The world is loud. If you don’t know who you are and what you stand for, the world will overwhelm you with it’s messages and dictate your values and wants.
In this world, we start our lives with messages from our surroundings, especially from family about what is and is not important. They are the ones that start to ingrain us with values. For the most part, we’re not choosing them but rewarded and punished when we act in or out of accordance with them. Afterwards, the messages start getting louder from the greater world that includes friends, tv, social media, and the greater community. They start to tell you what is important and the tool is shame, embarrassment, and exclusion. And then when we hit adulthood, our values are shaped by our work environment, social groups, and competition.
For most people, this passive indoctrination happens unconsciously until 25 or so before we start to question things. In the past it was called a mid-life crisis; now it’s become more like a quarter-life crisis. It happens when we’re doing all the things the outside world has told us to do and find ourselves unsatisfied with our lives. At this time people either seek answers through books, mentors, or coaches. Others start to drown out these feelings and thoughts through distractions or suppression.
The answer or solution comes in finding ourselves which is finding our values and discovering what we really want. It can be an undertaking to think about reconstructing ourselves but this is the pathway to happiness. When we know what we want then we can actively make decisions that bring us/shape our lives in that which we find valuable and meaningful. Then we can wake up with a sense of satisfaction, a sense of excitement for our future.
I was lucky to get an early start in life with this. I was labeled as being weird and oddly embraced and accepted by most. I also had a father who tried to explain things to me early on so I could better understand the human condition. Due to these factors I was able to forge a path of my own. Though I had chosen my values and went after what I wanted, the path still was not easy. Knowing what you want and learning how to create that life is another challenge and this also requires knowing yourself and your limitations.
My limitation was not knowing how to work hard. Life came easy to me because I was physically and mentally gifted for my age. Therefore everything was pretty easy for me. Unfortunately, that didn’t prepare me for the “real” world. My lack of success after college was due to my wandering nature and my inability to grind my way through difficult challenges. In recognizing this, I had to build a system/structure around my weakness to get me to take appropriate actions at the appropropriate time. This was an important step for me because I realized that I had created bad habits that needed attention and I learned how to implement systems to overcome them.
Knowing my values AND knowing my strengths and weakness both allowed me to create a life that enables me freedom and happiness. The last part of knowing yourself is knowing your end game. Knowing what you want it all to mean. But that is another discussion. This last piece creates a northstar in your life. It gives purpose to the freedom and happiness. Stephen Covey calls it begin with the end in mind and it is a valuable next step that enhances your happiness and creates fulfillment.