Years ago, when I first saw Plato’s words, they seemed simplistic. Know myself? How hard is that? I know myself! I never dreamed for one second that I did not know myself. When I did learn who I was, I was blown away. Self-knowledge is useful for self-acceptance and self-change. Differences between who we are and who we think we are lead to hypocrisy. Self-awareness and self-acceptance lead to inner peace. This essay is about ways of discovering yourself. Self-discovery can be difficult, if not impossible, to do in isolation. This is because much of who we are may be, hidden from our view, in our subconscious mind. In this essay I discuss two methods of self discovery: self-monitoring and asking others for input.
Self-monitoring involves watching and recording our day-to-day behavior for an extended period of time. This is very similar to keeping a journal or a diary. During the course of our lives our behavior often changes from day to day, month-to-month, year-to-year. By making a habit of writing down our thoughts, feelings and behaviors each day, we create a record of ourselves and our surroundings that we can learn from at a later time.
Asking others for their input helps us get beyond the limitations of our conscious mind and access information that may not be otherwise available. People watch us and have a sense of who we are. By asking ten people the same questions about us, and then averaging their answers, we can learn things about ourselves that we might not otherwise know. We must be careful when selecting people to ask. We don’t want to ask people who will only tell us what we want to hear. At the same time we don’t want to ask people who hate us. Ideally, we want to ask people who know us, and who will feel free to answer our questions honestly and openly. We can increase the likelihood of getting honest and open answers by allowing people to respond anonymously, either through questionnaire or the internet.
Combining our self-assessment with the assessment provided by others gives us a more complete picture of who we are. As the picture becomes clear, we can begin accepting ourselves and using it as a foundation for the person we want to become in the future. Self-knowledge informs us of our strengths and identifies areas where we can make improvements.