Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Self Part 2

First comes understanding, next we need motivation. What is the reason why you want to change? How will this make you a person more in line with the person you would like to be? There needs to be an end-goal or a desire in mind. This is so important, because without motivation, the desire to change will be nonexistent. Without a desire to change, little change will actually happen. We can only change if we want to change. Our minds are generally set in specific patterns of behaviors and ways of thinking, called schemas. We use these schemas to take our experiences and filter them into something we understand based on our previous life experiences. Then based on what we have learned in the past about what we should do or say in certain situations, we create maps in our head to direct the way we respond. Once we have set our minds into these certain maps, it is very difficult to change since we’re basically rejecting what our brain thinks is our interpretation of reality. If something goes against them, we naturally tend to reject it or twist it in such a way as to fit these patterns.

Therefore, without awareness and a desire to change, our minds will naturally be resistant to any change we want to accomplish in our life. So motivation is key. When people try to quit addictions, only some succeed. A major difference between the people who succeed and the people who don’t is because there is something in their life that is so important to them, so desirable that it trumps any withdrawal symptoms and desires to fall back into the old behavior.

There was a man who was quite a bit overweight and he really wanted to slim down. No matter what he tried, nothing seemed to help. One day, he was reading a magazine when an ad caught his eye. “100% guaranteed to help you lose weight or your money back!” He figured there was nothing to lose so he bought the “Lose 5lbs. in a week” package just to try it out. The next day, someone rang his doorbell. When he opened the door, he found a beautiful woman standing there dressed only in a small bikini and white running shoes. Around her neck hung a small sign, “Catch me and I’m yours.” She took off running and he gave chase. As hard as he tried, he never caught her that whole week. However, he had lost the 5 lbs.

Delighted, he sent out for the “Lose 10lbs. in a week” package. The next day, the doorbell rang and he found an even more beautiful woman on his doorstep, dressed in nothing but a bikini and white running shoes. Around her neck hung a small sign, “Catch me and I’m yours.” Again, she took off running and though he tried his hardest, he couldn’t catch her all week. At the end of that week, however, he had lost the 10 lbs.

Emboldened by his successes, he sent out for their best package, “Lose 25lbs. in one week”. The next day his doorbell rang. Excitedly, he opened the door. On his doorstep stood a hairy giant of a man, his grin missing teeth, dressed in nothing but a small Speedo and white running shoes. Around his neck hung a sign, “If I catch you, you are mine.” At the end of the week, the man had lost his 25lbs.

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Self Part 1

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Through these last few sections, we have hopefully come to a greater understanding of ourselves. However, we may know ourselves but still not accept ourselves. We want to be like someone else or just have different qualities. In order to be a better person, however, may simply becoming more of yourself. We are unique, a mix of genes, environment, socioeconomic factors, our place in history, and our souls. There is no one like us. Even identical twins have different personalities, different ways of looking at something. Cats that are cloned can end up being differently colored. There is no replication of the whole package of us. How priceless is it to be 100% unique in the whole world, in the whole of human history, never to be replicated, never to be found anywhere ever again? Still, we find ourselves unsatisfied, longing to obtain certain qualities or characteristics that we feel will give us greater acceptance or greater love.

Yet, who can love you as much as you yourself can? Am I saying to be egotistical or self-serving? To think you are better than everyone else? No. Self-love and self-centeredness are very different. Everyone has their good and bad qualities, their varying strengths and weaknesses. To think we are a better person compared to others based solely on a few qualities, especially qualities that we have little control over, is incorrect. Loving ourselves does not give us free rein to subjugate others or to hate others for not being us. Loving ourselves means to accept ourselves for the person we are and love our own unique qualities for what they are. Loving ourselves is a relationship we enjoy with ourselves and has nothing to do with others.

To love ourselves, we need to know our own personal identity, the identity that isn’t dependent on anyone else. Imagine you are in a deserted island with no one around. No one knows your name. No one will expect anything of you. No one will care what you say or what you do or what you feel or what you want. Who are you in that moment? What kind of person are you? That is your true personal identity. That is what you want to change if you indeed want to change it. If you want to change yourself, it should only be to better yourself and to accept yourself more fully, with or without the need for acceptance from others. This identity is the one we have to come to terms with, the one we need to learn to accept and all that comes with it, its good and bad and strengths and weaknesses. Once we accept ourselves fully, we learn to love ourselves fully and this is the love, which we in turn must learn to give out to others. There is a fine line between wanting to change and still being at peace with the person you are and wanting change because you are displeased with yourself.

