4 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Better
During my last two years at the University of Florida I was enrolled in the Leadership Minor program. The courses primarily focused on being aware of both yourself and the people you work with. The course work helped us in understanding our strengths, our weaknesses, how we handled stressful situations, the kind of environments we work best in, etc., etc. I found a lot of value in taking the minor because in summation the content helped us to step back and assess the interactions we have with people everyday in order to try and cultivate the best possible environment for everyone to co-exist, not in perfect harmony, but as close as we could get to it.
Something I particularly enjoyed were the self-assessments we did during class. We all have an idea of who we think we are, but there’s so much for us to discover, to change or even solidify. Growing up, a lot of decisions are made for you. Your parents or guardians influence a lot of the things you believe, whether they do that directly or indirectly. So you can imagine at a pertinent time like college, a time when you’re coming into your own, how important it is to spend some time figuring out who you are or who you want to be.
Trust me, spending some time sifting through all the things that make you who you are can be advantageous to you in life. I’m 24 and still finding out things about myself and I haven’t even hit mid-life crisis yet. Anyways, below I’ve listed some ways to better understand yourself. These four things are inspired by some of the stuff I studied in school. If you ever have a chance, I encourage you to take some time to go through some of these things:
1. To find out what you love/admire, reflect on the things you talk about a lot, things you write about, articles you tend to read, books that you own and people you respect or look up to. Also consider what you get excited talking about.
2. To find out what you value, look at the things that annoy you or get on your nerves. Whatever the opposites are of those things are probably the things you value, and maybe even pride yourself in.
3. Take a bunch of assessments. There are some really good quizzes out there to help you determine what your personality type is, what your strengths and weaknesses are and which people you work best with. Assessments shouldn’t be held as absolute truth and you shouldn’t shape your entire identity around them, but it can still give you an idea of who you are. Myers Briggs, DISC, and True Colors are just a couple of assessments you can take.
4. Ask the people around you about your personality, what they see as your strengths and weaknesses or the things that they admire about you and what annoys them about you. It really takes guts to ask the negative stuff, but that’s where you have to know the people that you’re asking don’t have the intentions of hurting you. It can really be a constructive process.
There you have it — 4 ways to get to know yourself better. I think we need to pause for a bit and make it clear that you’ll always be learning about yourself and you’re always growing and always changing. That happens in your everyday interactions with others, during those late night talks with close friends and even in the solitude of those long commutes to and from work/school. Okay, press play. Actually putting some application to this would be nice. I think one can benefit a lot from taking a little time to get to know yourself better.
