Tips to self Discovery-1

5 Tips to Discover Self

SELF AND LIFE SKILLS-1

How well do you know your English? ...your boss or neighbor? We have an answer for such questions. But let me ask you something simple. How well do you know yourself? I am sure most of us would struggle to reply.
Our answers would border on over confidence on one extreme of "I Know myself very well" to the other-an absolute loss of identity," Who Am I?"

As a teacher, trainer, and consultant, I found that most individuals aspire to sharpen their skills by attending technical workshops or courses on personality expecting miracles. However, the fact that goes unnoticed is the actual development of self… which is dependent on the discovery of self. It is important to discover and know your strengths and weaknesses to actually develop yourself.

Very few training programs concentrate on this self quest before embarking on the actual training. I always feel that it is like going on a shopping spree without knowing one’s taste. Here are five tips according to me that will help you fix that gap. 

FIVE TIPS TO DISCOVER SELF

Here are few pointers that provide a baseline for self-development. To explore and discover yourself, you need to:

1.ACCEPT

2.ACKNOWLEDGE

3.ELIMINATE & REINFORCE

4.BE SELF RESILIENT

5.BE SELF-RELIANT

The above tips are an outcome of my counseling and training experience for more than a decade and a half. The tools that I follow are those that I developed myself out of my own experience and ingenuity. You can try these out as these are simple and easy to follow yet very effective.

1.ACCEPTANCE

The first step in discovering yourself is accepting your SELF. 
– “You As You Are”. This includes accepting your strengths, flaws, weaknesses, dysfunctional attitudes, and idiosyncrasies. 
To do so, you need to:

Identify your strengths and weaknesses – List out the things you feel good about yourself or that others have pointed out as a compliment. Similarly, identify your improvement areas and list them.

Validate your assumptions by identifying instances that justify each virtue or vice. Take pride in exhibiting your strengths and analyze how you could have handled your flaws or mistakes. If you do not have clarity about self, anything you believe and transmit to the world would lack in conviction. Example: If you are short tempered, you need to accept the fact about yourself and rectify the same through techniques like breathing exercises or the most common ones like counting till ten instead of telling the world “I am short tempered be careful!!!”

Learn to adjust your own thoughts and stance on any and every issue about self and the world. Remember, if you cannot accept yourself, you cannot expect the world to do so.

Once you discover and accept your Self, you need to accept:

Others – It is important to accept others just as it is for you to accept yourself. If you learn to accept yourself it becomes easy to apply the same principles when accepting others. If you are impatient in a particular situation, you will understand the impatience of another person in a similar situation. If you are an extrovert, the silence of an introvert might frustrate you. Hence, it becomes important for you to make a conscious effort to recognize and rectify your reactions. Accepting others would be not getting perturbed if your colleague loses her cool often but to firmly make her aware of the fact that she needs to do something about it.

Situation – Use your strengths and weaknesses to accept and handle situations and monitor your reactions. Keeping a watch on how you react to success or failure, unforeseen events, and to incidents that are out of your control helps you identify how you are accepting a particular situation in life. 

Prepare and use a self made personality checklist to get a hang of your current status with regard to your Self both personally and professionally.

2.ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The second step in self discovery is acknowledgement. You must acknowledge your feelings, attitude, and facts about yourself without negating any. Acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses helps bring out the best in you. Well, how does acknowledgement help in self-discovery?

As a student or as a professional, by acknowledging your strengths and weaknesses, you are helping your mentor or manager. This enables them to challenge you with appropriate tasks that help reveal your strengths and probably overcome your weaknesses. Eventually, you end-up exploring a few new facts about yourself; be it strength or a weakness.

WHO, WHY, AND WHEN SHOULD YOU ACKNOWLEDGE?

