HOW TO GET TO KNOW YOURSELF BETTER!
Aristotle once said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”.
The relationship with yourself is one of the most important relationships in your life. If you do
not have a full understanding of who you are then how are others supposed to get to know you?
But why is it important to know yourself? Let's see the main reasons:
Happiness. You will be happier when you can express who you are. Expressing your desires will
make it more likely that you get what you want. Less inner conflict. When your outside actions
are in accordance with your inside feelings and values, you will experience less inner conflict.
Better decision-making. When you know yourself, you are able to make better
choices about everything, from small decisions like which sweater you’ll buy to big decisions
like which partner you’ll spend your life with. You'll have guidelines you can
apply to solve life’s varied problems. Self-control. When you know yourself,
you understand what motivates you to resist bad habits and develop good ones.
You'll have the insight to know which values and goals activate your willpower.
Resistance to social pressure. When you are grounded in your values and preferences,
you are less likely to say “yes” when you want to say “no.”
Tolerance and understanding of others. Your awareness of your
own foibles and struggles can help you empathize with others.
Vitality and pleasure. Being who you truly are helps you feel more alive
and makes your experience of life richer, larger, and more exciting.
Increased self-awareness has wide-ranging positive ramifications.
However, one of its most important consequences is increased emotional intelligence.
When you're more emotionally intelligent, you're better able to identify and manage
your feelings as they come up, neither repressing them nor being lost in them.
Emotionally intelligent people are also more at peace with who they really are,
focusing more on meeting their own standards than the standards set by others.
Self-awareness and high emotional intelligence are also correlated with greater levels of success.
For example, recent psychological studies indicate that many top business leaders
have both of these traits, and that plays a key role in their continued achievements.
So, whether you want to excel in your job, are looking to improve the most important
relationships in your life or just want to feel more at peace with your own company,
you have a lot to gain from working on self-awareness.
Get To Know Your Personality Firstly, let's look at
understanding your core personality. This is something you can do by reflection alone,
but making notes and writing lists can help you make better sense of the information you have.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What 5-10 traits do I feel define me?
What 5-10 words would others choose to describe me?
Which role do I play in my group of friends? How would a stranger see me?
What do I want others to think about me? What do I love doing?
What are my dreams in life? What do I want my legacy to be?
What is my biggest criticism of myself? What are some mistakes I've made?
Who is my role model? In addition, give some
thought to the major decisions you've made in life, both good and regrettable.
Why did you make these choices?
Which were authentic expressions of who you are? Which were made under pressure from others?
Consider how your past has shaped your future self,
giving particular weight to your early life experiences. Often, what we go
through as children plays a key role in creating patterns, preferences, and needs for the future.
Now that you are convinced that self-knowledge is worth having
(not that you needed convincing!), we’ll move on to those "VITAL Signs" of self-knowledge.
VITALS The capital letters in “VITAL Signs”
form an acronym for the six building blocks of the self, or VITALS, for short. The letters stand for:
Values, Interests, Temperament, Around-the-Clock, Life Mission and Goals, and Strengths/Skills.
V = Values
“Values"—such as “helping others,” “being creative,” “health,” “financial security,”
and so on—are guides to decision-making and motivators for goals. Research shows that just
thinking or writing about your values can make it more likely that you take healthy actions.
The motivation provided by worthwhile values can also keep you going even when you are tired,
as shown in many psychology experiments. If you want to self-motivate,
know your values! I = Interests
“Interests” include your passions, hobbies, and anything that draws your attention over
a sustained period of time. To figure out your interests, ask yourself these questions:
What do you pay attention to? What are you curious about? What concerns you? The focused mental state
of being interested in something makes life vivid and may give you clues to your deepest passions.
Many people have built a career around a deep interest in something.
For example, a friend of mine broke his leg when he was 11 years old and was so
fascinated by the emergency room that he decided to become an emergency physician.
T = Temperament
“Temperament” describes your inborn preferences. Do you restore your energy from being alone
(introvert) or from being with people (extrovert)? Are you a planner or go-with-the-flow type of
person? Do you make decisions more on the basis of feelings or thoughts and facts?
Do you prefer details or big Ideas? Knowing the answers to temperament
questions like these could help you gravitate toward situations
in which you could flourish and avoid situations in which you could wilt.
A = Around-the-Clock Activities
The “around-the-clock” category refers to when you like to do things—your biorhythms. Are you
a morning person or a night person, for example? At what time of day does your energy peak?
If you schedule activities when you are at your best, you are respecting your innate biology.
While the idea of biorhythm preferences may sound trivial compared to lofty qualities of
the self like “values,” your daily life is more pleasant when you are in sync with your biology.
L = Life Mission and Meaningful Goals
“What have been the most meaningful events of your life?”
“What have been the least meaningful events of your life?”
Answer these questions and You may discover clues to your hidden identity,
to your career, and to life satisfaction.
S = Strengths
"Strengths" can include not only abilities, skills, and talents, but also character
strengths such as loyalty, respect for others, love of learning, emotional intelligence,
fairness, and more. Knowing your strengths is one of the foundations of self-confidence;
not being able to acknowledge your own superpowers could put you on the path to low self-esteem.
Become a person who “takes in the good,” listening
for compliments and noticing skills that could be clues to your strengths.
Here's an example: An acquaintance tells you that she loves the soothing sound of your voice.
What could you do with that knowledge? Likewise, knowing your weaknesses can help you be honest
with yourself and others about what you are not good at. You might decide either to work on
those weaknesses or try to make them a smaller part of your personal or professional life.
There are 3 test you can take online to help you better understand yourself,
you can find the links to these test in the description box under the video.
The first is the notorious Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the 16 personalities test.
The second is the Gretchen Rubin’s “Four Tendencies” test which focuses on how
we react to internal and external expectations and accountability.
The third is the DiSC profile test, which is a personality assessment that
describes your behaviors and communication styles.
Once you have evaluated your personality and characteristics, review what you learned to
see if you're happy with yourself. Do these values and traits align with who you want to
be? If the answer is yes, look for ways to expand or build on these character traits.
If the answer is no, try to come up with a set of personalized goals to improve.[9]
Use your strengths to help yourself find happiness.
For example, if you realized that you're creative and enjoy working with your hands,
you might want to take art classes or start a new craft.
If you want to improve something, use your knowledge of yourself to create a personalized
plan. For example, if you realized you're introverted but want to become more social,
you might learn to socialize in small groups. By balancing time to yourself with time with others,
you can have an engaging social life that works for you.
Question Your Automatic Thoughts Finally, many of us have a tendency
to experience automatic thoughts that are pessimistic, self-undermining and irrational.
If you don't know yourself very well, you may just accept these cognitive distortions at face value.
Subsequently, you may then experience a low mood and feel bad about yourself.
In contrast, when you have higher levels of self-awareness you can “catch” these
distortions as they come up, redirecting your mind to more realistic thoughts.
Whenever you notice yourself catastrophizing,
making negative assumptions about your worth or discounting positive feedback,
take a breath and challenge these thoughts. For example, turn “I'll never get this
project done” into “I'm struggling with this project right now, but after a rest I know I
can finish it”. Meanwhile, spin “I'm not good enough to do X” into “I feel insecure about X,
but it's worth trying to do it because this is something I really care about”.
In time, the more positive thoughts should become automatic.
If you enjoyed this, you will surely enjoy these two other videos as well: “The 9 Types
Of Intelligence” and “How Childhood Affects The Rest Of Our Lives”. Have a wonderful day!