“Know Thyself” – from Socrates to your spouse to swami ji and every one tell you “Know yourself”. I never understood this well. If someone is talking about this from spiritual angle, then it is different from what your spouse or someone else meant. Here I will be talking about from the context of knowing your core personality.
My understanding of about “Know yourself” has the following components:
Values: What are values? Values are nothing but some core beliefs you hold for yourself. Based on these beliefs you define everything else in life. For e.g if you believe freedom is essential for living then freedom becomes one of the core value. If you firmly believe person should live honestly then honesty will be your core value. Based on these values you judge everything including yourself. So, it is very important to know your core values because these will be anchors for your life. Google on “how to discover your personal values” or “”how to know your personal values” you get some tools and tips on this. Get a list of your core values. Any time you deviate from your core values then you experience pain and when you live in sync with your values then you will be happy ( in fact joyfully .
Personality Profile: Personality profile will provide a holistic view of person’s behaviors, feeling, emotions, strengths, etc. There are different types of personality profiling tools available. My most favorite are MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and DISC profiling tests. You can do most of these tests online for free. And, horoscope is also kind of personality profiling but it depends upon whether you believe in it or not.
Personality profiling will give you very fair idea about who you are as a person overall.
Strengths: Even though personality profile provides good idea on your overall personality, I personally think knowing strengths/talents very specifically will help you in career decisions and in many other decisions. Gallup’s Strengths FINDER is the best tool available to decode your core strengths within 30 mins. This is not a free test but I strongly recommend you to buy this and do the test.
In summary, knowing yourself is very essential to gain clarity about yourself and it provides a sense of direction to your life. Otherwise, you will be living in a puzzle !!
YK