The process of getting to know ourselves require us to do lot of the Inner work. This allow us to learn to know who we are without outside attachments to things, people or places. 

Inner work means doing introspection and self-enquiry about yourself, by asking questions about who you are or want to be, raising your awareness, practicing reflecting on your feelings, your emotions, your thoughts, your triggers, your reactions and how they affect your overall wellbeing, daily life, goals, relationships, finances, and personal development. 

Doing inner work also means reflecting on how to take the responsibility for the role you play in your life and how to learn the lessons from situations you face.

Additionally, doing inner work means getting to know your mind and how it works, so you can learn to work with it and not against it, shape it slowly into the direction you prefer for your life, with consistent efforts and reminders to change habits and patterns that no longer serve you. 

Finally, doing inner work allow you to also identify areas for growth and improvement to help you become the person you aspire to or can be. 

Inner work can be done through mediation, journalizing, speaking to a trusted person, therapy, retreats, and various other methods that work for you.

Ideally, this process should be done in solitude and with quiet time if you can, so you can hear your own voice through your inner compass, without outside influence. Because the goal is to find who you truly are deep inside without any external attachments. 

Some practical actions to help you get to know yourself: 

Practice Solitude by learning to enjoy your own company

Start by spending time alone to recharge and understand what spending time alone can do for you. There is no best way to know yourself than through solitude. It may be difficult for many of us, but finding and making that time, would be rewarding for your growth. 

Also, start doing things by yourself and for yourself, choose to get out of your comfort zone, cheers yourself up, motivate yourself and learn to become your best friend. Start talking and advising yourself like you will do with your best friend. Enjoy just being you without no one around and be ok with that. 

If you have others around, enjoy time with them without being too attached to their presence or turning them into your only source of joy, happiness or sense of self. Because you want to rely on your own self for self-validation, emotional support and well-being, so that when no one is around, you still be ok to move forward in your life. Quite often, we make the mistake of relaying too much on others for emotional support and to make us happy, but the reality is everyone else is busy trying to find happiness.

Therefore, the only way to find it is within yourself by staying grounded and leaning to self-manage. By enjoying your own company, you start having clarity about who you are, want you want out of life and the direction of your life.

Practice Meditation 

Cultivating mindfulness help you become more aware of your internal state without judgment. You can start by sitting in silence for 1 minutes and gradually increasing your time until you start to enjoy the quietness-Yes! Feeling that peace in the quietness of your mind is really refreshing! 

In your daily grin, make intentional effort to slow down, stop and observe how you are feeling, and assessing your current emotion or thoughts. 

Then ask yourself why you are feeling the way we feel. Perhaps something happen that trigged the emotion, or a past event or situation maybe causing old feelings and emotions to resurface. By being mindful of how you feel through self-reflection, you can start understanding your why’s and take actions that can help you improve your state of being in that moment and possibly in the long term. But it all starts by acknowledging and accepting what is going on in the present moment without resistance or avoidance. 

Through this process, you learn to identify your emotions and feelings, the possible reasons behind it and release the energy that it hold within you. 

Learn to Be present

Pay attention to the present moment in your daily activities. This can help you understand how you react to different situations. For instance, do you feel constantly thinking about something else, instead of enjoying the present?

Or do you resist the current situation because you mind is focused on how to get out of it, instead of taking practical actions. By making intentional efforts to bring yourself back to the Present, you allow yourself to fully enjoy what is, minimize unnecessary stress and worries and even self-sabotaging the moment. This also help you avoid the trap of identifying the present or reality as bad, while the real issue maybe the need to control or letting your thoughts get in the way of what is actually a positive experience. 

By practicing being present, you start seeing that there is nothing going on at the present moment to cause you anxiety, fears, worry or any discomfort. Rather, it is letting your mind control the present moment by making it seems to be what it is not really. Like Eckhart Tolle beautifully quote it “Whenyou make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do and with it the quality of your life increases dramatically.” 

This process allows connect with who you are now, while still working on who you are trying to become, but with less resistance, and it can only help you find who you are in the inside.

Define your ideal Day to yourself 

 Define what your perfect day looks like by identifying your priorities. This process help you see what matters to you, what bring you joy, and peace, what energize you, make you feel contented, and leave you with a feeling of gratitude. Perhaps, just having a new day to get your job done, or write a paragraph is enough to make your day. Wherever it is, your goal is to find what works for you, so that when things are not going the way you want, you can still feel a sense of peace and contentment. Rather than letting your emotions and feelings take control of the situation and make it worse. 