“To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.” – Kurt Cobain

We can only change by understanding what truly needs to be changed and what doesn’t, what can be changed and what can’t, and to be at peace with the difference.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

[Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr]

Once we figure out what can be changed and what needs to be changed, we have to look at where it came from in the first place. In order to uproot a behavior or a way of thinking, we need to find the main root or foundation. You can pull out everything else but if you fail to pull the main root, not only will it come back, it may come back stronger. We need to come to an understanding of the reasons behind something because that is what needs to be changed before the actual behavior or way of thinking can be changed.

This is where self-reflection comes in again. Like we discussed previously, everything that happens has a cause. We must find that cause and figure out where it comes from. Not only that, but we need to understand what part of us chooses to make the decision of certain behaviors. Even if we are not conscious of it, there is always something that actively chooses to go ahead with an action and always a reason behind that choice. To find that reason, to find what pushes us forward towards that behavior is to find out what to focus our attention on.

Personal Discovery: Future Aspirations Part 3

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to even go forward and do that first little baby step. We have a fear that stops us, preventing us from accomplishing what we want. This is nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone has his or her own fears. The key here is to acknowledge that you do have fears and to figure out what exactly you are fearful of. What are the underlying reasons that are holding you back from going ahead? Where do those fears come from?

It is often difficult to face something new and difficult so we procrastinate and put it off. There’s no need for that. The first time will be hard and uncertain and possibly uncomfortable. So will the second time and maybe even the third time. If you keep doing it, soon it will become like second nature, instinctive and experienced. Try not to put it off for too long. It is better to work hard at first. The rest will be easier. The longer it is put off, the harder it will be to have the motivation to go ahead and the more difficult it may be to accomplish. Even, if in the course of pursuing a goal, you discover that this goal is something you don’t like, aren’t good at, doesn’t fit the person you are or want to be, or even all of the above, there is no need to perceive this as a failure or even a setback. Now we know even better where we are headed than when we first started when we figure out where not to go. Also, the skills and experience found in past experiences, even those not in the same category, can be very pertinent and useful in future pursuits. All experiences are worthwhile, as long as we are willing to figure out how to apply them.

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult” – Seneca

Activity:

What’s the worst that could happen? Grab some paper and list your fears. Now, let’s play an imagining game. For each fear for a goal, write down the worst thing that you could think could happen. Make it a story. It doesn’t have to be realistic. Just write down the very worst scenario. Use your imagination and creativity. Now, read it over and ask yourself, how likely is this to happen?

Then take each part of your worst scenario and think to yourself, what would I do if this happened? How would I survive? What could I do with what I have? Again, use your imagination and creativity. Think outside the box. Now, even though the fear may still be there, you now have an action plan to combat it with. If you ever start thinking, what if this happens? Think about your action plan.

Finally, we have to figure out what success means to us anyways. Your definition of success is based on the person that you are and what you want to accomplish in your life. See if you can distill it down to one sentence. This definition of success will help you focus your strivings and let you know when you have reached it. Without a proper definition, you may never know when you have reached success so you will always remain just short of it. In some cases, this is useful in pushing yourself forward but eventually, it can lead to a perpetual dissatisfaction with your direction in life. Know what you are striving for and go make each day a success.

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” – Bill Copeland

Personal Discovery – Future Aspirations Part 2

Goals are very important but even more important is to have dreams. Dreams are different from goals in that dreams don’t have to be as practical though they should still be SMART. It doesn’t even have to be what path we want our life to be on. They can be interesting side-trips or things that you’ve always wanted to do for no other reason that you want to do them. They can be large dreams that really do engulf our life and determine our path or they can be tiny dreams that whisper every so often in our hearts. Whatever dream they may be, it is important to take that risk. Even though it may not be essential to pursue our dreams and still be able to accomplish our goals, it is our dreams that bring new dimensions to our lives, making them multi-faceted and interesting.

