Discover Your True Self

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Discovering your true self is a crucial stage in your personal development

Just think of this: how well do you know your true self? And what is it exactly that you know? How many personal facts or character features do you know? What do you think of your true self? Is this the ultimate pride you’re feeling, or maybe shame or even fear? Your self-growth and the success of personal development efforts are entirely dependent on how well you know yourself and how you feel about your personality.

I hope you will forgive me for starting my entry with questions yet again. It seems to me that I quite enjoy starting some of my personal development articles this way. Probably, because no matter how much further I progress in my self-growth, I always get to some next level of self-understanding only to ask the next round of questions. It seems impossible for me to reach a point where I’m going to run out of all the questions and just sit there not knowing what should be done next, feeling that the quest for personal growth is over. I’m always full of questions. I’m always keen on learning something new. And sometimes it’s not clear at all whether it’s my questioning that makes me learn more or it’s my learning which makes me question everything.

My true what?

Yes, you’ve read it correctly. Your true self! And if you think you don’t know what I’m talking about, think again. Your true self is how you feel yourself when nobody’s watching. It is where your deepest thoughts live. It is what you ultimately think of yourself, how you treat yourself and what you fear others might see inside you. It is your most native and real personality.

Strangely enough, up until some quite recent point, I honestly believed that your true self is something you’re always aiming for as a person. It is the much better you which lives in your dreams – a successful guy or a beautiful girl which you always wish you could become one day. I thought becoming your true self is only about improving or gaining something about yourself. Turns out, I was wrong.

Your worst fears

Have you ever done something you wish no one could ever find out about? Chances are, you have. Do you still remember what exactly it was, and why you didn’t (and maybe still don’t) want anyone to find out about it?

Quite often, we do something and then try and justify our behaviour using things, events and people we see around us. A little bit less common but still very popular is to go through this process the other way around – justifying our actions, and then actually making them.

We do something only to realise how stupid it was, and this is when you can easily hear the inner voice of yours. That’s your true self talking there right now. This is the voice which, depending on your character, will either encourage you to take even more actions or discourage yourself as much as possible. This is the inner voice which easily controls a great part of your self-esteem. And like it or not, your true self is absolutely right in most cases.

So what happens then? We hear ourselves thinking about some events and we hear quite reasonable explanations inside our heads on the subject. We get to hear all the truth on the topic, and nothing but the truth. And if we’ve just made a mistake, most likely this is the moment when we feel ashamed. We look at what we’ve just done again and again and we simply can’t comprehend how something so stupid could be so easily done.

What’s the next usual step you take? Honestly now? Most of us will try and cover the tracks. We’ll pretend we didn’t notice something, or we’ll make it look like we don’t feel so good and we can’t possibly be held responsible for whatever just happened. Sometimes we won’t even bother with inventing or showing anything, we’ll just try running and hiding away. And we succeed at this, too! So quite often after doing something, it is really only ourselves who know what really happened and have the power to explain or fix the things done. But we very rarely do.

Why? Because that’s the human nature. We always have this fear. The fear of showing our real self, the fear of being exposed, the fear of being rejected for what we really are. This is because on top of our true selves, we’ve always got some layers of our personality – and as we go through our lives, these layers just keep adding up unless we do something about them.

Layers of personality and your personal growth

Rediscover yourself

You can still probably remember the times where you could speak or act freely, without any fears regarding the impact your behaviour may have. Do you remember how good you felt back then? And can you spot what exactly have changed since then?

While I’m sure you have your reasons for changing over the past years, not all the changes you’ve gone through were really that necessary. And luckily for you, there is still time to revert some of these changes. And here are just a few steps which will help you rediscover yourself:

Finding Time For Everything

How often do you have to decline an opportunity to do something fun or exciting simply because you have no time for it? How often do you give up bright ideas which keep occurring again and again? How often do you find yourself feeling guilty for letting the opportunity go simply because you thought you had no time for it?

 

Time management is very important

No matter what you do – it is always a good idea to be time conscious. Even having a pretty good idea of how much time you have at hand and what exactly your progress is, the task of successful time management is not an easy one.

Some people like the idea of having a daily plan accurate to every minute. They would know what time they usually arrive at work, when it is time for them to leave, when and how long a lunch break is going to be. They are making every appointment they’ve arranged, they’re sticking to the plan and never let a single minute escape their productive and effective approach.

Unfortunately, it’s a luxury not many of us can afford. Such is the real life of many – not everything is up to us. In most cases we’re being regulated by someone else’s idea of the best way to spend our time. At work, we’re advised about our lunch break time – we’re basically told when it is the good time for us to stop working and leave the office for an hour. We’re also advised in a similar way when to do many other things related to our work.

And face it, it is not so often that we’re told HOW to do things, or when exactly. We’re generally expected to give some results within a certain deadline, and we are to manage the time allocated for the task on our own.

Project management, they say. Use your time wisely, they advise. And it’s not always that you get a chance to attend a relevant course – on project or time management, so most of these things you’re simply expected to know or to pick up from your colleagues.

