This is a hard question that most people spend their entire lives figuring it out. Everyone’s journey to that answer is different. This question is important because it answers many things for you, such as, determining your career, the type of life you want, whether a relationship is good for you and having the self-respect to leave if you have too, grounding you in difficult times and helping with your self-esteem.
The question of, “Who am I,” does not come with a stable answer either. You will change a little and sometimes you will change a lot, but for each stage of your life, it is important to have a general grasp of who you are to help you make decisions that will make you happy.
This is blog will hopefully guide you on what you can do to answer, “Who am I.”
Let’s start simple!
The 3 Circles to Self
This is not a psychological theory but something I use for myself. The inner circle is your Character, which can consist of 1 or more of the following: kindness, self- control, justice, bravery, respect, honour, integrity and loyalty. This is the most important circle because it makes up who you are at your core, i.e. the principles that guide you. In the circle, write which of those 8 characters applies best to you. This follows the Japanese concept of Bushido. Personality is the second circle, this describes traits: loving, introverted, open etc. you can do the same and add words which describes your traits. And, the outermost circle is your preferences on beliefs, hobbies, politics, social issues, aesthetics and whatever else you care about. While these 3 circles will not define who you are, it can be a good guide about you.
Masculine and Feminine Traits
Another favourite of mine was balancing my masculine and feminine energy. We all have both, Psychologist Carl Jung believes when we achieve a balance of both, we have found a sense of peace in ourselves. People tend to misunderstand these traits as gender, but rather, they are simply traits one gender has been stereotyped to show more than the other but all humans have these traits. The idea is simply to balance the existence of these traits in yourself. The image below displays these traits and you can ponder upon if you’d like to find balance or add some of these traits to what already exists in your spectrum. The image is from Voices of Youth.
You can make a list and think about what you may want to work on nurturing this year. I would like to nurture Surrender and Discipline this year.
Emotions
Finally, let’s talk about how we can use emotions to help us discover a bit of who we are.
What are emotions?
Emotions are how we feel about a person, topic, place etc. They exist to help us experience life. They teach us about what makes us feel happy, sad, bored, excited and everything in between. Sometimes our emotions are functional. Sometimes, events or socialization makes our emotions maladaptive. This could mean, we suppress them because we think we aren’t allowed to show emotions or we react in ways that are inappropriate, without having control over them. In some cases, we are reacting on autopilot, unaware of the emotions we’re experiencing. When emotions aren’t functional, it tells us about how we’ve been hurt and that we have things we need to repair. There is no shame in that. If a space is not allowing you to navigate your emotions safely, that is not a space for you. Emotions are genderless and you are always allowed to feel.
Here is a short guide on how you can use your negative emotions to teach you about who you are.
First, you need to learn to recognize the emotions as they are happening. When you are responding to a situation, step back and ask yourself what emotion is causing you to respond negatively.
Common Stimuli: someone bringing up an insecurity, seeing people in your life or online do better than you, seeing things you want but don’t have, being rejected, losing/ experiencing the distancing of someone from your life, etc.
Common reactions: shouting, gossiping about the person, belittling, saying it’s ok when you feel bothered, being upset, sabotaging the person’s reputation (subtweeting, intentionally blocking opportunities, lying etc.)
Anger can teach you about your triggers.
Sadness can teach you about the things/ people who are most important to you. Jealousy: can teach you about your insecurities and what you feel you lack.
Fear can teach you about what you hope to achieve and what obstacles you think may be too difficult for you to overcome.
Insecurity can teach you about your past, important events both singular and cumulative that have impacted you negatively and what you feel you may lack.
Threatened, feeling threatened is a difficult emotion to recognize. No one wants to admit they feel threatened by a friend, a significant other, a family member, or a new person who they perceive in some way is better than them or has a resource that may make them lose something.
Embarrassment can teach you about what you were taught to be ashamed of.
Rejection can teach you about the things that affect your self-esteem.
Using these 3 short guides I hope will be helpful. There are definitely more avenues to self-discovery and I encourage to search them. This is part 2 of a 4 part blog. Be sure to stay tuned next week for, “Making 2023 happen: Hope Setting,” and if you haven’t, check out last weeks’, “Using your lessons from 2022 to elevate your 2023.” See ya!