“All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney

The term “bucket list” has come up a lot recently. It basically is a list of things you want to accomplish before you “kick the bucket”, or die. Now, dying is a rather vague notion. We could die anytime. We could die tomorrow or we could die 100 years from now and we generally don’t have much of an idea of exactly when it’ll happen. A lot of people who make bucket lists don’t actually do much with them. They feel that they have a while to go before they die so they have time to put it off. So, in order to not procrastinate further, here is a proposal to tweak the bucket list concept:

Activity:

Make a list of 25 things that you want do in the next 25 years. They don’t have to be big things or life-altering things. They can just be things that you’ve always dreamed of doing or thought it’d be really fun to accomplish. Choose one to do this year. If you don’t know where to start, just as you did for your goals, make them SMART and break them up over and over until you have a lot of little baby steps.

Some of you may be wondering, well what if I don’t have 25 years to live? What if I die tomorrow? It doesn’t matter. The fact that you are working towards something that you really want to do is enough. And, if you accomplish everything in less than 25 years, even better! If you live longer than 25 years, make a new list or even just add new dreams whenever it strikes your mood. Just keep reaching towards what you dream of. It’s in the act of reaching further and stretching our own capabilities that is the important process here. When you know you can accomplish what you put your mind towards, it will impart more confidence that we can accomplish even more.

Personal Discovery: Future Aspirations Part 1

In order to take the next steps in your life, it often helps to actually know where we are heading and if that direction is where we actually want to go. Often, when people ask us what our future aspirations are, we rattle off an occupation or career that we are working towards but how often do we think about why we are working towards that in the first place? How do we know if we have succeeded in what we were working towards?

What exactly is success anyways?

There was a man, a new graduate from business school named Tom, who went to the Philippines for vacation. One day, while walking along the beach, he noticed a fisherman pulling in his boat with the day’s catch in it. He went over to examine it and to talk to the fisherman.

Tom: How long did it take to catch the fish?
Fisherman: Only a few hours.
Tom: Was it easy to catch the fish?
Fisherman: Easy if you know what to do.
Tom: What are you going to do with the fish?
Fisherman: I think I’ll sell some of them to the nearby market. Then I’ll fry some up and eat them. The rest I’ll give to my friends.
Tom: So, what do you do the rest of the day?
Fisherman: Probably just go visit some friends. We’ll relax on the beach and drink beer and make music and talk and enjoy.
Tom: You seem to have a lot of time on your hands. Well! Today is your lucky day! I just graduated from business school, the top of my class. With my business expertise and your fishing expertise, we can start our own fishing company! You would spend more time fishing and catch a lot more fish and then I can sell those fish into bigger and better markets. Soon we could afford a bigger more high-tech boat to catch more fish!
Fisherman: Then what?
Tom: Well, then, we’d eventually own a large fleet of top-of-the-line fishing boats. We could sell to international markets and become very rich!
Fisherman: Then what?
Tom: Well, then we would save up all that money and invest it in the right projects to make more money. We could become multi-billionaires.
Fisherman: Then what?
Tom: Well, then…then we’d retire together and we’d relax on the beach, drink beer, make music, and talk all day.

This story illustrates the very important difference between knowing exactly what you want and being deluded into only thinking you know what you want out of your life. The fisherman was happy. He knew what he wanted and what he wanted was to relax with his friends and eat yummy fish. And he knew how to obtain what he wanted. Tom didn’t really know what he wanted. He thought that he wanted money and to be rich and own a lot of property. That was his dream. What he didn’t realize was that what he really wanted was exactly what the fisherman already had. We have to figure out exactly WHY we want the things we want and what exactly were are working towards. In this way, we can know which direction to go or know if we’re heading down a wrong direction, pursuing things that will ultimately give us results that aren’t desired, or wanting things that won’t satisfy us in the long run. To understand the reason why can also give us the confidence to go ahead with what we do think our goals should be.

There was a hamster that lived in a cage. He hated it there and wanted to escape above all else. So hour after hour, day after day, he gnawed at his cage. He gnawed until his teeth were ground down to little nubbins and yet he still didn’t give up. What he didn’t know was that he was one bar away from the latch. If only he had shifted right just a little bit, he would have been able to work himself free eventually. But, instead, he just kept gnawing away at the wrong bar and never escaped from that cage.

