Know Yourself
To know yourself is key to personal growth and success. Understanding yourself, your strengths, weaknesses, values, and motivations is critical for building strong relationships and achieving success in all areas of life.
To know yourself is your first priority!
How can you realistically set goals, go about life, and have successful relationships if you don't know who you are or what you want? You really can't.
Not knowing yourself will lead to confusion and wasting much time in hit-and-miss situations.
We tend to underestimate the importance of knowing ourselves. Many of us go through each day reacting to events and just getting by rather than making conscious choices based on who we are and what we want.
When we don't know where we are headed, it's hard to set goals, get motivated, and determine the best course of action. We must establish who we are before we can do any of these things.
To know yourself:
Be aware of your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes
Observe and be aware of your moods, reactions, and responses to what is happening around you
Become aware of how these moods and emotions affect your state of mind
Examine how you interact with others
Observe how your environment affects you
Knowing and understanding yourself better leads to better decision-making, setting and reaching appropriate goals, and ultimately living a more productive life.
Similarly, when you know and understand yourself, you can have better relationships with others. This self-awareness allows you to communicate effectively, set personal boundaries, and be more empathetic.
Knowing your tendencies and emotional proclivities can help you avoid conflicts and build healthier, more fulfilling connections with those around you.
There are many interesting personality tests and evaluations for self-discovery that can help you become more in tune with yourself and are also fun to do.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MTBI) and The Enneagram are two powerful tools I found to be exceptionally helpful.
These tools help you better understand yourself and what drives some of your behaviors, as well as what drives the behavior of others.
The MBTI is often used in employee training, marriage counseling, and personal development.
Some fun quizzes to take include: