How to learn to KNOW YOURSELF better and where to START! (3 main ingredients)

Know Thyself! Many masters that have lived on this planet have mentioned the importance of knowing yourself, but not many of us follow this advice… If you are one of the brave souls that decided to go on a self-discovery journey, today I will tell you the 3 main ingredients that you need to learn to know yourself better, and where to start!

Knowing yourself is an art! And the more you know yourself, more clearly you can see other people and have a deeper understanding about them. The way we perceive others is connected to the level of perception that we have developed about ourselves first, it’s proportional! When you know what’s going on inside you that makes you act in certain ways, you will be able to have the same level of understanding towards other people.

The journey to know yourself is a beautiful one and it will empower you a lot because you will get to know your true strengths and limitations. And it’s a journey that nobody can do for you, other than yourself. Though sometimes, when people tell you about the way they perceive you, can help you a lot to raise your awareness, especially when you hear the same thing from 2 or 3 different people!

To start this kind of journey, you need 3 things: honesty, self-observation and time alone! Now, let me expand on these topics…

Be Honest with Yourself

Have you ever heard the saying “You can lie to everyone else, but you cannot lie to yourself”? Well, I completely disagree with it! I’ve met many people that have a very distorted perception about who they are, and they do lie to themselves a lot! Maybe you cannot call it a lie when people cover up their issues with a lot of justifications in order to avoid seeing the truth! It’s more like an omission, but still, it’s not a full honest attitude towards themselves!

How many people do you know that are in a terrible relationship and they keep saying “Oh, my relationship is great!”, and they keep emphasizing the good parts of it as if it was an attempt to avoid seeing the flaws.

See, you can definitely lie to yourself or at least avoid seeing the truth! And if you want to embark on a self-discovery journey, you will need to practice honesty all the time and get used to speak out loud your worst thoughts… people don’t need to hear them, only you!

And you will need to get used to recognize your dark sides as well! All of us have a dark side, and by that I don’t mean evil, I mean flaws that we need to bring to our awareness, so we can look at them and work to improve!

The Self-Observation Skill

Now, let’s talk about self-observation! If you are not used to it, initially you will have to force yourself, and with time and practice, this behavior will become automatic! Self-observation must happen in 2 levels, external and internal! And they are connected because usually the way we act in life is a reflection what’s going on inside us!

And between the two, internal is definitely more important! We wear many masks in society, we play different roles and characters in our lives, and we are highly conditioned… but our inner world is where our true selves live! So being aware of it is the most important part of any kind of personal journey! Plus, the way you feel inside can work as a compass, a thermometer, and it can help you to get more aligned in your life and with your true essence!

You will know you have mastered self-observation art when, at any given moment, you become able to recognize and describe what is happening in your inner world! And also, when you become aware of the connection between the things that happen inside and outside of you.

The Need for Time Alone

You cannot get to know yourself better if you are too distracted by everything that is happening around you. That would be like starting a romantic relationship and always meeting the person in a night club, would you really be able to get to know the person well in this kind of noisy place? Obviously not!

Self-discovery is based primary on the relationship to know yourself deeply! You will need time alone to do that. If you have family and kids, you will have to figure it out sometime to be with yourself on a weekly basis. You have to commit yourself to the process, the same way as you would have to commit to a therapist. Actually, therapy might be something that can help you a lot, and if you can afford it, you should consider it.

You need this time alone to dive deep inside yourself! Some of the things you can do is to work on some questions to open room for reflection, some journaling and some research and studies on the topics you are working on!

Where to start the Self-Discovery Journey

Start with your biggest problem! Which aspect of your life is the one that mostly bother you? And when you look at it, don’t blame the world for it! For example, don’t say that your love life is terrible because there are no good partners out there, that’s not true! If you have issues in your love life, especially if there is a pattern that repeats itself many times, I’m really sorry to inform you but the problem is with you! So instead blaming others just ask yourself, what is wrong with me that is causing this difficulty in my life?

Most of our problems come from our minds and from lack of alignment with who we truly really are! By the time we are 20 years old, we are highly conditioned, full of limiting beliefs in our subconscious mind and we are disconnected from our essence! So the journey to know yourself better is about dismantling all of this that is not you and become more aligned with your true energy!

Once you have identified what you need to work on, I have a post about how to find your own personal truth, where I talks about this process of questioning, searching and finding your answers, click here to read!

The first step is the hardest one, once you align yourself in one area of your life, it will become easier to work in all the other ones! You just need to start and understand how the process is!