We have a lot of goals in life. Some are good ones and some that can be misguided. To understand which goals we should pursue, we have to understand why we are pursuing them and how to go about it the right way. Otherwise, we’ll just end up working and working and never getting anywhere we want, just like the hamster.

Activity:

Write down your key goals in life.  Doesn’t matter what it is. Just write down what you’re working towards. What do you want? Is it a partnership with that firm? Is it a home? Is it to travel around the world? Is it to have a starring role in a movie? Whatever it is, write it down.

Then pick one of them and write it down on the Goal Worksheet [find it in the worksheet section] For each goal, it’s time to act like a toddler who just learned the word WHY? Ask WHY? at least three times, though you are free to ask as many times as you want, and write down your answers.

Goal: I want to travel around the world. WHY? Because I like to experience new cultures. WHY? Because I like to figure out how cultures around the world are similar and different. WHY? Because I want to find a way for people around the world to relate to each other peacefully.}

So, using this example, questioning my reasoning behind this goal hasn’t dissuaded me from traveling around the world. In fact, it makes me want to do it even more but now I know what to focus on when I plan out my travels. It lets me get exactly what I want out of my travels rather than merely wandering aimlessly. Not only does this make me want to travel more, now that I know my key desire is to help people from different cultures relate to each other, I can find more opportunities around me perhaps even in my own neighborhood to indulge myself in what I really like to do. This not only narrows my focus in some aspects but it widens my perspective in other aspects. So for each goal you have, do the same, and see if it helps to focus or widen your perspective. For many of these goals, you will find yourself with a greater desire to go after them and for other goals, you may find that your desire to do them has lessened but you understand more your motivations for pursuing them. In that case, perhaps other goals, which may better fulfill your motivations, may arise.

In our current society, the technology and changing market situations change so quickly, there are occupations which have been born and become outdated within one person’s lifetime. Therefore, especially among the younger generation, they are less and less focused on having life-long careers so it is even more imperative to understand where our true passions lie. Then, no matter what happens in the global marketplace, a person can adapt accordingly based on their unique focus and interests.

Now that you have a better idea of where you’re going and why you’re going there, it’s time to draw yourself a map to get there. For each goal you want to pursue, we have to make them more easily attainable. The way to do this is to make SMART goals:

• S-Specific– design a goal that actually sounds like a goal. World peace is all very well but how will we know when we reach it? It’s better to have the goal of passing a human rights law. At least we will know exactly when we have attained it.

• M-Measurable– make that goal so that we can track its progress and measure how far along we have come. It is useful to have specific milestones along the way.

• A-Attainable– make that goal something that you really believe is within your reach. This is something where you can apply your new understanding of yourself to decide whether or not this is something you can reach. It’s good to reach a little further than what you think you can. However, everyone has different limits and you have to understand yours.

• R-Realistic– make a goal that is possible in this current world. For instance, it cannot defy the laws of science or wishing to be a supermodel when you’re shorter than 5 feet.

• T-Timely– make a goal that has a time-line. In giving yourself a deadline, you push yourself more to attain it in that time. This is also a good way of measuring how far you have come or need to go in your goals. This is used in conjunction with the measurable part of formulating goals.

Everyone has different goals and different ways of getting there based on our own unique mix of talents and ways of working. What does it take to reach your personal goals? Of course to accomplish goals, we have to work towards them but it can be difficult to know where or how to begin. In any situation that can seem overwhelming, it helps to break up the situation into smaller parts making it easier to deal with. If we take this further, we can keep breaking up the smaller pieces into still smaller pieces again and again until the pieces are so small that it becomes very simple and quick to accomplish. For each of these tiny steps we accomplish, we are one step closer to attaining that goal.

Activity: 

Go back to the goal you noted down on your Goal Worksheet.  Now, we’re going to modify them to make them SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Write down the modified goal on the bottom.  That’s the goal we’re going to work on.  Once we have our goal really worked out, it’s time to get cracking on them.

Grab some paper.  Take the newly modified goal and split them up into major action steps. Then split each action step into more action steps. Repeat until you have a list of little baby action steps you can take to get to your ultimate goal. Now, the hard part: go out and do the first tiny action step for each goal by the end of this week. You will be officially one step closer to fulfilling your goal. How does it feel? Do more if you’d like. Try to do at least 1 baby action step each week.

