How do you look? Are you tall? Short? Freckled? Pimpled?
How do you feel? Happy? Sad? Filled with an overwhelming urge to watch the world burn as you cackle madly?
How do you dress? Denim? Flowery Patterns? Polka-frigging-Dots?
What’s important to you? Happiness? Power? Familial Ties?
What’s your personality like? Optimistic? Introverted? Gloomy?
There are also a million other questions that could be asked. Each on of them uncovers a little small part of you. Parts you don’t even realize are there.
So why is this important?
If you know a machine’s full capacity, it is able to operate at full efficiency. Similar to us humans, by understanding the various complex parts about ourselves, we are able to make the most out of this life.
Isn’t that what we all want?
Most of us only have a superficial understanding of ourselves.
How many seasons on Netflix we can watch before we die on the couch.
How little sleep we need to get through class tomorrow.
How much ice cream we can eat before filling sick.
How well we can tolerate spicy food.
That’s all we know about ourselves.
In this competitive dog-eat-dog world, we scurry about trying to obtain skills to differentiate us.
Be the best at one thing and be the best at another, then you will be the greatest in both fields.
So we compete. Off we bustle to master music, or hit the gym, or practice basketball. All for the sake of outdoing our companions.
We focus so much on our external self we forsake our internal self. We expect that our internal self will grow together as time passes or with every external skill we gain. It is the other way around. The more we know ourselves, the better and faster our external self will grow.
Say you are about to go on stage to give your graduation speech. Nevertheless, minutes before you have to step up, you are struck by unexpected immense stage fright. Most likely you will screw up no matter how well you memorized your speech. Your external skills won’t help in this situation.
By understanding yourself deeply, you would be able to predict if you would get stage fright (most likely yes), how strong it would affect you, and how you might overcome it. Maybe you are a familial person, thus family support would be helpful. Or you could be self conscious about how you look; dressing well in what suits you might be a method to alleviate the fear.
You could even take it a step further. If you are an extrovert, you could make use your personality to make the speech lively and funny. If are a passionate,emotional person, use that to your advantage by giving a speech tat can touch the hearts of the audience.
It isn’t hard to understand yourself. Just like any other skill, it takes time and effort. All you need to do is become self aware, what makes you tick, how do you feel. As you keep questioning yourself, habits and actions that you never realized existed will slowly become clear.
So, how well do you know yourself?
Thank you for taking the time to read! I appreciate it.
