How To Discover Who You Are?

Who are you?
 
Not what do you do. Not what is your name. Not who are you related to... No. Who are YOU?
 
What makes you happy? What makes you grateful? What makes you angry? What makes you feel overwhelmed?
 
What makes you want to run away and hide? What makes you move into action? What inspires you to create? What traps your mind and holds it hostage in fear?
 
Knowing these kinds of answers is how you get to know who you are. How many of them do you know? How well do you know yourself?
 
Your answers to these questions will be different from mine, from your parents, your spouse, your boss... everyone. These answers are what makes you who you are.
 
When you set out to DISCOVER everything that makes you tick, you not only get these answers and know yourself a little better but you more easily come to accept them as a simple truth.
 
...I know that I feel guilty and punish myself emotionally when I mess up. This makes me feel worse because of how I judge myself. Then I spend the next 3 days trying to recover from mistake as well as all the guilt and self inflicted judgment that I added to that mistake...
 
Okay, that is true. Nothing you say or do is going to change the truth of that statement. No judgement of if it is the right or wrong way to behave is going to change the simple fact that it is the way you behave.
 
So now what?
 
Now that you've discovered this truth, this secret to what makes you work the way that you do, what will you do with this insight?
 
You have options. You can choose to live knowing you are always going to be your own worst enemy and become a victim to this reaction or you can figure out how to make this reaction work to benefit you?
 
How can it benefit you?
 
You can discover more about it and find out.
 
When you look at this statement from a distance, you can see how ridiculous it is in its entirety. I messed up. So for a visual think of it this way. If I started at zero now I'm at negative two. The mistake set me back and I'll need to work harder to get back to zero.
 
But then I add on, all by myself, judgement and guilt. That sets me back further to negative four. Plus the added pressure from now all of the work that it will take just to make me feel like I am back at zero, or ground level, again puts me at negative five now. Simply knowing I now have to climb out of this deep hole from negative five to zero is overwhelming and pushes me down further still to negative six... before I know it, I can't move from the weight of how far I am away from where I need to be.
 
Using this information to benefit us we can easily see, (easily since we are looking back and not currently going through this default reaction of ours), that everything after the "I messed up" is fake... it's not even real.
 
It is only fictitious pressure I add to the situation because of thoughts that are playing tricks on my mind.
 
The only real thing in this situation is I messed up.
 
Watch how fast this visual changes when I accept that I messed up. (Because ALL people mess up occasionally, it is how we best learn and grow).
 
I messed up. If I started at zero now I'm at negative two. I then accept that I messed up and that is okay because expecting myself to never mess up is not realistic, (and how would I ever learn if I didn't mess up).
 
I'm still at negative two. So what do I do now to get back to zero? What do I need to do to make this better for me and move forward from here?
 
No judgement necessary.
 
Like it or not, right or wrong, it all makes no difference to the fact that it is that way. My feelings about it or my self-judgement add nothing that helps or changes anything about what is real in this.
 
Therefore, knowing myself like I now do, I can use this tool next time.
 
My tool:
Next time I mess up and start to feel guilt or judgement I can remember that I'm adding those and they don't change anything. I can ask myself, What do I need to do now to make this work for me? How do I get back to zero from here?
 
This will help me to keep a healthier forward focused perspective instead of allowing my defaults to bury me in my own pity that adds nothing and is false.
 
The better you know who you are, what makes you tick? What makes you cringe? Where the line is between tolerating a situation and it being too burdensome to deal with?
 
How you prioritize the same things your spouse or roommate prioritizes things? Is there a difference in how you prioritize them? Does this difference cause you trouble? Are you willing to compromise to avoid this trouble? If not, are you willing to accept that you cannot change their priorities and will either need to be okay with the fact that your standards are differing or that you will need to pick up the slack that they aren't carrying because it's not their priority like it is yours?
 
This type of questioning yourself and every natural reaction and emotion that you have to better understand why it is there and what you can gain from it is how you discover who you are.
 
So who are you?
 
I encourage you to go on the adventure of discovering you. Looking at yourself as though you were discovering a foreign land or culture.
 
Why are you doing that? What would be a better reaction for me? Is there one?... No judgement, just fact. You are how you are. No amount of wanting or wishing you were different will make it so.
 
Therefore, if you want different you start where you are with all the facts of who you are currently and how you work, then ask what now?
 
What do I need to do now to get me to where I want to be instead? No judgement, nothing wrong with where I am other than I want to be somewhere else and am going to work to make that happen.
 
This is how you discover WHO you are. This is how you build that life you've always dreamed of.
 
Happy Building!
 
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