The most successful goals require a combination of talent and interest. Talent without interest may succeed in the short-run but it will become drudgery quickly, becoming hard to sustain when the almost-inevitable hard times come. Interest without talent can be sustained for a while during both good and bad times but often a person will reach a certain limit that they can’t go beyond. It can be a solid goal but very difficult to become much beyond average. To have both talent and interest means you will like doing it enough to sustain you during hard times or failure and you will be good enough at it to make it eventually as successful as you want it to be.

Personal Discovery: Defining our Self through our Relationship to Faith

For everyone, our relationship to our faith in a higher power plays a large part in our life. Even if you are an Atheist, not believing in the existence of a higher power, or an Agnostic, not sure whether there is a higher power or not, this particular belief of yours still plays a large part in your life. To look at the way our beliefs influence us, we need to look at it in three different ways.

We begin by looking at the present in both an inward and outward way. Faith can be focused inward on how it shapes and defines the person that we are. What faith and beliefs do we have currently? Is it a deep personal faith or something that just forms part of your identity? When you think of your faith, what emotions does it evoke? Is it encouraging or defeating you? How satisfied are you? If you aren’t satisfied, why not? What kind of person is it making you? How do you identify yourself with it and form your identity through it? Depending on the level of integration into our daily lives, they may heavily influence who we believe ourselves to be. Beliefs are a personal choice, sometimes more personal than many of the factors that influence us because they are something that dwells within us of our own will, not to be touched by others and only influenced if we specifically allow it to be. It is something that lives wholly within us but at the same time becomes greater than us connecting us to the world and other believers, both tangible and intangible. This unique hold it has on us can profoundly shape us.

Faith can also be focused outward on how we use that faith to affect our life and the lives of the people around us. How much does this faith connect to our daily life? What priority are we making to have it integrated into our lives? How do we show or hide our faith from others? Why? How does our faith change the way we interact with others and how we treat them? We often use our beliefs as a guide, a moral compass of which personal choices to make as well as how to act towards others. These choices and actions affect our future, opening certain doors and closing others. They are a physical and public representation of our beliefs, proclaiming them out loud to others. What message are we sending? Is it the same message we believe in? Often, the way others react to our expressions of faith can lead us to change the way we view ourselves, depending on the level that our identity is based on our beliefs. Public reaction may propel us into making choices but are we making these choices because we believe it is the right thing to do or because we want to go along with others? Again, it comes down to coming to a true understanding of our own interactions with our faith and to consciously choose what we are going to do with that understanding.

Of course, we must have been previously introduced to our beliefs at some point in our life. So, in taking a look at the past, we can start to understand how this belief became intertwined with the way we think. How did you come to this belief? Who introduced it to you and why did you accept it? What made this belief real to you? Or if it isn’t real to you, why do you still believe it? Whether or not our history with our own particular belief system is convoluted or not, there is always a process we follow: the initial introduction, the moment where we take that belief to be the truth, and a period of discovery in which we become better versed in our beliefs. Each of these makes a unique impact on the person we are, often changing our own identity and our patterns of behavior, even the course by which we live our lives. So it is imperative to understand our history with our beliefs. Even past beliefs have made indelible changes in our unique history and make-up.

Faith is an incredibly personal thing, expressed and repressed in so many different ways, with a unique impact on our self. That is why there is no activity for this section. The best way to focus on this section is to go through the questions and spend time in deep self-reflection. In this way, we come to a better understanding of a major part of our self.

Personal Discovery: Defining the Relationship with Self based on Others Part 2

Even though our relationships can vary in emotional intensity, we often find ourselves defining our closer relationships into a few categories: family, friends, and love relationships. In some ways, even having enemies is a sort of relationship (or more like an anti-relationship). We do this because they’re very different from each other and rules that apply to one type of relationship may not apply to another type of relationship. Through the years we have developed for ourselves patterns of behavior, templates, with how we act with others. What is slightly different about this subset of templates out of all the behavioral templates we have developed for ourselves is that they come in direct contact with other people’s templates. This contact point is where most relationships develop out from. To not understand where this contact point is or how it defines our relationship can often lead to unfulfilled expectations and misunderstandings. So it is important to know these rules and expectations that you have for relationships.