2023: Figuring out the toughest question: Who am I?
This is a hard question that most people spend their entire lives figuring it out. Everyone’s journey to that answer is different. This question is important because it answers many things for you, such as, determining your career, the type of life you want, whether a relationship is good for you and having the self-respect to leave if you have too, grounding you in difficult times and helping with your self-esteem.
The question of, “Who am I,” does not come with a stable answer either. You will change a little and sometimes you will change a lot, but for each stage of your life, it is important to have a general grasp of who you are to help you make decisions that will make you happy.
This is blog will hopefully guide you on what you can do to answer, “Who am I.”
Let’s start simple!
The 3 Circles to Self
This is not a psychological theory but something I use for myself. The inner circle is your Character, which can consist of 1 or more of the following: kindness, self- control, justice, bravery, respect, honour, integrity and loyalty. This is the most important circle because it makes up who you are at your core, i.e. the principles that guide you. In the circle, write which of those 8 characters applies best to you. This follows the Japanese concept of Bushido. Personality is the second circle, this describes traits: loving, introverted, open etc. you can do the same and add words which describes your traits. And, the outermost circle is your preferences on beliefs, hobbies, politics, social issues, aesthetics and whatever else you care about. While these 3 circles will not define who you are, it can be a good guide about you.
Masculine and Feminine Traits
Another favourite of mine was balancing my masculine and feminine energy. We all have both, Psychologist Carl Jung believes when we achieve a balance of both, we have found a sense of peace in ourselves. People tend to misunderstand these traits as gender, but rather, they are simply traits one gender has been stereotyped to show more than the other but all humans have these traits. The idea is simply to balance the existence of these traits in yourself. The image below displays these traits and you can ponder upon if you’d like to find balance or add some of these traits to what already exists in your spectrum. The image is from Voices of Youth:
You can make a list and think about what you may want to work on nurturing this year. I would like to nurture Surrender and Discipline this year.
Emotions
Finally, let’s talk about how we can use emotions to help us discover a bit of who we are.
What are emotions?
Emotions are how we feel about a person, topic, place etc. They exist to help us experience life. They teach us about what makes us feel happy, sad, bored, excited and everything in between. Sometimes our emotions are functional. Sometimes, events or socialization makes our emotions maladaptive. This could mean, we suppress them because we think we aren’t allowed to show emotions or we react in ways that are inappropriate, without having control over them. In some cases, we are reacting on autopilot, unaware of the emotions we’re experiencing. When emotions aren’t functional, it tells us about how we’ve been hurt and that we have things we need to repair. There is no shame in that. If a space is not allowing you to navigate your emotions safely, that is not a space for you. Emotions are genderless and you are always allowed to feel.
Here is a short guide on how you can use your negative emotions to teach you about who you are.
First, you need to learn to recognize the emotions as they are happening. When you are responding to a situation, step back and ask yourself what emotion is causing you to respond negatively.
Common Stimuli: someone bringing up an insecurity, seeing people in your life or online do better than you, seeing things you want but don’t have, being rejected, losing/ experiencing the distancing of someone from your life, etc.
Common reactions: shouting, gossiping about the person, belittling, saying it’s ok when you feel bothered, being upset, sabotaging the person’s reputation (subtweeting, intentionally blocking opportunities, lying etc.)
Anger can teach you about your triggers.
Sadness can teach you about the things/ people who are most important to you. Jealousy: can teach you about your insecurities and what you feel you lack.
Fear can teach you about what you hope to achieve and what obstacles you think may be too difficult for you to overcome.
Insecurity can teach you about your past, important events both singular and cumulative that have impacted you negatively and what you feel you may lack.
Threatened, feeling threatened is a difficult emotion to recognize. No one wants to admit they feel threatened by a friend, a significant other, a family member, or a new person who they perceive in some way is better than them or has a resource that may make them lose something.
Embarrassment can teach you about what you were taught to be ashamed of.
Rejection can teach you about the things that affect your self-esteem.
Using these three tools I hope will be helpful. There are definitely more avenues to self-discovery and I encourage to search them!