The good news is that it’s quite possible to learn and obtain such skills, so you should be fine if you have a colleague or two willing to share the knowledge.

 

Time-saving tip one: be conscious

That’s all time management is about. Be conscious about everything you do. It’s actually very easy.

From GTD, I’ve learned about the 2 minutes approach: when given a task, instead of diving into it right away, sit back and take 2 minutes to break it down into smaller tasks. Think of the ultimate goal you have. Enlist the steps you think are necessary in order to achieve this goal, and propose the time you’re going to need for each step. Don’t spend much time thinking about it, literally spend 2 minutes and not more. Write down your goal and steps to achieve it, and note the time.

You’re set to go – start working on steps, taking them one by one. After working on the problem for the time you expected you needed to complete it, stop and review the situation. Analyze the tasks list and answer few more questions to yourself: Have you reached your original goal? Has your original goal changed after taking one of your steps? Have all the steps proved to be necessary? Did any step take longer or shorter time than expected?

Even this simple approach – extra 5 minutes overall, is bound to dramatically improve your performance. You will not work any faster or any harder that you would usually do. Instead, you would have your approach optimize for each particular task, and by brainstorming the goal before and after the time allocated for it, you would see the potential for improving your timing.

 

Time-saving tip one two: be patient

Don’t expect to improve momentarily. Such things don’t happen overnight, so be prepared to spend at least few weeks working on all your daily tasks and goals with exactly the same approach. Don’t be lazy to write everything down. If it takes you longer than 2 minutes to take notes of your planning, do so – it’s always better to spend another 5-10 minutes planning your tasks that to lose a day working on some step only to realise later it was completely unnecessary and irrelevant to the overall goal.

You’ll soon discover that some global goals need more time for breaking them into smaller steps than others. Don’t be afraid to spend this extra time, in fact when you do start distinguishing goals and realising how much consideration time they require, this will mean you’re on the right track and that you’re improving.

 

Finding time: use 2 minutes approach

Our life isn’t about sacrifices, but if there are any we’re making at all, then time is definitely one of them. To do anything, you have to put your time to it. So whenever a new opportunity arises, don’t simply throw it away by saying you have no time. Take the 2 minutes approach again. Look at the opportunity. See it a goal. See what the positive sides are. Try and quickly break it into some steps, and try to predict the time commitment required for each.

Chances are, you’d lose the same 2 minutes by simply regretting you’ve just missed a good opportunity. When you deny yourself even the slightest chance of trying something exciting out, you’re bound to be thinking about it for at least some time later on. So instead of not doing something and then losing time regretting about it, just take the time and consider the possibilities.

Once you agree that 2 minutes is a fair price to pay for a good chance, it gets easier. Once you’ve given something a proper thought, you’ll feel more relaxed and assured – you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you might be missing, and after just 2 minutes you’ll have a list of some kind of the benefits you may gain should you agree to spend the time necessary. Try this, and you’ll be amazed how many good opportunities which seemed to be real time wasters will turn out to be the things you can quite easily afford.

You can spend 2 minutes considering the opportunity, and therefore improving your chances for a right decision, or you can lose the same 2 minutes regretting the missed opportunity later. One more thing: often you regret something just because you have not properly assessed it. Lots of opportunities seem attractive, but turn out to be somewhat different once you take time to analyze them. So you may feel upset and ruin the rest of your day simply because of some opportunity which in reality was no benefit to you anyway. But because you haven’t taken time to look at it closely and see this, you’d regret that you have let something go.

So all it takes to find time is really to take a closer look. And once you make yourself comfortable with the idea of spending 2 minutes in order to save yourself hours, you’ll feel much better and easier about making such decisions. You’ll also be sure to look at every opportunity closer, and to make sure that you never miss a really good chance or never take up something you really shouldn’t have. Of course, 2 minutes aren’t going to make you 100% right about every decision you make, but they sure are going to improve your chances.

[tags]finding time, time management, planning, efficiency, self-improvement[/tags]

Never Leave A Question Unanswered

Every day we hear dozens of questions asked and answered, so what I’m going to say is probably a kind of situation most of you are familiar with.

 

Why do we ask questions?

You get a question asked, and it’s the casual type one – you’re expected to give an answer within few seconds, and it’s perfectly okay if you don’t know the answer – the person who asked you will just move on to try his luck with someone else.

How often do you get asked questions? I mean, any kind of question – be it something related to the position you have in your company or some personal advice people want from you? Rarely will you have not a single question asked during an average working day. Chances are, you’ll be asked at least few times during your day. And depending on how popular or smart you are, people will turn to ask for your wisdom more and more.

 

Giving valuable answers

When asking questions, surely people tend to note your answers and how correct and accurate they are, but they also look at your ability to face questions you don’t have an immediate answer for. Sometimes they deliberately ask you a question no one can answer, and they simply watch how you play it. In fact, your ability to find an answer to such questions is considered to be one of the best personal and professional skill you can possess.