Sometimes, though, we allow our template to become whatever the other’s templates are. We submerge our self and fall completely into how others want us to be. This may work for a while but unless the template they want is exactly how you yourself are, in the long run, the dichotomy between how you yourself are and how the other person wants you to be will chafe, becoming more and more uncomfortable until you choose either to give up yourself entirely or you leave that relationship.

"You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family."

One type of relationship to focus deeper on is our family relationships, especially the family we are born into and grow up in. They are the first relationships we form and often, the ones that last the longest in our lifetime. They are what we often use as examples of what to do or what not to do when we marry and form our own families. Our parents, or lack thereof, make a huge impact on us. It is their values we are taught first, their thoughts and beliefs we internalize, their patterns of behavior we first actively learn to accept or reject. Even if we rebel against them, many of their ways of thinking and perceiving, their values, form the core of the way we define our world. Our siblings are the ones that first give us roles in life, responsibilities, and competition. Siblings are the ones who may know us the longest. Parents are there for the beginning, lovers later on, friends come in and out of our lives, but siblings often see us through it all. We have relationships with them as children, as adolescents, and as adults and these relationships will change us accordingly. So often, a major part of understanding ourselves lie in understanding our family and the role we play in them. We may deviate from them, escape from them, deny them, even flat out reject them, but they will always, for better or worse, influence us.

Another major factor in our relationship with others lies in our personality and that is our level of extraversion and introversion. People generally fit into one of four types and their type determines their level of social interaction.

• Extroverted Extroverts – people who gain energy from being in contact with others. They thrive in social situations and love being in the center of things. These are very popular people who make friends easily. When there are times they are by themselves, , they tend to become fatigued, easily bored, and listless. They often don’t know what to do with themselves on the rare occasion they find themselves alone and will actively seek out social situations.

• Introverted Extroverts – people who gain energy from being in contact with others. They usually have large groups of friends and like going out with others. Though they can become easily tired when alone, they don’t mind spending time alone, often immersed in their own hobbies.

• Extroverted Introverts – people who gain energy by being alone. They do like spending time with friends and often have a circle of good friends whom they keep in close contact with. However, spending too much time out will often tire them out and they’ll need to recharge by spending time alone.

• Introverted Introverts – people who gain energy by being alone. They prefer spending time alone and are perfectly capable of being alone for long periods of time without needing the company of others. They have a few close friends but they can find it hard to make friends and to maintain friendships. Social situations tire them out quickly and they tend to linger in the quieter corners rather than be the center of attention.

To determine the type you are, monitor yourself in situations when you are around people and times when you are alone. When do you feel energized? Do you prefer going out or do you have to convince yourself to leave the house? It is possible and normal to be any of the four types and it is possible to change from one type to another depending on your life circumstances and changes in personality over the course of your life. To understand your type is not only to gain a deeper insight into your own personality, but also gain an insight into the general state of our relationships as well as giving us clues for what to watch out for in our relationships.

No matter our personality, though, other people will populate most of our life journey so it is inevitable that they will make an impact on us. It is our job to understand whether these impacts are in a positive or negative manner and to consciously choose to be with those who elevate our life, pushing us to be a better person.

Personal Discovery: Defining the Relationship with Self based on Others Part 1

“I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” – Chuck Palahniuk, author of the book, Invisible Monsters.

Everyone that we have come in contact with in our lives, our friends, our family, our enemies, our acquaintances, even the person we run into at the grocery store from time to time, has somehow impacted our lives. We define ourselves by them and they define themselves through us. Have you ever noticed that as we associate with different groups in our lives: our family, our high school friends, our coworkers, we subtly change the way we act? This is because they have different expectations for us and we have different expectations of ourselves when we are in that specific environment. The behavior that is acceptable with our friends may not be acceptable when we are interacting with our boss in the workplace. This is taught to us socially as we grow up: what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior. We define our behavior in accordance within the confines of those teachings expressed uniquely based on our personality.

