“The better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world”
– Toni Collett
I find it fascinating how we are so intrigued about the world around us that we will spend so much of our time trying to make sense of it – and others. We want to learn new technologies, concepts, how the human mind works, how others think, how plants breathe, or how dolphins speak, yet, we rarely – if ever – dedicate as much time studying ourselves. This is despite the fact that self-knowledge will not only improve the relationship you have with yourself, but it will drastically shape the course of your life.
For example, imagine you are naturally a highly extraverted person yet, you grew up in an environment where you were shamed for being so ‘loud’ and‘talkative’ – key characteristics associated with extraversion. So, in order to gain acceptance and approval you adopted an introverted persona. The introverted ‘identity’ that you took on helped you to cope with the intense shame you experience for those parts of yourself that are ‘wrong’ (i.e., being extraverted). As an adult, you now spend most of your working life as a microbiologist, because you are of course an introvert and you also just happen to love biology at school. However, you feel miserable. You find yourself utterly depressed, anxious, and prone to addictive behaviours. You start looking for the “holes” in your relationship(s), your career, and everything in between. You reason to yourself you now have depression and should go on meds. You now just help yourself to cope with that which you have been avoiding since childhood. Yourself! This is like sticking a plaster on a bullet wound.
It is in cases like these where I cannot overstate the importance of self-knowledge. When we grow up, we are very much reliant on the feedback of others to tell us who we are. Unfortunately, not everyone receives accurate information about who they truly are. Maybe you grew up within a household where your wilfulness was not tolerated and you were shamed for it. Or maybe you had some physical challenge at school and bullied for it. However, as we grow older, we have mental capacity to turn inward and learn about who we are. What makes us ‘tick’, what our dominant traits are – or “pull traits” as I would call them, and what our insecurities are.
For example, knowing that one of your dominant traits is extraversion, means that you will be more able to equip yourself to handle different life contexts. Applied practically, let’s say Jack, who is a highly extraverted, works 8 hours a day as a lab technician then gets home to spend some time with his family. However, over the past several months he has been feeling so tired that he barely has the energy to spend time with his family or go out with friends. Now, one could attribute this to a bout of depression or burnout and try rectify the situation through taking medication, doing less, re-evaluating his career choice, his values, etc. However, a key part is missing – who is Jack, really?
For any person who scores high on extraversion, working 8 hours a day in a lab, all by yourself, would drain your battery faster than a squirrel trying to power a skyscraper with a single acorn. You will soon find yourself unmotivated, depressed, and burnt out if you don’t prioritise social engagement in-between. A solution could be to try working in a lab group rather than just solo, or intentionally spend more time with different friends in the evenings or weekends as time alone with family is unfortunately just not going to cut it. This could mean inviting other parents over or meeting other parents on weekends at the kids’ games. Alternatively, you could just change to a career that is better aligned with who you are. More often than not, the careers that are aligned with who you are, will also be the ones that will fill you with excitement, drive, and passion.
However, here is a caveat. A high extraverted person can also be in a suitable career, frequently spends time with his friends yet, feel unmotivated, less eager to go out, and emotionally blunted. Now, this can be a case for depression. Why? Because depression is particularly hard to diagnose in people high on extraversion and agreeableness. These people often struggle to identify depression in themselves. Research suggest that this is largely due to them wanting to appease others, and live up to what is expected of them, socially.
Now, let’s take this even further. Imagine you were an extraverted person who also happens to score high on impulsivity! This means that if I were to place you in a social setting with alcohol or great food – well, let’s just say controlling how much you eat and drink will be equivalent to trying to herd a group of cats at a catnip convention. However, if you had the self-knowledge you would have been able to equip yourself knowing you need external control and not internal in those situations. Conversely, when you lack the self-knowledge, you may end up labelling yourself as a person who lacks self-control, or who cannot control themselves around food. You will berate yourself for not having control over your emotions, or your drinking, your food, your work, your hobby, and/or your social calendar.
However, when you actually do the work to understand yourself better, you will be able to learn how to adapt your personality given the context. Impulsivity is not “bad” trait! Just as introversion is not “bad”. The context determineswhether your personality trait or disposition is positive or negative. For example, we need impulsive humans as they drive spontaneity. What would the world be like if we were all just self-controlled, rigid, and inhibited introverts who planned everything lightyears in advance? We need each other’s unique personality quirks. We need the more extraverted humans to help the more introverted humans step out of their comfort zone. Similarly, we need the highly self-controlled humans to help those who struggle with self-control to achieve their goals.
We do not all have to change each other to fit the dominant stereotypical ideal. I strongly believe that is what we’ve been trying to do for years – and still trying to do. Trying to get children to all be conscientious, agreeable, and openminded. These personality traits do serve you well in a world where productivity is praised and obedience valued. These are also traits associated with higher life satisfaction. However, it does not mean that a highly disinhibited, wilful child is “bad”, and that they won’t achieve anything in life because they don’t “listen”. Maybe we need to let them teach us who they are instead of us trying to tell them who they should be. Maybe we need to equip children with the skills to help them get where they want to go, not where we need them to go. But this is something worth unpacking on its own!
So, with all of this in mind, you may be wondering, “how do I get to know myself better?”
One key way to achieve a better understanding of yourself is to learn about your own personality makeup (i.e., what are your strongest traits), your key strengths, your main areas of interests, your emotional agility, and even your cognitive abilities. The best, and arguably, most accurate way to get a better insight into these aspects of yourself is via psychological assessments. These assessments do, however, need to be standardised! Meaning, they are not these free fluff stuff you find on the internet, where it ends up categorising you as either a dog, a tree, dolphin, or some logician or emotive. As a qualified psychometrist, I know what it takes to develop a standardised psychological assessment measure. It takes tons of research to develop and validate such a measure. In fact, my Honours, Masters, and PhD research entailed aspects of validating psychological assessment measures for the South African context. So, when I see people offering free online assessments without any research backing, it gets my back up a little (ok, maybe a lot). The aim with psychological assessments is not to box you. It is to give you an indication or overview of who you are at that point in time. Similar to how a health check will give you information on the different aspects of your physical health.
If doing psychological assessments is not an option for you, then another very effective way is to journal. Yes, yes, you may already be rolling your eyes in your head, but hear me out. I promise you, you sound very differently on paper than you do in your head! You come to profound insights about yourself when you write down your thoughts and feelings as they come up – without judgement or alterations. In fact, I have made a list of journal prompts for you that may help you get to know yourself a bit better, which you can download by clicking here.
When taken together, we really owe it to ourselves and others to learn who we are and how we show up in the world so that we can live a life that is truly authentic to us.
