The more you know about yourself, the happier you'll be.  Knowing yourself has other benefits as well.

Knowing your true self will help you work more effectively to reach your goals.  It will lead you down the road to success.  It will bring you a calmness that will improve your attitude and your relationships with others.

Psychologists spend most of their time trying to help people see things within themselves that they have been hiding from themselves.  We humans are very adept at such games.  If we don't want to deal with something we deny that it happened, or we re-interpret it to fit a different view of the world.

I once had a startling conversation with my mother that revealed to me how completely we can fool ourselves.

She casually mentioned doing something with my ex-wife and I asked when it happened.  She said "when you came to visit from Michigan."  I could not place what she was talking about.  I had absolutely no recollection of a visit that had occurred a few years before.

"Isn't that interesting," she said.  "You must not want to remember."  She then gave me a picture taken at the time.  Not only was it interesting, it was alarming.  How could I simply forget a weeklong trip across the United States?  The memory of my brief first marriage was powerfully painful.  And what else have I "forgotten" or buried?

How easy it must be to ignore a comment or minor interchange.  And what about things that were "remembered wrong" rather than forgotten altogether?

Humans have an amazing capacity to pay attention to just the things we want to.  Have you ever watched non-kiddy television with a two-year-old in the room?  Invariably, adults tune out the commercials and the kids tune out the TV show itself.

We do the same thing with newspapers and magazines.  Some of us train ourselves to ignore the ads.  We browse through the articles and ignore the ads.  That's why advertisers are always doing something different to get our attention.

We pick and choose what we want to see.  Our unconscious mind makes decisions about how to filter our experiences and sensory "input."  And we're all different in what we filter and how we filter it.  Have you ever heard someone say, "I never pay attention to . . ." something?  One person might not know the color of her neighbor's car.  Another might not know the major street names in his own neighborhood.

These are minor examples.  But our mind uses the same process to interpret every aspect of our personal and business lives as well.  Was that tone in my wife's voice irritation or just fatigue?  Does the boss expect me to work late or is that just my perception?

I once had a boss who stated very plainly that no one had to stay after 5 PM.  He always did.  And others always seemed to be around with him.  Many of them believed it was part of their job to be there when he was there.  Was this his intention or merely their perception?

We can take steps to make clear our intentions.  I have a client with more than a hundred employees who actually flashes the lights off and on at 5:10 PM.  The message is clear:  Go Home.

Sometimes we have to work hard to be understood.  Some people have built tough, thick shells around themselves and it's impossible for you to break through.  A person with extremely low self-esteem will see an accolade as a criticism.

"The boss thinks I'm such a loser that, when I finally do something right, she makes me employee of the month."  Well, there's very little you can do to change that person's negative perspective.

But what about yourself?  How are you interpreting your world?  What do you ignore in yourself and others?  Many of us are just too busy to slow down and examine what we do and how we filter our world.

If you want to "know yourself" you need to take time to work at knowing yourself.

Who are you?  What are your goals?  Where do you want to be in five years?  What do you want in your relationship with your spouse?  How's your relationship with your children?  What have you done to get to know your neighbors?  What hobbies would you like to renew?  What makes you happy?  How often do you do things that make you happy?

What are you thankful for?

As with so many things in life, the road to happiness and success is easy, but we have made it more difficult than it needs to be.

When I ask you what makes you happy today, there are two possible answers. The first answer is superficial—it's the parlor game level of self-awareness. You might say money, or sex, or time to go on a date with your spouse. I'm not saying that this superficial answer is untrue, but it is probably trite. Any personal meaning for you and the answer could be different tomorrow and the day after that.

The other answer you can give is a well-considered, principle-centered reflection of who you are and what you value.  This statement does not have to be long and complicated.  It need not involve a lengthy discussion of the relative importance of competing values in your life.  In fact, the "true" answer to what makes you happy can be short and sweet.  For example, "My family makes me happy."

To others, this sounds like every other answer given around the table.  But your well-considered, "true" answer to the question will not change tomorrow or next week or next month.  It is also defensible.  No matter how people might argue and ask "what-if" questions, you can support your answer.

Parlor games aside, the process of knowing these types of things about yourself takes a long time.  You need to relax and make yourself aware of who you are.  And then the answers will make themselves known to you.

So now I've made this process sound long and complicated.  But I've already made the claim that the process was to be simple.  It is simple.  The process involves taking time every day to sit and relax and think about yourself.

That's it.  Simple.

You don't believe me, do you?  You want the long, complicated answer that involves exercises you can do and lists to make and inventories of your values and self-awareness questions, and long personal evaluation worksheets, and mission statements, and all that jazz.

You may want that because then you'll have every excuse to not participate, or to quit after a few weeks.

Or you may want that because our society has told you that successful people are dynamos, real go-getters.  And we love quick-fix solutions.  Our collective closets are filled with ten-minute-a-day exercise machines and our bookshelves are loaded down with advice on losing weight without trying and getting rich without working.

You have to work at anything you want.  You want to get rich?  Work at it.  You want to be happy?  Work at it.  You want a good marriage?  Work at it.

The process of getting to know yourself is very simple.  Relax.  Focus.  Think.

I will tell you my "plan" – what I do to relax and focus and get to know myself.  But my way is not the only way.  Once you spend some time and begin to have some success you will think of things that work better for you.

It may take a month of relaxing and thinking before your method of relaxing and focusing reveals itself.  Then you'll believe me.  You'll say, "This is so simple.  I could have figured this out if I had just sat down and relaxed and focused every day."

Alrighty then.  Let's get started.  I'm going to tell you what works for me.  Feel free to make changes.  Remember that the keys to success are:

·     You must set aside time every day.  Twenty minutes, thirty minutes.  Maybe an hour on Saturday.

·     You must relax.  This takes practice because the hurry-up-and-be-successful person inside you doesn't want to relax.

·     You must focus.  Examining yourself is difficult.  Not yourself as a parent or spouse or boss or worker or whatever.  Yourself as you.

All of these things will seem difficult at first.  And they are.  But they get easier over time.

The first twenty minutes you spend on this process will be difficult and not very productive.  When you finally find twenty minutes to sit quietly your mind will not relax and you will experience a flood of thoughts about bills and family and work.  You will not have much focus.

But don't worry.  This is the inevitable process you have to go through.  You will develop the habit of setting aside time.  You will learn to relax.  You will train yourself to focus.  And then you will have a flood of energy, renewed vigor, and happiness in all aspects of you life.

I promise.

See Related Articles