How to Discover Yourself

Beyoncé once said, "Knowing yourself is the wisest thing a person can possess. Understanding your goals, preferences, ethics, needs, standards, what you will not tolerate, and what you are willing to sacrifice. It defines who you are." This is true. Also, remember that as you grow older and interact with different people and experiences, you will gradually evolve. If you're struggling to understand yourself, it's important to reassess and discover your true nature.

Identify What You Like and Dislike. People often focus most on what they enjoy. Understanding what brings you joy and excitement is crucial, and it’s equally useful to know what makes you sad or uncomfortable. One of the first steps in self-assessment is to sit down and make a list of all the things you like and dislike.

• Your likes and dislikes often indicate how you present yourself to others. These can either separate or connect you with those around you. Understanding these helps you know what you want to achieve in life and what to avoid. Recognizing what you like and dislike can guide your career, living situation, hobbies, and the people you surround yourself with.
• Apply this activity to see if your likes and dislikes are too rigid. Are you limiting yourself? Is there something you'd like to do or try that you’ve convinced yourself is only a theoretical possibility? Build the courage to try something completely new. You may discover a new side of yourself.

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses. Just like understanding your likes and dislikes gives insight into who you are, knowing your strengths and weaknesses is equally valuable. Write down your strengths and weaknesses on paper.

• For most people, strengths or talents may overlap with things they enjoy, while weaknesses or challenges often align with things they dislike. For example, if you enjoy baking cookies and cakes and your strength is baking, both are linked. On the other hand, you may dislike sports and your weakness could be physical coordination or endurance.
• In many cases, challenges may become something you dislike because you're not naturally good at them. This explains why you like or dislike certain things.
• Understanding these aspects is important. However, you can go further by deciding whether you want to work on improving the challenging areas, or focus your energy on things you excel at.

Evaluate What Makes You Comfortable. We can understand ourselves best when we are in our most comfortable state, but we also gain significant insights from times when we feel bad. Reflect on the last time you felt frustrated or stressed. During those moments, what did you seek for comfort? What made you feel better?

• Knowing what makes you feel comfortable can reveal a lot about who you are. Perhaps you always need someone to lift your spirits or help you forget something. You might watch your favorite movie or dive into a novel you're passionate about. Comfort can also come from food, which is common for those who associate emotions with eating.

Record Your Thoughts and Emotions in a Journal. A great way to learn more about yourself is by becoming an observer of your thoughts and feelings. Practice this for a week or longer to gain an overview of the topics you frequently think about or the moods you commonly experience. Do you have positive thoughts? Or negative ones?

• Reviewing your journal can reveal the life you desire but are unaware of. You might repeatedly write about wanting to travel, someone you like, or a new hobby you want to try.
• After identifying recurring themes in your journal, take time to reflect on the meaning of those thoughts and feelings — and whether you'd like to act on them.

Take a Personality Test. Another method to understand yourself better is by completing an online personality assessment. Some people dislike being categorized, while others find that classifying themselves and their behavior brings order to their lives. If you're interested in exploring yourself through a test to see if you're similar (or different) from others, taking a personality test online can be insightful.

• Websites like HumanMetrics.com ask you to answer a series of questions (in English) about your preferences and how you perceive the world or yourself. The tool then analyzes your responses to determine a personality type, which may help you identify your strengths, potential career paths, and how you interact with those around you.
• Keep in mind that not all free online assessments can be considered entirely accurate. They only provide a general understanding of who you are. If you want a deeper analysis of your personality, you'll need to see a clinical psychologist.

Delve deeper to understand your core values. Values are the fundamental standards that you truly cherish, and they influence your decisions, behavior, and attitude. These are the beliefs or principles you will stand up for or fight for: family, equality, justice, peace, gratitude, trust, fairness, financial stability, integrity, and so on. If you don't know your core values, you won't be able to evaluate if your choices align with them. Explore your core values by:

• Think about two people you admire. What qualities do you admire in them?
• Reflect on a time when you felt proud of yourself. What happened? Did you help someone? Did you achieve a goal? Did you fight for your rights or the rights of others?
• Consider the things you feel most passionate about in your community or the world. These could include, but are not limited to, topics like government, the environment, education, gender equality, crime, and so on.
• Think about which three items you'd save if your house caught on fire (assuming everyone is safe). Why would you save those three items?

Ask yourself if you're living a life you're proud of. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said: "I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again." If you were to pass away today, would you feel you’ve left behind what you hoped for?

Ask yourself what you'd do if money were not an issue. When we were children, we often had lofty dreams. As we grow older and are influenced by society, those dreams change. Think back to a time when you had a clear dream but it was extinguished because the timing wasn't right or you didn’t have the funds. Write about how you would spend a day if you didn’t have to worry about finances. How would you live?

