Understanding myself.

[CalmPiano]

For the past few months I've been trying to get to know myself. I'm 20 years old and this whole process is new to me but I think I understand the importance of getting to know yourself and why you should. It's really difficult and takes me a lot of time to really understand and agree with myself. Something that I'm really comfortable with and have learn't about myself recently is my intelligence. I'm not smart, average if anything but I'm hard working, always.

I came to this conclusion and really understand and believe in this because nothing contradicts this thought and can easily see and have plenty of evidence of working hard throughout my life.

I've been thinking about a lot of other stuff too such as if I think I'm kind and sincere something that really matters to me. I can think of many times I've been polite and kind but I think deep down I didn't really want to. I only was kind or polite because I was scared or because it's what was drilled into me growing up. I can remember my mother telling me every time I left the house to be kind and always remember my manners. This has always stuck with me but I think that I don't really believe I'm kind because of how my thoughts contradict my actions. I do the right thing for the wrong reason and that bothers me.

Maybe I'm not asking myself the right questions or thinking about this the wrong way? It scares me the more I dig into this because I'm starting to realise that all the things I've believed about myself aren't true. I try to reassure myself that I'm human and I make mistakes but It feels wrong knowing this stuff about myself. I hope what I'm conveying makes some sense to you. This is my first post on this forum so I hope I've placed this in the correct directory.

[Richard@DecisionSkills]

Getting to know yourself is a lifelong process. Hopefully you will always have more to discover, more to learn, more to explore.

At 20, no one is who they think they are. It is very normal to start discovering this in your late teens to early adulthood as you form a separate identity away from authority figures such as parents and teachers.

As you learn my one caution is to avoid using labels, especially labels that are highly malleable, subjective, and context dependent. Things like intelligence or good or bad are not fixed traits.