A prompting to self-discovery
Growing up, knowing myself has always been a challenge. To truly knowing myself, understanding who I am, having a clarity on what I want, what makes me tick, my boundaries and all, has been and continue to be a tricky thing. I believe than knowing yourself is a very essential and possibly the primary step that we need to take on our journey to achieving our goals and going after the the life we want.
Welcome to your life
Welcoming yourself to your own life. Is like opening your home to a stranger, only that, that stranger is you. As a host, you willingly open your door to the guest and making sure that you welcome them in all graciousness. Giving them a warm treatment of hospitality and service. As a guest you are all present, voraciously consuming the uniqueness of the home you are entering, quenching your curiosity towards the home and the people living in it. And as this visiting and welcoming the guest repeatedly continues the host and the guest similarly feel a familiarity towards each other. The host becoming more open to showing the natural and normal day-to-day event of the household to the guest. The guest becoming more acquainted to the norms of the hosts residing in the home, now being exposed not just with the beautiful graciousness but with the ugly realities that exists under the roof as both parties become more open, honest and accepting of each other. And this I believe is one of the easy way of starting that very important practice of knowing your own self; that is by welcoming you into your own life. :)
Here in the Philippines we have a consistent tagline to welcome our guests. Most, especially foreigners (Non-Filipino Citizens) or Filipinos who travel outside the country and returns. "Mabuhay", a word in the Pilipino language denoting "Welcome" and holds the meaning of ; "To Live". Thus, I believe that welcoming yourself to your life is a prompting and a call toward ourselves to live our lives to the fullest. Why welcome, because it is indeed necessary for us from time to time to get a full-on audit and inventory of our own life.
Why the hassle?
One of the most common problem of people nowadays is the lack of clarity and balance. Most of us these days are flailing through life. Individuals who are merely existing and not living. We feel this way because we don't know what we truly want in life. We are in a constant pursuit of things that we are not really passionate about. We are burned out and discontented, victims of the social media scroll. We are keeping it up hard with the Jones'es, but nowadays there are just too many Jones'es, we are lost.
One of the mental disabilities of adult people is the lack of identity and self awareness. Nowadays, we have trouble coping with criticisms, always in need or asking for attention, we lack internal and solid verdict that we tend to be easily swayed or too rebellious. We are prey to rushing to whatever ideas and trends, we neglect our true talents and we have grown to lack originality. Do we want to keep being this way?
Mabuhay
Why, do we need to start the practice of knowing ourselves by welcoming ourselves; the answer my friend is this, to live.
To live our life in the best way possible --- and that best way is to live the kind of life that we want to live. Not the kind of life our parent's want us to live, not the kind that others want, not even the kind of life you think you like as a result of what you see in social media and all but the kind that you deeply want and in harmony with your true nature.
How do we know the life that we want to live?
That my friend begins by beginning to know ourselves. Let us do a simple mind exercise. Let us begin by closing our eyes and imagining our bare-naked selves. Then slowly, piece by piece like solving a puzzle let us add the the things that we want in our life. Pieces that are parts of the person we deeply hope we can become, pieces of the dreams we want to achieve, pieces of those that we truly cherish and hold dear to our hearts and pieces of those we secretly hope will become a part of our lives. Then, slowly let us dissect each piece and ask ourselves these questions: Why do we want this in our life? Do we truly need it? Do we really want it? Is it possible? Is it attainable? Each piece that we want to fit into the puzzle we must ask ourselves the hard and difficult questions and with humility must answer in all honesty.
To know ourselves we must not be afraid to ask, and more so we must not be afraid of the answers because more often that not we all know the answers within but we are clouded with fear and shame upon knowing our own truth. We are hard at accepting our vulnerability, we have a hard time accepting answers that may or may not fall inline with our own truth. However, the bottom line is this, it is knowing our truth.
Knowing our truth includes knowing our yeses and nos, and yes, we cannot be a yes always. it is good to note that the underlying reason to our why's is always built upon our own values. Our inclinations, our loves and hates, our temperament, in the expression of ourselves. All the tiny bits and pieces of you and when we do, we are able to grasp the reality of the person that we have been living with, sleeping with, eating, breathing, and doing everything together with our whole lives; our own self.
The Truth about You
Once we get a hold of the key which is to knowing ourselves, we should also remember that we are not the same person always. Every single day, we grow and change. Our circumstances can change us, the people that we meet can change us and our experiences through life brings about a change. However, it is also good to note that majority of our circumstances are mostly a result of our own response to situations and this response is guided by our own character and attitude. Thus, if we have a solid foundation of our own identity and have clarity on our decision-making processes, somehow we are able to control the majority of the situations we are in.
Knowing what is good and great about you compels that you have also an equivalent degree of knowing your weaknesses and failures, that which is a very powerful thing.
Tyrion Lannister: "Let me give you some advice, bastard. Never forget what you are, the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armour and it can never be used to hurt you."
Tyrion, in the Game of Thrones TV series has always been ridiculed being an imp and since childhood called a monster by his own sister. In this drama Tyrion displays a solid and unapologetic acceptance of being an Imp and being a Lannister (in this series each houses has a word to which they try to uphold always). And more so he is fully aware that he may possibly the most intelligent person in the whole Westeros.
When we have a full-knowledge of our limitations and weaknesses we are empowered to decide where and how we can improve, and in the things we cannot change --- accept.
Funny enough, I also believe that deep down we always have this desire to know ourselves more, the reason why we love answering personality quizzes, horoscope readings, and enjoy asking our partners "What do you like about me? ✌" I think we do this because as ugly as it may be we human beings are most of the time, are self-centered and really more interested in our own selves.
The process of self-discovery will take time and we may need to do it repeatedly over time. However, these are the three points that I would just like to leave:
Be Honest.
Be not afraid to ask hard questions.
Be Kind to yourself.
This is yet to be the beginning of knowing ourselves and hopefully we can continue to walk in this path towards gaining a healthy dose of self-esteem, pursue happiness that is in harmony of our true nature, towards self-mastery and cultivate self-love.
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