Imagine what your life could be like if you weren't afraid of failure. We often miss great opportunities or hesitate to seize them because we fear the embarrassment of making mistakes. A lack of confidence can define our lives if we don't make an effort to overcome it. Sadly, it also has a profound effect on how we think in terms of "what-if" over time. Here are a few ways to overcome the fear of failure if it’s holding you back from becoming the person you want to be:

• Understand that failure is necessary. When we make mistakes, we can assess our actions and improve our methods. We grow and learn through failure.
• Visualize success. One way to overcome the fear of failure is to constantly picture yourself achieving your goals.
• Stay persistent. Keep pushing toward your goals despite setbacks. Often, we achieve our wildest dreams just when we were about to give up. Don't let small failures distract you from a bigger goal.

Ask others what they think of you. Once you've asked yourself various questions about who you are, reach out to a few close people and ask for their perspective on you. Their feedback may include lists of traits or examples from specific moments when, in their opinion, it summarized your character.

• After seeking feedback from family or friends, reflect on their responses. How do they describe you? Are you surprised by their assessments? Are you disappointed? Do these perceptions align with the person you want to be or how you see yourself?
• If you value others' opinions, you can ask yourself what steps you could take to be more in harmony with both their views and your own. Perhaps you have a distorted view of yourself and need to reassess your actions.

Understand whether you're an introvert or extrovert. If you've taken an online personality assessment, one of the factors that might be assessed is whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. These terms were coined by Carl Jung to describe where you draw energy from in life – from your inner world or the outer world.

• Introvert describes someone who draws energy from introspecting on their inner thoughts, ideas, memories, and reactions. These individuals prefer solitude and may enjoy time with just one or two people they feel connected to. They may be introspective or reserved. Extrovert refers to someone who gains energy from interacting with the outside world. They enjoy participating in a variety of activities and connecting with all types of people. They feel energized in the company of others and may act before thinking carefully about decisions.
• Common explanations often describe introverts as shy and detached, while extroverts are perceived as sociable and open. However, these descriptions are not entirely accurate, as most researchers agree that these traits represent only part of personality diversity. No one is 100% introverted or extroverted; individuals tend to lean more towards one side or the other depending on the situation.

Consider what kind of friend you want to be. Exploring who you are includes understanding your expectations, feelings, and behaviors in relation to friendship. Reflect on past friendships. Do you enjoy talking to your friends every day or do you rarely speak? Are you the one who organizes meetups or do you usually get invited? Do you value spending time with friends? Do you share personal details about yourself with friends, or do you prefer to keep things private? Do you support/encourage friends when they feel down? Do you drop everything when a friend needs you? Do you set reasonable expectations for friendships (e.g., not expecting friends to always be available or to be friends exclusively with you)?

• Once you've asked yourself these questions, decide whether you're satisfied with your way of being a friend. If not, have a conversation with your closest friend and ask for advice on how you can be a better friend moving forward.

Assess those around you. It's said that you are the "average" of the five people closest to you. This idea is based on the principle of averages: the outcome of an event is determined by the average of all possible results. This principle also applies to relationships. The people you spend the most time with will strongly influence you, whether you realize it or not. Take a close look at your most intimate relationships, as these people will also define who you are.

• Of course, you are still yourself, and you can make your own decisions and conclusions. However, those around you influence your life in subtle ways. They might introduce you to new foods, fashion, books, and music. They may suggest job opportunities for you, take you out late for a party, or cry on your shoulder after a breakup.
• Have you noticed some traits in yourself that come from those closest to you? Are you happy with the qualities you’ve been influenced by? Simply put, if you’re around positive, hopeful people, you’ll likely feel and act similarly. If you’re surrounded by negative, cynical people, their attitudes can make life feel dreary. If you want to understand who you are, look around you for the answer.

Think about what you do when you're alone. What you do with others reveals a lot about you, but what you do when you're alone speaks volumes as well. Typically, we are strongly influenced by social groups to think, act, and feel in certain ways. However, when we are completely by ourselves, we are closest to our true nature – hardly influenced by society.

• How do you spend your time alone? Do you dislike being alone? Are you content? Do you read quietly? Do you play loud music and dance in front of a mirror? Do you dream of wild adventures?
• Think about these activities and what they say about you.

• Take a few days or weeks to thoroughly explore each self-discovery exercise to truly understand who you are. Avoid rushing through all the exercises at once.
• Embrace who you are, no matter what others may say. Only you can determine who you truly are!

• A notebook/journal and a pen