For Those Who Don’t Really Know Themselves
Who am I?
It’s a vague question but probably the most important one you could ever ask yourself.
If you were to begin to explain who you are, I bet you would start with whatever it is that you do as a profession (accountant, teacher, mechanic). You would then probably describe yourself in terms of your role or status within your family (mother/father, brother/sister, son/daughter). And you might end by characterizing yourself in terms of whatever you do on the weekends or in your spare time (outdoor enthusiast, artist, Netflix binger).
But, with disregard to any of these arbitrary roles or titles that define you, do you know who you really are?
Do you have a full understanding of what your true passions and aspirations are in life? Are you aware of your deepest hopes and dreams, the ones that you’ve repressed for so long that you may not even remember what they are anymore? Do you know precisely the purpose for your existence on this planet and what your soul was put here to accomplish?
Don’t worry. Most people don’t.
It’s a true blessing to have the ability to undoubtedly know yourself. Unfortunately, it’s also very rare.
Many people go their entire lives without fully knowing themselves, failing to ever take the opportunity to explore the true identity that lives within them.
Instead, most of us go through life accepting the roles and responsibilities that are placed on us. And as more and more responsibilities are added to the list, the inevitable result is that life slowly starts to define who we are, rather than the opposite.
Living a life that prioritizes serving others’ wants and needs before your own will only add more and more weight to your shoulders in the form of unfulfillment and regret. Living a life subject to someone else’s terms and conditions will only leave you unsatisfied.
“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” — Steve Jobs
There’s a lot of influence that comes with whatever titles you have. It’s these titles that determine how you show up everyday. They determine how you act and present yourself.
Not all of the titles are bad. Someone who has the role of a mother may be very caring and compassionate while someone that has the role of a college student may be very driven and academically adept. It’s possible that many of the responsibilities you have are actually guiding you towards becoming a better person.
Nonetheless, these responsibilities are still demanding a change from you. For better or worse, your obligations to others are causing you to lose sight of who you are.
Consider this: Over 60% of Americans work white-collar jobs. There’s an endless number of specific job titles that these people have, but we can generally sum them all up as businessmen and businesswomen. These are individuals that work traditional corporate jobs that require them to be punctual and professional. These roles that they play demand that they get to work on time, dress in a certain manner that’s acceptable for an office environment, and be courteous to their fellow coworkers.
But is this really the life that these people want to be living? When you consider that 7 in 10 people are disengaged at work — meaning that they’ve lost interest in the work they do — then it’s easy to see that people are not passionate when it comes to the number one thing that we spend the majority of our lives doing.
We wake up early, spend hours commuting just to sit at a desk all day, and then repeat this process five days in a row. We do all this because we have to, not because we want to.
There’s an old saying that suggests you could work with a man for 30 years and never really know who he is. That’s because we are not truly ourselves in the workplace. Instead, we transform into what our managers expect us to be, what the corporate world tells us we must be, what we believe we need to be in order to play the part.
Each title or responsibility you have comes with a silent set of rules that you’re required to conform to. And the problem with accepting responsibilities is that they require you to play by these rules. They require you to fit your square peg into a circle hole.
They change who you are as a person.
It’s not what you do for others that determines who you are, it’s what you do for yourself that does.
After living your life on someone else’s terms for so long, you start to forget who you are. Even worse, our external roles become synonymous with who we believe we are and they begin to shape new internal narratives that influence how we see ourselves.
You get used to doing things for other people and forget what it’s like to do things for yourself, to prioritize your own wants and needs for once.
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” — Carl Jung
It’s critical to your happiness that you reconnect with yourself and that inner voice that lives deep down inside of you. You must be conscious of your actions and question every single thing you do.
Do you do the things that you do because you enjoy and value them? Or are your actions dictated by the need to collect a paycheck, to make your parents happy, or to compete with others?
Tune into your true identity to discover who you are meant to be.
Seneca knew better than anyone the importance of self-awareness and frequently observed how little most people actually know about themselves. He once wrote:
“Death lies heavy upon one who, known exceedingly well by all, dies unknown to himself.”
When you live a life that dictates your every action, you lose the single most important thing that makes you unique: your self-identity. Fortunately, awareness is the key to rediscovering yourself.
As you go down this road of instilling a full and undeniable sense of self-awareness within yourself, you’re going to have to break free from many of the responsibilities that control your inner dialog and dictate your actions. You’re going to have to rediscover who you really are by learning to listen to what it is that you truly desire. You’re going to have to make the decisions that you know are right, even if you don’t receive outside approval.
It’s a true blessing to have full control of your decisions in life. Once you learn to let go of all your cares and worries around money, acceptance, and the status quo, you’ll finally start to gain a true understanding of who you are.
Because, after all, if there’s one person you should know, it’s yourself.
