Get to know yourself better to live better
Knowing yourself better is the key to living a full, rich and healthy life. This process can last a lifetime, as people are changing, evolving.
Although our temperament remains more or less stable over time, life experiences favor us to change opinions, interests and even values or moral principles.
People evolve throughout life. And that's what makes this inner journey so fascinating, don't you think? However, this makes the process of self-knowledge somewhat more complex, although not for that less valuable.
- Related article: "Self-concept: what is it and how is it formed?"
Benefits of self-knowledge
Knowing yourself well means living better for many reasons:
- A personal map is created that works as a guide even in the most stressful situations.
- Improve your emotional self-control.
- It makes you a more autonomous and creative person.
- It favors states of fullness and inner calm.
- Reduce stress by channeling energy into the things that are truly important to you.
- It leads you to surround yourself with people who enrich and contribute to you.
- Internal conflicts caused by lack of coherence are reduced.
- They reduce friction with your loved ones, since you anticipate (and anticipate) your reactions more easily.
- Improve job performance by being more aware of your strengths and limitations and using them to your advantage.
Definitely, being aware of who you are leads you to make better decisions, decisions that although they are not ideal, will be aligned with you and your personal values.
Keep in mind that making decisions has more to do with coherence (with which there is harmony between what you feel, think, say and do) that with the security of making the best decision possible. By deciding, we are embracing uncertainty and the possibility of being wrong.
The important thing is that self-knowledge takes you, decision by decision, step by step, towards the life you really want and deserve to live. But... What does it take to deepen that knowledge?
- You may be interested in: "Do you really know what self-esteem is?"
Requirements to get to know each other better
To know yourself you need to pay attention. It is necessary turn up the volume of that inner voice that speaks to us even though we do not listen.
Many times, we pay more attention to the voices around us than to our own. Whether due to insecurity, low self-esteem, fear of disappointment, failure, rejection... we tend not to prioritize our inner voice.
You have to listen to your inner voice in order to know yourself. Self-knowledge also requires a great deal of patience and self-criticism. since it is about getting an idea as realistic as possible of our strengths and strengths, but also of our weaknesses and weaknesses. And this is not always easy to accept.
Here are some practical ways to get to know you better.
1. Go to a quiet, natural or special place for you.
Silence helps to connect internally, the contact with nature as well. You have realized? Try to get out of your usual environment, or schedule some time alone in a quiet place in your house, better if it is special.
2. Write, write down, review
A very powerful exercise is the following: write anything that comes to mind, it doesn't matter if it makes a lot of sense.
You can also create an emotional diary, in which you collect how you feel, what feelings you are having over time, what things worry you ...
You can go back to what you have written later to witness your own evolution. It is important that you try to understand what your habitual patterns are: what do you usually do when faced with a certain emotion, how you relate to your thoughts, to your emotions ...
3. Think in terms of need
Not all people need the same thing at all times. Understanding what you need helps you give it to yourself, in a gesture of love. And this is part of who you are to know where you really want to go.
4. Use creativity
Both the use of artistic tools such as painting, dancing, singing, sculpture, as well as trying to be creative / mentally will be useful.
An example of creative thinking is as follows: Imagine that you are a witness to your own funeral. Recreate the people who would be there as well as the things you would like them to say about you. How do they describe you? What words do they use to refer to you? What events or actions do they point to as relevant to your life?
This creative visualization invites us to reflect on what we value.
In conclusion
It is not always easy to be objective enough to get to know yourself in depth. Going to therapy gives us the opportunity to learn to know ourselves better, from the hand of professionals who accompany us and who work like a flashlight where we cannot see.
