How Do You Find Your True Self?

I am not talking about your role in life or your social identity. You can be a friend, a brother, a sister, an employee, a lover, a sweetheart, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a son, or a daughter at the same time. However, this is only one aspect of your personality. It is not your inner truth, but your inner self.

Have you ever thought about who you are? What do you believe in?

To know it well, you must understand your purpose, values, vision, goals, motivations, and beliefs, not what others have told you, but what you have discovered about yourself.

Awareness of your true self requires a high degree of introspection and self-awareness. If you have a clear view of some of the above, you probably have high self-awareness.You probably must know that the process of self-discovery is endless, rather it is a lifelong journey.

Your identities are only a part of you: 

Trying to reveal your true self can be a difficult process. For example, you have multiple identities in your life, each with its own set of values and expectations set by society, which may not fully correspond to who you are from within.

For example, suppose you are an employee of a car company. As an employee, your message must align with your company's message. Let's say it is to improve people's lives by providing better transportation. Your goals should be in line with the company's goals, such as increasing its sales by 20% within one year and strengthening its regional presence, for instance.

But you are a person with other goals and dreams that are different from the goals of the company. Perhaps you love volleyball, and the ideal picture you painted for your life is to be an international volleyball player, and later, to be a very popular trainer in this field, training the national teams, but this is completely different from what is expected from you as an employee of an automobile company.

The same applies to your other identities as well. You are expected to have a set of goals, values, visions, and beliefs for each of them, which may not exactly match those of your true self.

Since each person is unique, you cannot limit your true self to one identity or quality. I am the coach of a group of apprentices, a daughter to my parents, a sister to my brother, a friend to my friends, a blogger to my readers, and a trainer to the people participating in my workshop, but I am more than that. These are just roles and titles, none of them can determine precisely who I am. Within me is a person who cannot be described by one name.

Sunflowers can be used as a good example to illustrate the point. For your true self is like the head of a sunflower - the central part to which the petals are attached - your identities are like petals around your true self, while the petals are an extension of the head, but not the head. Likewise, your identities are an extension of yourself, but they do not represent your whole reality.

If you do not think deeply about who you really are from within, you are likely to become limited by your identities. People consider themselves to play a certain role, as a friend, partner, employee, son, or daughter, and some of them spend their entire lives building their personalities related to these identities. These people are unable to express their vision of things, their goals, or their beliefs, beyond what their identities impose on them.

For example, a person who dedicates their life to be a son sees their entire existence built on this foundation. They will spend a lot of time with their parents, do things for them, and give up other things in their life to make them happy if necessary, then when they must make important decisions, like those related to their profession or their life partner, they will make sure to get their approval before taking any action on it, as they are the centre of their life.

However, their true self is more than just being the son of their parents. If their parents leave this life, their loss will be heavy. Things will start to spiral out of control after the foundation on which they were building their life has disappeared. It is like the disappearance of the head of a sunflower. All the petals are scattered because there is nothing to bind them together, so when you become too attached to any of your identities, you run the risk of an identity crisis when that role is taken away from you.

I am not saying that being a good son or father is a bad thing, but what I am saying is that we need to know who we are from the inside, with a commitment to our roles, and to realise that they are an extension of who we are.

So, it is important that you find your true self. Your life is yours. If you are not in touch with your truth, you are more likely to live your life for others, pursuing other people's goals and living up to their expectations, rather than achieving what you really want, knowing your true self. It is the first step to live a conscious life of your own making.

True knowledge comes from self-awareness:

As we mentioned at the beginning, knowing your true self comes from being aware of it, so even if you don't have a clear view of your true self, it is possible that some aspects of your true self emerge on a daily basis through the way you act.

For example, if you find that you often glorify the importance of parenting, then taking responsibility is likely to be your most important personal value, and if you feel the urgency to always be with your friends, loyalty is likely to be an important value to you. 

It's never okay if you don't know your true self. Discovering and analyzing it is a lifelong process. If I take myself as an example when I was 10 years old, I wasn't self-aware like that 25 or 35 - year-old girl. When I was in elementary and high school, I didn't really know who I was, or what my beliefs were.

I don't think anyone of that age knew that. Everyone was just doing what they were told, we lacked insight or self-awareness, and we never had to think about who we were, our thoughts, or what we wanted to be. Although we had our own unique personalities, they were ambiguous at best.

I think the reason for the lack of self-awareness is that submission was held in high esteem in school days. At that time, expressing an opinion was seen as a tendency to rebel, and the student's role was to follow instructions, not question them.

If you had different thoughts from what you were told, they would ask you to be silent, so we never thought about our desires, for we were like robots doing as they were told, or like sleepwalkers, as I like to call it.