The majority of the time, we are generally unaware of these changes in our behavior besides vague notions of appropriateness because we have internalized most of these rules. These rules come from what we believe is expected of us by the people around us, especially by those in higher positions of power or respect as well as those we feel greater degrees of emotional intensity towards. Often, these can be the sole determinants of our behavior. Some people have developed their own set of rules based on what they expect for themselves that may not have much to do with prevailing social conventions. Even these, however, are still developed as a response to the expectations they grew up with and the people around them.

Activity:

Think of your relationships as a target and yourself as the center. Each ring represents a different cluster of people. The closest ring are the people that you feel the closest to, the ones that you would die for or would die for you, that you would trust with your deepest darkest secret, those that you can’t imagine life with. The succeeding rings are those with less and less emotional connections with until you reach the outermost ring of people whom you have the least contact or emotional connection with.

Then think of those who dislike you and make a target with yourself again as the center. The centermost ring are those that you hate passionately or they hate you passionately and so on and so forth, lessening in emotional intensity until the outermost ring hold those whom you actually kind of like but somehow you can’t talk to them except in a horribly awkward manner.

Now, the theory is, those who provoke more emotional intensity are the people who affect the person you are, and the person you define yourself to be, more often. So we go through each person asking these questions: What is your relationship with them? What are the feelings they invoke in you? How do they feel about you? How do you act around them? How does your personality change at all when with them? What expectations do they have for you? Why do you like or dislike them? Is it a quality of theirs or a quality of yours or both? Now, let’s focus in: How do their expectations of you or for you differ from the expectations you have for yourself? Why do they differ? Is it important or significant in the ways that they differ?

The actor, Charlie Chaplin, enters a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in a San Francisco theater. His final standing is not recorded but it was noted that he “failed even to make the finals.”

There was once a girl who never played sports. When she was young, her mother had said she didn’t have the body type to be athletic so she was content to not be athletic. In college, her roommate asked her to play some tennis with her and she said she had never played. Her roommate promised to teach her. That day she found out she was incredibly talented in tennis. She had never known because she had never tried.

Both of these stories illustrate an important idea: that sometimes people see us differently from how we really are. And sometimes, we can allow other people’s perceptions of us keep us from really figuring out who we really are because we often play to other people’s expectations instead, which can make us at odds internally. Think about it more, are there things that we believe of ourselves that we simply took for granted but we’ve never tested it? Maybe we are holding ourselves back and we don’t even know it.

Personal Discovery: Defining the Relationship with Self Part 4

As we’re starting to see, the past affects the present and the present affects the future and this is an ongoing cycle of cause and effect. We are constantly changing. The person that you are today was probably different from the person you were five years ago and will probably be different from the person you will be five years from now. Even if your core personality doesn’t change, your physical appearance may change, your life situation may change, your relationships may change, and any number of other things may change. As we become older, we are learning new things every day and learning new ways to deal with people and situations. In order to better understand the self through our lifetimes, to keep up with our constant evolution and to note the changes, it is helpful to keep records for ourselves as reference along with our self-evaluation.

Activity:

Keep a journal. Do it in such a way as you can write in it at the minimum once a week, though it’s better to do so daily. For some, it’ll be hard to get into the habit of it. That’s fine, just set aside 5 minutes once a week to do it. You can write in it as little or as much as you want. At the simplest, just write a sentence about your day and then draw a little face next to it to show your general emotion for the day. Most importantly is that your keep the journal PRIVATE, meaning you are not to show this journal to anyone, not a priest, not a significant other, not your parents, not your children, not your psychotherapist. If you know you are going to show your journal to someone, then you are not going to write this journal purely for yourself, you will be writing for an audience even if its subconsciously. You need to be completely 100% yourself in this journal, not influenced by anyone else. This is an ongoing project. Read through it every so often, noticing your mood changes and the events, no matter how ordinary, in your life. See if you notice:

• What do you spend your time doing?

• What is the general trend of events in your life?

• How do your emotions fluctuate daily, weekly, or monthly? Is there a pattern? Why do you think that is?

• Are there events or emotions that caused certain events or decisions in future entries?}

The journal is a good way to focus and aid in self-evaluation. In this self-evaluation, it is essential to be entirely truthful to yourself. As long as you are true to yourself, that you are made up of strengths and weaknesses, happy and unhappy emotions, and face that fully, you will come to understand your true self more and more.

