Personal Discovery: Who Am I? Part 2

One of the things I find most helpful in jumpstarting this conversation is to take a free day off just to spend with yourself and yourself ONLY. No one else should be able to intrude on this day, not family, not friends, not even strangers talking near you. If there’s just no other way, get a cheap local motel room. Lock yourself in with no other distractions except a notebook and writing utensils (make sure to bring spares) and a couple of sandwiches and drinks. Use this day as a quiet time of reflection, a time just for you and the conversation you have with yourself. With nothing and no one around, you can truly and fully be the person you are without any outside influences, no censoring, no second-guessing, and no interruptions.

Now, sit down and start writing whatever is in your mind. It doesn’t matter what it is, or even if it makes sense, just write it down. If you can’t get started and find yourself just staring at a blank piece of paper, here are some questions to get started: Who am I? Why am I doing this? What do I want? Where am I going? When this day is done, what am I going to do?

Start with these deliberately vague questions but as other thoughts come into your mind, start writing them down and segue into stream-of-consciousness writing. It may begin slowly but hopefully, as you allow yourself to completely step into that mode, it will get easier and faster. It doesn’t have to make sense, have any order to it, or be grammatically correct. It doesn’t even have to be real words or any words at all. Don’t censor yourself or try to write what you think you should write. Don’t analyze or make any decisions. Just let the words in your mind flow out naturally. Do this for as long as you can. Then rest, spend time thinking, reflecting, daydreaming, or just woolgathering. Then go back and write some more.

If you’re having difficulties loosening up, then make a solemn agreement with yourself to destroy it after you’re done with it. Rip it up, throw it away, or dunk it in a bucket of paint. That way, no one, not even yourself, will ever have the exact words you wrote. But please make sure to destroy it after we’re completely done with it.

Now, take some time at the end to read over what you wrote. Keep an open mind and try to remain objective. Do you notice any recurring themes? Recurring images? Recurring thoughts? Patterns? Any revelations that are particularly important? Take a blank sheet of paper out of the notebook. Note these down. What do these mean to me? Do they have any connections with each other? Where do they come from? What emotional attachment do I have to them? Also, write down your reflections on the general process and any concluding thoughts you may have.

This is a more formal process of starting up a conversation with yourself. Sometimes, it is better to do it this way, even if you are in the habit of self-reflection, because this is a more structured and isolated way to take time for yourself when so much of the world tends to intrude on even our innermost thought processes.

The informal process is to do the same thing inside your mind, as a constant background hum. Keep note of your thoughts and reactions. Are there recurring themes? What does this mean? If you’ve never actively done this before, try to do it consciously for limited times throughout the day, every day. Soon, as you get used to doing it daily, it will start happening automatically and you will find yourself noticing more and more things about yourself and your own thought processes. This is the ongoing conversation we want. As we ponder the subjects we will talk about later, we want to keep up this constant self-reflection and cycle of feedback.