Know Yourself

So I wanted to ask... How well do you think you know yourself? Imagine you played the Newlywed Game (do you know what that is??) with yourself. Could you answer questions about who you are, what motivates you, what your strengths are, your values, and so on?

This theme of “knowing oneself” has been coming up of late in my coaching practice and speaking with other coaches on my podcast. And, it’s not uncommon to find that we may not know ourselves as deeply as we might think. It's almost as if we think that getting to know ourselves is an indulgence or that it’s too woo-woo, you know that self-helpy stuff.

But the reality is to guide your life and your career you need to know yourself. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states in his book Flow: “These seemingly easy questions are almost impossible to answer for someone who has lost touch with his own experience. If a (person) has not bothered to find out what he wants, if his attention is so wrapped up in external goals that he fails to notice his own feelings, then he cannot plan action meaningfully.” 

So, I encourage you to get to know yourself—understand your true colors and what makes you tick. In doing so, you’ll be better positioned to pay attention to your life and make decisions along the way that are in alignment with who you truly are and your internally-driven goals, not ones governed by should’s and expectations.


 

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