The quest for self awareness
How do we find our greatness, or if we have any?
Have you ever asked yourself “what am I really passionate about?”, “what should I really do with my life?”, “what’s the right job for me?”. It’s hard to find an answer, especially if you keep changing your mind like I do. I might fall in love with something, only to become bored with it soon enough and crave for something else. So how do you find your way?
Success is talent and effort
I wrote about this before. Success is equal part talent and effort. But, while effort is controllable, talent is not: either you have it or you don’t.
Success can have different metrics. I think that ultimately success is about being happy, grateful, and in a state of progress. Growth, whatever meaning you want to give it, is things in forward motion, improving or even changing. When a situation moves forward, hope and fulfillment can emerge. You’re happy.
So there you go: moving forward, and thusly success, is sustained by focusing effort on what can create the most growth. Know your strengths to avoid wasting time on something that would progress slowly and lead to frustration, despair and even failure.
But how does one find out what his/her talents are? Here’s another complication:
Passions change.
I might feel compelled to learn everything about a topic today, only to feel bored by it next week. I might feel super passionate about photography, and yet wanting to sell all my equipment a month later to buy a guitar. How am I supposed to figure this out? Is this even normal? (Turns out, it might be)
Does it matter?
Self awareness is about finding the underlying themes.
It doesn’t matter that you switch topics all the time. If you’re young, you’re tasting because you just don’t know. But as time passes, it’ll become a manifestation of a common trait you’re more inclined to. The task is to be open and committed enough to audit and reveal what this theme is.
Patience, commitment, courage.
I think that those are the three ingredients we need to become self aware, find out our calling and what we should do with our life.
We need patience, especially when we’re still young. We need to allow ourselves to experiment. Taste things and ourselves.
We need commitment, because it’s not enough pretending to be who we’d like to be. We need to go deep, vertical, actually practice it. Keep at it as long as it takes. Distraction is the enemy. Starting ten things at the same time just provided plenty of excuses. To find out if I’m good at something I need to practice it. Results will speak.
We need courage, because not doing anything is always easier and safer. Sometimes it’s just scary to know you have a talent. What if I find out I’m really good at public speaking, but afraid to actually put myself on stage? Should I act on it, or would I be better off never finding out?
But why would we want to go through all that? Is being just “OK” really that bad? What if I’m happy with that?
Being self aware is not the path of least resistance. Staying put might look like the safe option, but it’s risking to be unhappy the last years of your life. Regret is around the corner: when you feel it, it’s already too late.