Acknowledging your feelings and reactions to self and others is a stage where you reinforce your stand on your acceptance of the same. Many times we accept certain facts but fail to acknowledge it as we do not consciously believe in it. Ingraining these tendencies and feelings is a must as it paves the way for a proper transformation of self and there-by a new You.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Who Why       When Self Helps you and others  discover some traits  about yourself         Provides clarity  to self and  others on situations  that you can  or  cannot handle Prevents you  and others  from taking  wrong decisions      At regular intervals       so that you have       a reality check on       yourself Others      Use your discretion       and  acknowledge       only when    necessary       if you feel it will          help improve       the situation

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Many times, I found that parents accept their children’s inability to do a particular course but fail to acknowledge the same. As a result, few unsuitable courses are forced onto children with the hope that they will ‘get over or manage’ somehow. However, acknowledging the child’s inability would have prevented the child and the parent from taking a wrong decision.

Follow a simple self approval exercise where you list all your tendencies such as punctuality, short-temper, eye for detail, messy and so on. Segregate them into categories of acknowledgement and denial and cross-check at regular intervals till you minimize your deny list.

ELIMINATION AND REINFORCEMENT

The next immediate requirement calls for you to strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses. Acknowledgement is the precursor for further action in that specific area. You must start working on strengthening your virtues further or making strategies to use it to its fullest. However, in case of a weakness or a negative trait, ensure you do away with it or abstain from it or at least minimize to reveal it within your own Self.

Accepting the fact that you are careless and forgetful is one thing but when you start acknowledging the same you make a mental note to cross-check for any miss on your part. In this way, you begin weakening your weakness. Similarly, if you are a perfectionist and posses an eye for detail, explore every option where you can exhibit this trait and ensure you use it to boost your confidence.

After years of counselling, I found that elimination and reinforcement can happen in two phases:

The initial phase of elimination happens when you consciously put an effort to block, remove, or avoid certain behavioral traits that you feel needs to be eliminated. In this phase, you are aware of what needs to be eliminated or reinforced. For example, if you are the cynical type that sneers at everyone or anything, you consciously put in efforts to stop expressing your view aloud and try to stay calm. However, you would still be cynical from within.

The matured phase of elimination is from within, where reinforcement happens. In this phase, you mould your weakness and convert it into a strength. You would then convert cynicism from our earlier example to constructive criticism or better still a silent appraisal of the situation thereby weighing the pros and cons.

SELF RESILIENCE

Shaping up self is not always about changing or eliminating. It is also about preserving and protecting one self. Time and again I stress on the necessity to accept self and developing a base to stand on and return back to after a rough patch. Whatever happens remember you are you and that’s how you have come on to the planet.

Once I was counseling a first year management graduate who was repeatedly performing low inspite of being a very attentive and proactive participant of the programme. During the session it was found that he thought he must change himself according to the instruction rather than let himself be. We always feel we must follow the mob! Instead, wait and give yourself a self check if you already have it in you.

It is absolutely necessary not to let carried away by every advice, reprimand or praise and try to mould or change accordingly. Its progressive to be responsive to the world but it’s a matter of utmost importance to preserve what you are. You are what you are because of different experiences and experiences in life. Individuals with serious mental blocks should seek the help of professionals to remove them from their system instead of struggling to get over or above such things.Never forget that you have a unique identity that differentiates you from the rest of the species and that can never be tampered with no matter what.

SELF RELIANCE

The sermon of any spiritual guru says that the source of all thoughts and actions is from within and infact we have a whole universe within us. Self reliance is a double edged knife which when used aptly builds ones character and provides him with a purposeful and effective self. 

When you successfully cross the first four steps and continuously practice maintaining your acceptance and reseliance levels you will automatically progress to the next level of relying on yourself. I would say get inspired but do not get affected or enslave yourself to alien ideologies especially when you do not believe in them.

Self reliance stems from rigorous and dispassionate appraisal of self. However when used in excess this might lead to excessive obsession with self that might be detrimental to self growth and ultimately lead to self destruction.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY READERS

This is my New year bonus post and hope you enjoy it as much as you enjoy reading fiction...

The above are  a brief of my thoughts on self and self concept! This is the first in the series of my new initiative THE GOLDENHAND SERIES!

In this I wish to focus on individuals and kids along with a host of other factors that would ultimately shape them and their attitude!

I request all my fiction readers to participate and let me know their feed back! It would be a great support if you also suggest topics that you would like to know more about...

Please do comment and discuss any issues or submit your queries...

Those who are interested to learn more can simply email me at- 

thoughtsgallore@gmail.com.