like bold, shy, confident, confused, ambitious, hard-working etc. If you honestly study the list, you will move some of the entries from the “I AM” list to the “I WANT TO BE” list, and that is good.

3)??YOUR TRUE BELIEFS: You need to make a list of things that you really believe in. Make sure that you exclude things that you ‘think’ you believe in, and things you simply ‘say’ you believe in, because of external pressures.

?4)??YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS: We often forget to acknowledge the things we have achieved in our own lives. This could be either because we were not praised for things we thought were achieved, or we want to look good to ourself, so we choose modesty instead. Make a list of all your achievements, big or small, right from your school-days to the present. It is important, as it will give you an insight at both, what you are good at, and what you really love doing.

5)??YOUR PASSIONS: It happens to all of us, that some things we were deeply passionate about, get left behind in our lives. Like in my own case I had buried my passion for the Media world for over two decades of my life. Here you need to go back in time, right from your childhood till today, and remember all the things that you really had a passion for, or did them passionately. This is one facet about yourself that is going to be very important in determining your future. Here try and remember, which are the things that you reacted immediately to, without needing any motivation.

?6)??QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF: Ask yourself these questions and with complete integrity and honesty, write down the answers:

?a)??What are the things you avoid doing?

b)??What are the things that you are ashamed of?

c)??What are the things you would like to change about yourself?

d)??On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is money to you?

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Once you do all of the above things, you will start having a very good understanding about yourself. As you go ahead on this journey, feel free to go back and change some of the things you have listed, only as long as you remain honest and truthful to yourself.

“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment” – Lao Tzu

Excerpt from my E-book published & available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B08QMZZL1C/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk