How well do you know yourself?
I am so tempted not to leave a post today, for it has been a very hectic week. 
But i knew, if I succumb to that temptation, it will be my first step to do it over and over again. I know myself that well, that when I succumb to a situation like that and have a nice justification, everything will start to crumble again. Ah! The will. The patience. “God give me patience -I need it NOW!”
Anyways, let me ask again: How well do you know yourself? Was it Shakespeare who wrote in the famous Hamlet: Know thyself?Learning to know yourself is not easy. One way of course is to know how you use your time and prioritize. And there is also a need for us to accept ourselves, who we are, including accepting our failings. We play a lot of roles everyday. We play the role of a professional, a boss, a father, a friend, a driver, and so on and so forth. All these roles entail functions and responsibilities and are governed by set of rules and standards. We need to accept those terms too. Can we?
Each is unique. Each to his own. Different people have different energy levels and require different amounts of time to rest and think. (Darn. It’s Saturday. Am I not supposed to be skin diving somewhere?) One person can’t perform on less than 8-hour sleep, while I can make it through the day with only an hour of sleep. The point being, one person may find the lack of sleep emotionally draining while the other finds it exhilarating. Each to his own. Do you know your limitations?
What is important is knowing yourself by recognizing your limitations and harnessing your gifts and strengths. If you know your impediments, work something out to make them into assets, rather than liabilities. Evaluate your daily routines at work, at play or at home and learn to put more efforts where you are failing. These things are easily done if you pause once in a while to reflect about or analyze your strides, goals, dreams, roles and motivations.
So, how well do you know yourself? Tell me, what have you done to really find out who you are?
Very interesting post. I think I know myself pretty well. But then there are days that I wish I didn’t know myself too well. Such as, I tend to procrastinate when I have ample time to get something done. When the deadline nears, I make a mad dash to accomplish what I’ve put off.
I believe there are people that purposely refuse to look inwards and discover their true self. They either fear what they might see or deny what they see. It’s not easy to look honestly at oneself. We see things that we don’t like, and sometimes we see things that we do like. But mostly, it’s always the negative aspects about ourselves that keeps us from seeing our true selves. Fear keeps a person from looking honestly at their self. And if they don’t look, they don’t grow.
On a good note, if one wants to improve and better himself/herself, then that person will always be searching and looking within themselves.
“I believe there are people that purposely refuse to look inwards and discover their true self. They either fear what they might see or deny what they see. It’s not easy to look honestly at oneself.“
exactly. well said rain.
true, if only if we are willing to look within and are unafraid then we can easily find-out both the ugly and nice things about ourselves, and there begin to accept them. The acceptance, especially of the ugly things, can help us ‘improve and better’ ourselves.
thanks for sharing those simple yet profound thoughts rain.
I definitely agree. The key to being successful is knowing yourself. But, I am constantly amazed at how hard it is. I’ve always thought I constantly carefully look at myself to see how I am performing and where I can improve. There are a lot of things that prevent us from knowing ourselves closely. Societal, parental, monetary restrictions, social boundaries, etc. I don’t think that we really know ourselves until we’re tested in a variety of situations. I don’t know about most young professionals but my experiences have been rather limited. Small undergrad, grad school, internship and now career in a conservative career field. So I suppose I need to get out more
I’d be interested to hear what the keys are to learning about yourself. I’m familiar with all that “self-help” info out there but sometimes that advice is generalized and not specific enough for daily evaluation.