Some reflections concerning life: 1.- To know oneself

Created by:

Carlos Lasserre

Introduction

In many times, in the endless process of learning that is life, I stopped to analyze things that have worked for me, and the ones that didn’t. And when I managed to separate the two groups, I could see clearly that there are marked differences between the actions which led me to success and others that led me to fail. The concepts that I point out below are the keys that I believe, allow us to better identify the path to the goals, go through it and then demarcate for the next track.

To accomplish this I pointed out four ideas that are repeated in each of my challenges: "Know yourself", "Be protagonist", "Living consciously now" and "Give as much as possible"

The motivation to develop them is related to live a quiet and fulfilling life, with a better management of our talents available to our goals.

It is important to note that none of these concepts subsists alone, and they are all intrinsically interrelated. It is impossible to give as much as possible without knowing oneself, or live consciously now without choosing being protagonist. But the implementation of these ideas is only possible if we have the courage it takes. As I usually say, “life is like poker: No matter how much you win or lose, the important thing is how much you bet”.  And the spirit of a person can be measured by the size of his/her bets.

That is why I don’t relate the concept of success or failure to results, but to form. Negative results are often the basis for future success. The real failure is not to try, or to try it mistakenly not intending to enhance consciously.

These concepts are my best way to try.

1.- To know oneself

This story begins with a terrifying question: How can we spend 100% of our time with ourselves, or sleeping, walking, thinking, acting with ourselves and yet know so little about us?

From our younger years, we are taught the importance of knowledge, and we spent an important part of our life developing disciplined learning mechanisms. So we acquire information about events, phenomenon, dates and especially about people, many of them introduced as relevant. We study and analyze their motives, their actions and their consequences, but,  What about ourselves? Is it a task that we set aside by considering it personal, or even worse, less valuable?

It is likely that first question explains itself from the same emotion that it generates: fear. Because the process of knowing oneself is much more related to discovery than to learn. We are there, on the other side of the curtain, is just  we do not see ourselves. A revealing quotation Erica Jong considers by referring to advices: "Advice is what we ask every time we know the answer to something, but we rather not know it." What she means is that we prefer to live in uncertainty, fearing not knowing how to handle the question’s answer. That is the first major barrier to be overcome when knowing oneself: overcoming fear. But it's not fear of what is on the other side of the curtain, but rather how we will handle it when we meet. Nobody has taught us to do it, fear is a logical defense response.

Let stop at that point.

Are we aware of the opportunities we are missing because we do not know ourselves?

Many times I think we are not. And therein lies the key to the whole process, acquiring a greater fear than the fear of not knowing how to handle ourselves: the fear of wasting our life potential.

Lets review what we’re missing by not knowing ourselves:

a. Management of desires and frustrations:

If we really knew our strengths and weaknesses, if we understand which are our real limitations, necessarily we would have a better control over our frustrations. On a scale of 1 to 100, is not the same aspiring 100 without knowing where we are positioned, to aspire knowing it, for instance,  that we are positioned in 50. Or we can reduce the goal from 100 to 70 and make it more attainable, or we can prepare to cover the entire gap of 50. But whatever the case, it is impossible to raise a proper strategy to overcome without knowing the starting point. Any other attempt would be an unnecessary waste of time, energy and talent.

b.    Management of self-esteem and interpersonal relationships:

Why do we allow our self-esteem being altered by definitions that other people do to ourselves? Because the definitions and concepts of others take shape and sense in us when we have no definition. And we can perfectly live many years with a false reality of ourselves, ever built and nurtured by others. How is it possible then to develop our self-esteem, understand and love each other, if we have not an accurate idea of who we are? Following the logic above. How authentic interpersonal relationships can be built without the knowledge of ourselves?

The eternal question of How can we love others without loving us? And how can we love ourselves without knowing ourselves?

c.   To have what we need

A famous quotation goes: "Better you love what you do than doing what you want". I change it for "Better you love what you need." There is a dangerous gap between what we want and what we need, which is a clear sign of not listening. This difference usually overwhelms us and frustrates us. Logic dictates that decreases progressively with self-knowledge.

All these are just basic examples of the power of self-knowledge. A motto that I use in Engineering whenever required to solve a problem is: "80% of the solution for a problem is really understanding what the problem is." Once known, the remains is easier. This is because our learning is much more oriented to solve problems to understand their origin. Hence our solutions do not satisfy us, we are not solving the problem.

But the process of self-knowledge is dynamic, and since we are constantly changing it is important to remember that it requires a deep and fluid communication with ourselves to update us about who we are.

Two practical examples to develop this subject:

Example 1:

Prepare a list of your main strengths and weaknesses. Then ask two people who know you well to prepare the same list. Compare the lists and list the main differences, one in where you found yourself and the others didn’t and vice versa. These gaps can be an interesting starting point in the construction of self-knowledge.

 

Example 2:

Prepare a list of those things you normally spend your time during the day. Prepare another list of the things that you really like to spend your time in. Compare both lists and list the main differences, both in what you do and do not want to do, and not do and what you like to do. Analyzes these differences and the communication you have with yourself, how much you know  and listen to yourself.