The importance of knowing who you are.

An interesting way to figure out how important it is to know yourself is to look at it in its extremes.

• First extreme: Everyone in the world hasn’t a clue as to who they are.
• A wimpy person may take up boxing and get beaten to a pulp because they did not understand their physical limit.
• A intellectually challenged person would spend their whole life in rocket science school and never graduate because they didn’t understand their intellectual limits.
• An extremely creative person would never try painting because they thought that everyone should be a rocket scientist.

• Second extreme: Everyone in the world really knows who they are.
• Everyone would take responsibility for their decisions. (See my blog entry on taking responsibility: http://samwhatdoyouthink.blogspot.com/2009/05/taking-responsibility.html )
• If something goes haywire, everyone would be able to analyze it from the perspective of their strengths. This would make it easy to categorize the event as a learning experience or, oops, I just did something foolish, experience.
• There would be little self confidence issues. Doing something new would bypass thoughts of “can I do it” and be reduced to a simple issue of courage. :-)

Yep, the above are a bit silly but the examples demonstrate the different perspectives and are not meant to stir deep emotions. It’s important to understand that the above analysis is pure conjecture and hasn’t a resemblance to the real world. However, even if there is some semblance of accuracy, which category would you like to be part of? It’s an easy decision...

Now there is also a metaphysical perspectives that I think is really valid. The bottom line is:

The better you know yourself the more profoundly you are able to express yourself. The better everyone expresses their true self, the more balanced the world becomes. I think that this if fodder for an independent blog entry so I’ll just drop it for now.

What do you think?

Sam