One note of caution: no one is perfect. It is ok to have weaknesses, to have times when we are unhappy, to fail, to have bad times or bad reactions to situations. That is what makes up the completely unique you that you are. There is no need to be ashamed of that. If you strive to make yourself “perfect” and to have a “perfect” life, I can guarantee, you will probably fail eventually and probably end up more dissatisfied with the person that you are. We should learn to accept ourselves. To be perfect, really, is to be perfectly the person whom we are.

Figure out what is important to you, what makes you the person you are and you will be giving yourself a road map to make your life and yourself closer to how you want yourself to be. Now things won’t just happen to us randomly. We can actively control our life when things happen to us and we can actively control what does happen in the first place. We can understand what’s important in our lives and how to make ourselves happier. If you understand yourself, you don’t need to rely on other people to tell you techniques on how to improve yourself, you can figure it out for yourself.

This doesn’t mean that we’ll never need help from others. It is one of the wonderful things in life to have friends and partners to support and be there for us, to have role models to look up to, to have wiser people to ask advice of. 

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Issac Newton 

However, we have too often only looked to others when most of the answers we truly need should come from us. It is time be self-aware and to learn to consult ourselves, treating the answers coming through with respect and proper thought. It is time to take control of our own lives and instead of drifting aimlessly, assume the responsibility of guiding it.

<<Please note: Sometimes, we may have mental illnesses that are severe enough to affect our daily lives. If this is so, please see a psychologist or psychiatrist for medical help. They are the most qualified to identify and treat these illnesses. You shouldn’t try to do this on your own. Even if you don’t want to see a professional, at least tell someone you trust with this, someone who can help you or help you get the help you need. >>

Personal Discovery: Defining the Relationship with Self Part 3

However, our story not only consists of the events that happened to us personally, but those events that happened on a wider scale. We are the children of history, shaped and molded by the times we live in.

“He who knows not why the universe exists known not who he is…and could not say for what purpose he exists himself.” – Marcus Aurelius.

Edward Norton Lorenz, a mathematician and meteorologist, came up with the idea of the Butterfly Effect, or “Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?” The idea was that small factors could have far-reaching consequences in the future. In the same way, the choices we make, will affect not only ourselves, but also the world at large just as choices made in the rest of the world may ultimately affect us on a personal level. It is important to put the events of our life in context with the events of the world because the historical events that happen during the course of our lives have a direct impact on the person we have become. It colors our reactions and creates our biases. Many Americans that grew up during the Great Depression in the 1930’s learned the extremes of frugality and an inherent distrust of banks. Many Chinese who grew up during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s are handicapped by their disrupted education and many biases against highly educated people. The children who witnessed the collapse of the World Trade Center, the subway bombing in London, or the Bali nightclub bombings in the first decade of the 21^st century often internalize a mistrust of their surroundings and may even develop irrational xenophobia. Whether these attitudes are correct or not, these patterns of thought and behavior become instinctive judgments on how they perceive the world. Again, it is imperative to be aware of these patterns in our own lives and to consciously decide whether they are truly beneficial to us. It is also equally important to realize that others may harbor these same biases in their perceptions of us. The meeting of their patterns and ours will affect the relationships we develop with them.

It is worthy to note, that events will affect different people in different ways. It is the unique intersection of our personal circumstances and predispositions in conjunction with our unique placement in the flow of human history that determines how something will affect us.

Activity:

Sketch out your autobiography by coming up with a rough timeline of your life up until the present. Put in every event that seems memorable or interesting. Specify out different periods of your life such as romantic relationships or periods of employment. Also add in major events that happened to those who are nearest and dearest to you, your family and closest friends, which you were also a part of. Now, add in the dates of each event. If you can’t remember a specific date, try to at least specify the year. Lastly, add in any major world events that happened during your lifetime that you particularly remember. Now, it’s time to analyze. Just figure out the facts and the cause & effects.

• What caused each event and how did it affect later events or decisions?

• How does the timing of these events in your life matter?

• How did world events impact your life?

• What has each event done to shape your life and the person you are (both positively and negatively)?

• How did the person you became throughout your life, affect the way you made decisions in certain situations?

• If an event had happened in a different time in your life, how would it have changed later events and decisions? How would it have affected the person you are in a different manner?}