Tell Me Something About Yourself
I know the answer to this…Or do I?
On the first day of my engineering college, a senior asked everyone around the room to introduce themselves one by one. My heart was pounding in my chest, and my breath was getting heavier, as my turn to get up in front of a room filled with 150 other students was getting nearer. Like a broken record, my mind was repeatedly playing the four lines I was going to speak to introduce myself. But,
What if I fumbled?
What if I pronounced a word wrong?
What if I blanked out?
Stop it, it’s just a few lines. All you have to do is to tell your name, where you’re from, and why you have joined engineering. That’s it. It’s not a big deal. Don’t overthink.
But why have I joined engineering?
Because my parents told me that was the right choice. I did not know what I wanted to be yet, so I left it to my parents to decide for me.
I heard my name being called. I stood up from my chair and spoke the lines I had been mugging for the last 10 minutes. “I joined engineering because it’s the future. Every aspect of our life today is dictated by technology and I’m excited to become a part of it.” The senior gave me a nod and I sat down with a sigh of relief. Inserting the words ‘future’ and ‘technology’ works well for most of the speeches I guess.
Another time when this question popped up, I was standing on a stage, holding tightly onto the mike with my both hands. All the dance performances in college fests had given me a newfound confidence, which had led me to this moment, competing for the title of ‘Miss Something’ in my third year of college. The jury had asked, “Tell us something about yourself, and if you could change one rule in the college what would it be?”
“My name is blah blah…I want to be this that after engineering….”,
“…If I had to change one rule in college, I’d extend the hostel timings for girls and restrict the timings for boys. If it’s because of the guys that girls are asked not to leave the hostel after 7 pm, then perhaps the guys need to remain inside their rooms more than the girls.” I was serious but it made the jury and the crowd chuckle. I won the title anyway.
A few months after this, I went on a date with a guy in my class and he asked me, “Tell me something more about yourself.” I had a huge crush on him for a long time so naturally, I told him the best things about me. I mean come on, I wouldn’t be starting with ‘overthinker’, or ‘occasionally bursts down into tears thinking about her childhood’ right?
Fast forward to the last year of engineering, to my very first interview with a startup company. “Tell us something about yourself, they said.” I had prepared rigorously for the interview, looked up all the “popular interview questions”, and so I threw in some words like “Quick learner”, “hard worker”, and “Sincere” which eventually landed me my first job.
I was on cloud nine (This company would soon go bankrupt and I would be laid off from my job 3 months after joining)
A few years later while dealing with a difficult breakup, I met another guy. He was a freelancer looking for a ghostwriter. A few months into our ‘professional partnership’ he asked me out. For our first date, he took me to an ice skating ring and I realized that he is an expert skater after he was flying around the arena, while I was holding onto the railings for my dear life.
“I know you’re a dancer, a writer, an artist, and an engineer, so tell me something I don’t know about you,” he asked. I let out a laugh and said, “I also write poetry, but to tell you some of my other interests, I find anything related to psychology, the cosmos, our existence, or the occult highly interesting. Anything about the deeper stuff in life…. You may now think I’m a weirdo.”
He smiled and said, “No, I think I like that.” I would go on to marry this guy and have a beautiful daughter with him.
Coming back to our topic, “Tell me something about yourself” — a simple yet complex question, which has always forced me to dig deeper within.
Some of my friends will tell you I’m really fun to be around and I crack the funniest jokes in the most serious of situations. Dark humor is my thing. Ask another set of my friends, they’ll tell you I’m very mature, calm, and composed. Ask my husband he’ll tell you I am easygoing but likely to have an explosive reaction to the most insignificant things.
Ask my parents, they’ll tell you I have been a rebel all my life yet they love me to death. Ask my best friend, she’ll tell you I give the best advice, but I am also weird af.
Funny how everyone knows you a little differently, even when you’re the same person.
But the question is, Who am I?
Am I a mix of opinions, perceptions, and judgments of people I have come across with?
Do I carry fragments of every person’s personality that I have met in my life?
It’s true that every person you meet and interact with leaves an impact on you, big or small.
Am I a puzzle composed of thousands of small pieces from others?
The truth I discovered
Occasionally I say, “I’m a seeker.” But what am I seeking? Is it enlightenment? But how do I know I want it if I haven’t experienced it yet?
In the past few years, since I began my journey into mindfulness, I have tried to know myself deeply, beyond the perception of others and my own perception of ‘I’.
I have spent hundreds of hours doing meditations, reading books, watching videos, and listening to spiritual leaders and gurus, which all came down to one truth about knowing yourself.
“You are not the body or the mind. You are a divine light inside the universe. And the universe is inside you.”
So what’s stopping me or anyone of you from experiencing yourself as a divine light?
“Ego”, says Adi Shankara in ancient Hindu texts called Upanishads.
Ego is defined by the feeling of ‘I’, and all the roles you play in this lifetime. “I’m a mother. I’m a daughter. I’m American. I’m Indian. I’m happy. I’m successful. I’m a failure. I’m an overthinker. I love this food. I like that outfit. I have a difficult childhood. I don’t like my boss and so on.
Anything that defines us and anything that we give the power to define us is Ego. It stops us from becoming one with the universe.
I know that this thought takes some time to process so let’s simplify this.
To know yourself, you have to know what makes you, YOU.
Is it your behavior around others? Your emotions? Your achievements? Your goals? Your religion? The god you believe in or don’t believe in? Your nationality? Skin color? Your friends? And family? And everything else?
Perhaps yes, they do make you who you are, at least in the physical reality.
But to know yourself deeply, you need to identify your Triggers…which is what I did.
Ask yourself,
What is it that triggers my emotions? Deep emotions? Those suppressed emotions? Which makes you go, ‘I don’t know where that came from.’
Is it your childhood traumas? Abusive relationships? Heartbreak? Failure? A feeling of not being good enough?
Does someone confronting you make you cry, be defensive, or shout back?
Why do you react the way you do in certain situations?
Understand the root cause of your emotions. Is it because of something that happened in your childhood? Was there an incident that shook you, broke you, and forced you to be a certain way?
Once you know the answer. You’ll know yourself a little more.
You have to heal yourself from the baggage you have been carrying around for too long. Let go of emotions, feelings, and scars that don’t serve you anymore.
You are not defined by your past. Not by your future. Your present is all that matters.
If you’re also contemplating the eternal “Who am I” question like me, you have already begun your journey of self-awareness.
Knowing yourself is power. The more you know yourself, the more you’ll understand and empathize with others.
Meditate to know yourself.
I have found meditation to be the best way to know yourself.
Just take 10 minutes out of your day to self-reflect.
Take a few deep breaths and then let your breath flow naturally. Observe your breath. Feel how it’s entering your nasal passage with a cool sensation and leaving it with a warm feeling. It’ll help you clear your mind, so you can blur out the world outside to focus on the world inside you.
Writing to Know Yourself
If you’re someone who has a hard time sitting still or you fall asleep during meditation then you should try writing or journaling.
Write down your thoughts. Even when you think you’re not a writer, you might discover something new about yourself.
Just look at this post. This made you know a little more about me, and I also got to know a little more about myself.
“Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.”
If you like this story, do leave a comment and a few claps if you like. I’d love to see your feedback.