But when I went to middle school and then college, I became more self-aware, thanks to the increased space for personal freedom, the choice of classrooms for example, and the removal of teachers' influence.

These things may seem easy to you, but to me, it was the first time that I felt like my life was mine alone. Taking responsibility for my decisions made me think carefully about my future, so I did several side activities, which in other ways helped me develop.

For example, one of my hobbies at that time was designing websites, so I ran a wide network of websites. I also participated in several extra-curricular activities and gave private lessons to many students.

Later, I worked for a company and then resigned to pursue my passion, and I learned more about myself. Every day is a learning journey to discover who I am and what I'm trying to achieve. The more I discover about myself, the more able I am to live my life consciously.

What do your identities hide?

You can try this exercise to discover your true self. Start by letting go of all the identities that have accumulated to form your personality through all stages of your life. This means to stop envisioning yourself as a brother, colleague, friend, partner, or any identity you normally associate yourself with and think of yourself stripped of it all.

Write down what comes to your mind while reading the questions below:

1. What is your life goal? What is your goal?
2. How do you perceive yourself as isolated from anyone else? What are your goals and dreams for the next year, three, five, or even ten years?
3. What are your motives in life? What motivates you to move forward day in and day out? What are you fighting for? What drives your passion?
4. What are your values? What qualities are important to you?
5. What are your beliefs about the world around you?

If this is your first time doing such an exercise, you will probably feel a little lost. Some of your answers may come from one of your social identities. If your life is centered on the family, you may find all your answers are limited to taking care of your family. It's okay to get such an answer, but at the same time it should not be your only answer because you are more than just a member of this family. Start thinking about it beyond your family environment. What is your perception of yourself outside the boundaries of your family? What are your personal motives in life?

Don't worry if you are having a hard time writing the answers. Eeven if you draw a blank, there is a real person lurking behind your social identities waiting to be revealed.

Here are a few steps I found helpful in revealing my true self:

1. Continuous learning and growth.
2. Dig deeper into the mysterious aspects of your personality.
3. Put yourself in unusual situations to increase your ability to learn.
4. Constant self-accountability.
5. Ignore what is being said to discover what you want for yourself.
6. Listen to your intuition.

By doing this exercise, you have announced the beginning of the search process to discover your true personality. You will become more aware of your thoughts and actions, and you will soon have an impression of your true self separated from your social identities. Eventually, you will have a clear picture of who you really are.

Compatibility with your true self:

As you reveal more about your true self, you may find that some identities in your real life do not fit with who you are; That is, you have a conflict between who you are and what you are expected to be.

This is the first step to discover who you are. The next step is to live in harmony with your true self as best you can in the context of the prevailing situation, but at the same time start making long-term plans to eventually live in harmony with your true self. 

For example, when I used to work for a company, my true self was passionate about helping others grow consciously, but my identity as an FMCG employee required me to run skincare brands and come up with ideas for doubling the business.

This included the development of commercial and marketing strategies to entice consumers to purchase these products. This is because the beauty industry today, in my opinion, suffers from a very low level of awareness. It tends to adopt specific aesthetic standards and promotes the idea that some natural aspects of the human appearance are in fact ugly, such as freckles, wrinkles, laugh lines, and flabby skin, which does not correspond to my true self. Therefore, this resulted in a conflict between it and my identity as an employee in the company.

What I did next was to live in harmony with my true self as much as I could while working there, while carrying out the plans I had made to pursue my passion. Since changing the nature of the company was not within my reach, I focused on the effect I could make, such as establishing strong relationships with my colleagues and increasing their awareness during every communication or meeting with them.

In the end, I saw the opportunity to make a paradigm shift in 2008, and this was the most important step. It bridged the gap between me and my true self. As for what was left, it became a thing of the past, as they say.

Every action you take should bring you closer to your true self. If your roles in life do not fit in, there are two steps you can take.

First, try to find common ground between those identities and your true self. This may require reconfiguring them to fit your reality. Secondly, if this does not work, the other more dangerous option is to eliminate or change the role altogether.

When I left the company where I used to work, for example, I effectively eliminated my identity as an employee, or when I got rid of the frustrated people from my life, I eliminated my role as their friend and their role as my friends as well.

Taking these two steps has helped me become more in tune with my true self. Today I have reached a point where my outer identities are in good harmony with my inner truth. Although I need to improve them, I have a perfect harmony between them. All of this is the result of conscious effort, not sheer coincidence.

In conclusion:

Focus on finding your true self, and begin to live with it in harmony. In this way, you will start to live your life consciously.