Know Thyself?

WHO AM I?

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. “

- Thomas Szasz

This is the question for the ages. I might as well be trying to answer, where I think we came from or why we are all here. Who am I? What is my purpose? How do I know myself? Questions asked by every man and woman since the beginning of time; analyzed, philosophized and debated. My answer to this may surprise you – you are who you think yourself to be, or even more accurately, who you believe yourself to be at any given moment. Who you are is not some fixed, tangible thing and there is not some magic key at your core that you need to excavate in order to know yourself. You know yourself by living in the present, immersed in the malleable nature of life; shifting, growing and adapting to your current happenings. The more important question is: What do you want to experience?

“An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.” - James Baldwin

I COULD NEVER DO THAT!

We all have ways we identify ourselves and these labels can be as many as the day is long. You might attach labels such as: I am a woman, a Catholic, a wife, I like chocolate, broccoli and I hate seafood. You might say you are hard-working or lazy or fun. You define yourself in a myriad of ways: emotionally, with job titles, the roles you fulfill, your likes and dislikes, religion, looks and age and on and on. These things or aspects that you identify with make up your identity. Often when you are intently seeking to “know yourself” it is simply an attempt to shake off a label or to muster the courage to embrace a new one. When you ask yourself, what do I want to experience, you become aware that how you choose to identify yourself is dictating the life you are living. Who you are is beyond labels and is eternal; however what you experience is based on the aspects you are aligned to. In order to know yourself you have to ask yourself questions and begin to embrace opportunities to identify with the labels that are the best part of yourself and the willingness to see yourself in new ways. The labels that no longer serve you are literally the beliefs that limit you. When labels become limitations it is an indication that the authentic you longs to experience something different and more in line with the infallible, indestructible spirit that you are. If you find yourself saying, “I could never do that!” remember you are greater than the identity, ego and labels that you have temporarily claimed and change occurs when you move from your comfortable “roles” and challenge new ones.

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE"

You know who you are and will become more adept at expressing it as you understand the feedback you are getting from the people and situations around you. You may have temporarily identified with labels that suited others, were easy, lived up to the status quo or required very little effort on your part to maintain. As you begin to see yourself as shifting and flowing, you can relax; you are not “missing” something. You can embrace the knowledge that you can change what you identify with and thereby change your experience. A great example of labeling is what happens to someone when a role changes. You used to be a child; a role you no longer fulfill, but you are still you – flowing and growing. Maybe you have always most strongly identified as a mother and now the kids are grown and left home? Maybe you were a star hockey player and an accident left you unable to play again? It is possible to rediscover, reinvent and renew yourself by understanding that you can choose new labels, to provide a new experience. The qualities and essence that guides you always remains but you can choose what you want to experience by what you identify with. That is your identity and that is who you are being in this moment.

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

- Anaïs Nin

If you would like to discover what you want to experience more of and how to change what you identify with, I would live to help. Please contact me at, onpurposelifecoaching@hotmail.com