How to know & understand yourself 

What makes us human is our natural will to think and make rational decisions – if not, we are as good as animals. walking around aimlessly waiting for its turn to die.

What truly makes us human is that we are free to make decisions and direct the course of our lives. Unfortunately, a lot of people are not exercising their God-given rights to be human as most people are passively enduring their day-to-day lives.

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In this thread, I will show you how you can truly understand and connect with yourself.  This might sound funny but it’s not. I believe most people don’t know or understand themselves.

They don’t know why they live the way they do, they don’t know why they hang around the same losers they call friends, and they don’t know why they keep repeating the same habits that aren’t leading them to the life they want. 

How To Understand Yourself

• Spend quality time alone: This is especially for “extroverts”. Constantly spending time with people and not being able to listen to the voice within you is a recipe for disaster. This is not to glorify being termed as introverts either. But if you’re the type who barely spends time alone…you hate solitude so much that you’d rather be around people or feel the atmosphere with all sorts of noise. What you want to do is intentionally separate yourself from people and spend time alone in a quiet atmosphere thinking and listening to yourself. This is not to say you spend time alone doing drugs or taking in alcohol. You need your mind sharp and your thinking clear to be able to understand yourself. 

• Separate yourself from yourself: what this means is that you intentionally start seeing yourself as a third party. Let’s say as a new friend you just met whose life and wellbeing have been placed in your hands. As much as you love and care for this new friend of yours, you want to be critical in your approach to dealing with this new friend. You won’t hesitate to tell him the truth and call him out on his bullshit. You question every self-deprecating habit he’s engaging in and make sure he starts doing better. when you were young, your parents and probably some relatives are in charge of doing this for you. But as you’re an adult now, everyone believes you’re old enough to be your own man. So, rise up and be your own man. 

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• Keep a Journal: Keeping a journal can help you Fastrack your growth into becoming the best version of yourself. As your brain is mainly for thinking not for storing information, it’s in your best interest to keep a journal that allows you to track everything you’re doing right and everything you’d like to change in your life. With the help of a journal, you will develop self-awareness – the ability to know and fully understand yourself.  Don’t think you can achieve any significant growth in your earliest phase of trying to understand yourself without keeping a journal. If you want to understand yourself you first have to know yourself. When you know yourself, you can start asking yourself why you do the things you do. Like a therapist, you scrutinize everything you do and every emotion you feel. This process is powerful and won’t be easy at first, but with time, you’d get better. By asking yourself thorough questions and getting honest answers, you start the process of understanding yourself. You’re able to critically analyze or diagnose the problems in your life to the point of determining a solution. 

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Conclusion

Maybe you’ve noticed, that there’s a great relationship between the 3 steps I’ve listed above.  Spending time alone will help you listen to the voices in your head and feel your emotions deeply. Separating yourself from yourself will help you critically rationalize your thoughts without the tainted effects of your emotions. Lastly, with the help of a journal, you can write down your thoughts and keep track of the changes you want to make.

Content by: Odumeru Olamide

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