Self-Discovery Meaning and its Tools.
written by: Javeria Khan Date:21 February 2014
Introduction.
Self-discovery means to recognize your abilities, weaknesses and purpose, how are you different from others. Individuality exists in everyone. The path of finding your individuality is self discovery
How to find yourself? What is our authentic self? All of you must have struck with this question, at least once in a life. We often depend upon the judgement of others for knowing ourselves. This will come to an utter disappointment when people only see your superficial traits and ignore your true self
The society has become more self-possessed. They barely want to look beneath the other person. They are quick to pass judgement. That's why self discovery has become more important. It is very likely that you will find hell inside like unsealed trauma, insecurities, fear, phobias. These are buried deep within yourselves. In order to avoid these uncomfortable feelings we choose different defense mechanism.
One thing I want to tell you for sure is that, the path of self discovery is hard and challenging but if you succeed in finding your authentic self. You will be free from many captivities. Peace and serenity will be your destiny.
During self-discovery, you will get to know about weakness, strength, interests, preferences,the things that deserve your attention and the things that are holding you back.
The journey of self-discovery often confuses with travelling, series of events and pilgrimage. They may help but that not always the case. I discovered myself by sitting in my room, reading books and articles
I also want to help others to find themselves because after the journey you will feel reincarnated. It is time consuming and emotional. So prepare yourself.
Your life Before self discovery.
The initial process of self exploration started in childhood. Children lacking wisdom, turn to their parents or guardian. Parents teach them about self-worth, self esteem, ways to protect yourself from outside world. During this process children also learned the ways to regulate their unpleasant emotion.
If we are fortunate enough to be born in healthy environment. Our emotional regulation and self control become strong but that's not always the case. Children raised in problematic and dysfunctional families, lose the connection with their self and hide behind the false image.
The amygdala over activates in younger age and instead of feeling the emotion and regulating, processing them in healthy way, we begin to doubt our feelings. This creates inner turmoil, low self esteem, trauma building.
Also the defence mechanism, which are behaviours acquired by brain to survive in disturbing environment. It a coping strategy. This comes with downsides, instead of connecting with other people and being yourself. You mold yourself to please other. Seeking external validation, people pleasing, avoiding conflict, seeking attention, avoiding constructive criticism are common downsides.
The defense mechanism remains activated throughout the lifetime until they are healed. Examples are emotional detachment, escapism, hyper vigilance, displacement, sublimation, regression, repression, denial, people pleasing, reaction, undoing, day dreaming, intellectualization, acting out, projection.
I will make a separate blog on the defense mechanisms. So like my blog to keep updated.
Why It Is Important?
There is a short story to highlight the importance of self- discovery
Once a teacher, brought a eaglet into the classroom and asked her students," This eaglet is unable to fly, whoever makes this eaglet fly will be awarded 100 dollars". The students took turns but none of the students were able to make him fly.
The students asked their teacher," Why this eaglet, being a bird is unable to fly".
The teacher told that this eaglet was born and raised in the farm among the chickens, so it never learned to fly and spent its whole life, like a chicken. This shows the importance of not neglecting oneself and accepting the circumstances you are born with.
After recognising yourself, the traits which are labelled as flaws by society will be seen as individuality.
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, " No price is too high to pay, for the privilege of owning yourself".
The self- discovery is the first step in personality development. It enables us to track the root cause of our desire and whether it is a reasonable one.For example if someone wishes to be successful and confident, but when they track the cause of their desires , the primary motive was to impress others and earn their validation.
This is unhealthy cause, embedded in you by your unhealed trauma. When you will learn about it you will give up the desire to be the one and focus on what's truly matters to you.
Tools to Find Yourself.
Human have been on a quest of self reliance through centuries. This question has made many intellectuals struggle. Legends have been told about how a prophet in search of his true self, found the right path and God. Religion, philosophy, anthropology sociology, horoscope etc are common tools. I believe in religion and the holy book of Allah that helped me find myself when I felt lost .
Myer-briggs personality type, enneagram, big five personality. In my opinion these are the best tool for individual personality assessment.
Myers- Briggs personality types
It characterizes human personality into 16. This test is widely popular and easily accessible. According to MBTI. There are four categories introversion, extraversion, sensing, intuition, thinking, feeling, judging/perceiving.
The shuffling of these traits according to human nature creates 16 different personalities. Each has their own weaknesses and strengths.
It is very helpful in finding individual personality but it lacks in focusing on the shortcomings of each personality. Here is the link of the MBTI test by a trusted website.
https://www.truity.com/test/type-finder-personality-test-new
The Enneagram.
It divides the personality into 9. Each is known by their name given above, the name is the representative quality of each type and they are dominated by this trait. The symbol is ancient and there are many theories about its origin. The explanation of the personalities are in corresponds with the Freudian 's theory, Carl Jung and Karen Horney. It is a wide explanatory topic and soon I will write a separate blog on this. If you are more interested please read these books.
1- Personality Type using the enneagram for self- discovery by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
2- The road back to you by Ian Morgan and Suzanne Stabile.
The Big Five Personality Traits.
This test is most commonly used by psychiatrists and professional. It is less specific and still leaves ground for self- actualization. It is helpful for professional but mostly backed by research. It could also be due to lack of research done on the above two personality types. But that doesn't mean they give false personality. I will not advise this test because it gives the percentage of the traits that we already know, it just helps psychiatrist in understanding their patients better
It divides the human nature into openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism( acronym as OCEAN).
please like my blog and advise me with your valuable comments.
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