First things first – no lies. If you don’t know the answer, don’t lie about it – just be strong enough to admit your lack of knowledge on the subject. Don’t say anything just for the sake of giving some kind of answer – your good reputation and trust of your colleagues may be lost with just one stupid answer you gave abruptly and without proper thinking on it, yet it might take you hundreds of brilliant, intelligent and perfectly correct answers to earn this trust and respect again.

Then, know your strong points and your weak areas. Learn to quickly give any question an estimation which suggests whether you’re capable of answering a particular kind of question or not. Always remember: you’ve got your trust and respect to protect. Evaluate each question, see how important it is to others that you give the correct answer.

 

How to answer questions

Answering questions is easy, once you stick to this idea: a question is asked, because someone wants to know a correct answer. What kind of answer is correct? Most people would agree, that to give a correct answer is to provide a meaningful and useful information, which is 100% correct in your opinion. But not many people realise that simply saying “I don’t know, sorry” is a correct answer as well. Don’t let this idea get out of your sight when you’re looking for an answer.

Remember: you were asked a question because someone believes you to be a reliable source of information. If you say “I don’t know”, your credibility stays the same, because you’ve estimated all the factors, realised you don’t know the right answer, and you’re being honest to say so.

But if you decided to give some kind of answer, and it later proves to be an incorrect one, your credibility will be shaken – people will think and try to understand why you gave this answer instead of simply saying no. And they will probably think something along these lines about you: You simply tried to trick them. You deliberately tried to mislead them. You didn’t know the answer but you were too ashamed to admit it, so you opted for telling the first thing which came to your mind just to look more knowledgeable than you really are.

And as people think of it more and more (remember, we’re talking dozens of questions asked and answered daily), they will make their opinion up about every person they ask around, and it will be very hard to change their attitude to a given person at a later time.

To people looking for some answers, it is important that they get the correct answer. So if you say “I don’t really know”, they will thank you for this anyway – you haven’t given them the answer, but you haven’t given them a false one neither – so they think something like: Oh well, you can’t know everything. I’ll ask someone else.

And they do. And the next question they have from a different field, they’ll probably think again: Hey, why don’t I ask this guy first – so what if he didn’t know answers to lots of questions asked before? He certainly has some strong points, so maybe he knows exactly the answer I need?

 

Patterns we all follow

So when we look at a certain company, or a group of people within, talking to each other and asking questions, it’s obvious that everyone follows some kind of pattern when dealing with questions raised.

Some people, when they face a problem or see something they can’t understand, decide to concentrate for a little bit more and see if they can manage on their own. Others immediately opt for asking someone around – this smart guy at the end of the corridor is a good option, or this lovely girl just across the cubicle – it’s not a big deal if they don’t know the answer, but it’s definitely worth a try.

And in exactly the same way, people follow various patterns when asked a question. Some couldn’t possibly care less and they will say anything simply to get rid of you. Others will take you so seriously that even if you thank them and return to your desk, they will hunt you down after a lunch break to hand you in a pile of paper with their formulas and graphs, representing the ideal answer to your question.

Yet another category of people will fairly quickly think of your question and give you a yes or no, and then forget about it. I think this is the most common category of people. Very efficient approach: they think over your question, they honestly try to find an answer, and they give up or give you an answer fairly quickly.

 

Productivity tip: answer every question

What shocks me though, is that this most common category of people will never come back to your questions once you’re gone. That may be okay for the questions they answered correctly, but it’s a mystery to me why people don’t get curious when they didn’t know the answer.

Again, it’s a case of judging the question – if you see it’s somehow relevant to your work or other activity, you’d probably get a little bit more irritated with yourself for not knowing the answer, but even after this – most of us will simply forget about it few minutes later.

Now, I obviously don’t belong to this most common category of people. ANY question I couldn’t answer will raise some interest in me. But if it’s related to my profession, I simply can’t throw it away – if I have a spare minute, I’ll find the answer myself or google it. If I don’t have an immediate chance to answer the question, I’ll most likely think of it in the background, so once I’m at home, I’ll make some time specifically to find the answer. This way, if I ever get asked the same question again (and you know how some people like coming back to you the following day with the very same question, don’t you?), I’ll definitely have one, and it will be the 100% correct one cause I’ve specifically looked for it.

Some people will say it’s impossible to know everything. And I totally agree. And even if that was possible, you don’t have all the time in the world. And this is true too. But it’s never harmful to expand your knowledge a little, is it?

Once you master questions judgment and estimation, you’ll be able to see how important this question is and whether it’s worth your time and efforts thinking of an answer or looking for it.

Sure it takes time to find an answer for something, but you’ll be surprised how many answers are really easy to find, and once you get into a habit of resolving most of unanswered questions, soon enough you’ll realise that these simple questions and found answers have started building your fundamental knowledge – they help you answer others more quickly, and save a lot of your time in the long run.