Answering Who Are You? Part 2

By Arnie Thomas the Everyday Mentor

Last week we discussed step one for answering the question, “Who are you?” Yet, how and where do we start this vital self-examination? Campbell says, “It is within everybody to recognize values in his life that are not confined to maintenance of the body and economic concerns of the day.” Let’s look at some of my suggestions for answering the question. Remember, these are merely starting points.

1. Begin with meditation. Start with a few minutes a day and work up to more. When you are meditating you are focusing on you and not the thousand distractions that attack each day. Mediation is a learned skill and imperfect practice is totally accepted in the beginning. Enjoy the quiet time to discover you.

2. Go back in your life and take snapshots of moments when you were content. This is different than being highly excited or those life-changing moments. Take these brief snapshots and record them and then look at the commonalities. This is a hint to who you are!

3. We often discover who we are by practicing healthy giving and serving others. Start volunteering and the more you reach outside yourself, the more you will find yourself. When you get lost in the needs of others, you are in a time and space greater than yourself. Your ego could be your worst enemy in this search. The more you serve others the more the ego is lost.

4. Work with a mentor to help you on this quest. Often we need the guidance and the objectivity on a trusted other to get a clearer picture. Since it is difficult to be a prophet in your own land, I do not recommend someone close to you. Seek out a former boss you trust, a coworker you trust, a professional group contact, the Everyday Mentor or reach out to friends for suggestions.

5. Stop numbing yourself to excess. Sometimes we numb ourselves so much that we numb who we are. Pills, alcohol, drugs, always being right, and more are ways to escape from our discomfort and our self-discoveries. The journey to find who we are is not always an easy journey but it is a rewarding one. Be awake to this journey.

I have a client who came to me over a year ago and was unhappy and unsatisfied mentally and emotionally in her job. In the last year, she worked hard to discover who she was and now she is in a different job, happier, and on a journey toward making a difference.

Since you were born perfect as you are to complete your purpose, the real “who you are” is someone very special and has a tremendous force to make a difference. Be curious to who that is and do the vigilant work to fight the machine to uncover your “self.” I said previously that the knock at the door rarely comes. I will rephrase that to say that it may be knocking but only if you know who you are will you ever really hear it.

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