Because, for sure something, someone or anything can throw out the perfect day at any time-but only if we let it!  We want to redirect our focus to a positive stay of being as much as possible, so that when things do not go as planned, we are fine and still feel grounded to accept it for what it is and keep on moving forward. For instance, you may plan to go to the gym twice a week but work always seems to get in the way. But instead of being frustrated, you accept it for what it is and understand this will happened sometimes and it is ok. The truth is things could be worse, but it is not.

Sometimes, this requires you to reframe negative experiences into positive outcomes for yourself to benefit you in some way by adopting a positive attitude.

Identify your core values and beliefs

Identify your cores values and beliefs by clearly defining what is important to you as these drive your actions and decisions. For instance, is freedom, security or creativity important to you? Start asking yourself what are the values and beliefs systems you want to live by? What are those you inherited, but no longer resonate with?

What are the non-negotiable values and beliefs that you hold, that allow you to keep your integrity and stay truth to who you are at your cores? perhaps, you want to redefine how you feel about money and happiness? Some of these answers can help bring clarity and sense of direction in your life.

Explore your personality

Start reflecting on your personality traits to better understand how you communicate, make decisions, and interact with the world. For instance, do you constantly feel anxious, even when everything is fine? Perhaps, by understanding this about yourself, you learn how to better navigate your life and relationships the best way possible and not let this trait overtake who you can truly be. Or perhaps, you may have strong personality traits that may intimidate other easily, but you learn ways to work with these traits without coming off too aggressive, depending on the situation you are facing. 

This process will help you work with your personality in the more positive ways for the best possible outcomes. For instance, if you are often sad and hopeless, but want to improve it by understanding why and how to create and feel more joy and happiness in your life.

Exploring your personality also include understanding your emotions and feelings and what are the most dominant state you have. This allows you to identify recurring patterns in your behaviors and emotions as related to your personality traits, and how you can work with it to bring you more positivity than negativity. 

Identify Your “Shadows”

This step requires you to acknowledge your fears, insecurities, triggers, hurts, pains, and past traumas to understand what drives your reactions and behaviors. Do you still hold on to fear of rejection from past experiences or are you working to let go and embrace the reality of the current life?  Perhaps, you still have insecurities about a particular area in your life, that has been holding you back from living the life you want, and maybe now is the time to learn to face the fear and reframe the insecurities to help you enjoy life more.

By identifying your shadows side, you learn to live in your truth, live authentically and move from a place of genuine feelings and emotions that are no longer tied to fears, insecurities or trauma, allowing you to enjoy life freely.

Understand your needs and wants and the reasons behind them

Start asking yourself if you truly want what you are seeking or working for or there are other reasons. This step would allow you to identity if you are focusing on our own growth and journey, or for external validation, external pressure, opinions or insecurities.

This understanding allows you to start redirecting your actions to what matters to you.  

Review your past and early adulthood

By reflecting on your past, like your childhood or early adulthood, you can recall moments that bring you joy, contentment, happiness, a positive sense of self and joy for life before external pressures influenced you. 

Through this process, you can start to embrace that same or similar ways of being, create more positivity in your space and energy, and find your genuine self to help you live authentically.

Listen to your energy

Start noticing which people and what activities energize you and which ones drain you. what bring you joy, feel engaged, excited? When do you feel most alive? 

Engage in activities that bring you joy and invest in your interests, talents, hobbies or skills that you want to learn or grow. Maybe try volunteering if you want to put your skills to use or learn new ones. In turn, this can boost your sense of self and improve your self-esteem tremendously.

Additionally, start asking yourself self-reflective questions like “If I wasn’t afraid, I would…” Maybe it is connecting with new people to expand your network, while getting out of your comfort zone. 

Wherever bring you more joy, happiness, increase your energy and your overall well-being is what you want to invest more of your time in.

Additionally, it is important to understand the difference between wanting and feeling positive and the energy you are projecting. Quite often, many of us make this mistake, by thinking that if we see ourselves in a certain way, that we also show up in life the same. But sometimes it is not and we do this unconsciously. Therefore, the idea is to show up, speak and behave in the same way that match the emotions you want to manifest without trying hard, but learning to become it by finding what works while staying true to yourself.

The process of get to know yourself can be a long-life journey, but choosing to start now can bring you closer to the ideal person you are trying to be in the long run. It is also important to keep in mind that choosing to Improve yourself often come with loneliness because not everyone may understand you, your journey, your path or what you are seeking in your life, but it is up to you to stay the course and keep moving forward if you want to keep growing, evolving, and become the person you are meant to become. Now go on gently on a self-discovery journey!