Know Thyself

I am learning more and more that the key to a happy and fulfilled life is knowing yourself.

On the good side, the more I know about what I like, the more I can fill my life with it. Colors, shapes, people. If I know what clothes suit me best, I can buy more of them and always feel at my best when I am dressed. If I know what foods make me feel the best, I can focus on eating those. If I know what songs, what TV, what conversations I prefer. I can bring them into my life.

Same goes with books, hobbies, places to go. Focusing a lot on my actual likes and taking a step back and thinking really hard about whether I like something because *I* like it (and not because someone else encouraged me or cause it looks good or sounds important, etc.) is a very valuable way to spend my time.

I wrote about this in a newsletter a few months ago but I’ve been thinking more and more about it everyday.

Today Brené and Jen were talking about shame triggers in the Ordinary Courage class and, to me, it was another reminder that how well you know yourself can be crucial in recognizing situations and being able to step away from them instead of getting upset, frustrated, or even worse falling into a shame spiral, again and again. Noticing how your body behaves when you feel ashamed allows you the opportunity to pay attention, take a moment, step back and take the next step accordingly.

Being aware is always the key.

I notice this helps when I go into arguments with people who are close to me like my family. I’ve known them for so long that I can recognize patterns, I can see my buttons as they are being pressed, I can see when an argument isn’t really about what it appears. I can understand that when the other person is just frustrated about something totally unrelated and is picking a fight. Knowing myself, knowing how I trigger, how my anger, shame, frustration, pride, etc. triggers is really really valuable in these situations. It stops me from escalating an issue unnecessarily and getting into a bad place.

One of the exercises we did for Karen’s Pathfinder class was writing down what matters to us. What our values are. What we strive for them to be. I think this awareness also brings so much light into our lives. It allows me to live my day to day life true to my priorities. If I spend time thinking about exactly the kind of mother I want to be, not what i think I should be or what others think I should be but what truly matters to me, I can make sure that the time I spend with my kids is focused on exercising those values and priorities. Same for my career or marriage.

It even applies to art. If I believe that preserving my family’s memories is crucial to me, I can spend more of my energy writing journaling on my pages. If I believe it’s more important to do play and experiment and use art to just relax and unwind, then I can worry less about the theme of my pages and focus more on the fun. For example, for me, having my art be meaningful is crucial so I focus on titles and journaling in my scrap pages and put themes and titles on my art journal pages. For me, a page isn’t complete until I have meaning. Ever since I figured this out, I always think of my “sentence” on my art journal first. And then even if the page doesn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, if it is meaningful, I am content. Knowing my preferences allows me to get to a more peaceful (or happy) place with my art.

To this end, I will spend the next few weeks spending extra attention on this. On how I think I want to be perceived (and not be perceived) and how that affects me. On what I truly want for myself. On my values and the kind of person I want to be in the world. On how I would truly like to spend my time. I plan to reserve my journaling time to note these observations daily and see if I can make some progress on getting to know myself better.

I believe it will some of the most rewarding time I spend.