Author Dona Middleton shares her story on the tiny Buddha website narrating that at the age of 25, she was happily married and had a great career, many friends and lots of money. During that time she also became deeply depressed, was put on medication for anxiety, and entered what would be a very long relationship with psychotherapy.
This phase of her life was a real struggle for her to understand why she wasn’t happy when she had everything that she thought was important in life.
"Was I selfish? Were my expectations too high? I honestly couldn’t understand what was missing and how to fill this huge void that gnawed at me every day.”
The journey to finding out who she was and what really mattered to her eventually involved divorce, the loss of her career and most of her possessions, and overcoming a serious illness.
"It pretty much took the loss of everything I thought defined me and made me happy to admit to myself that I honestly didn’t know myself very well at all. When I look back at my life, twenty years later, I realise that I really had no idea who I was or what made me happy. I kept expecting something or someone to answer this question for me,” she shares.
Who am I? What do I believe in? What is my purpose? What fills me with joy and wonder? These are questions she says she is just beginning to understand after forty-five years of living her life.
Knowing who you truly are enables someone to become more confident in understanding their purpose in life—the hardest part is in knowing where to begin.
Before you dream of the person you want to be, Counsellor Shadia Nansasi says it’s important to first understand who you truly are.
How do you find this out? Point out your weaknesses, strengths, what you are good at, what makes you sad and what makes you happy too.
Nansasi says understanding one’s personality is also very vital in terms of understanding ourselves as humans.
Whereas these assessments cannot be perfect, they are very helpful in identifying who you are from the core, she notes.
The counsellor believes that the best gift that anyone can give to themselves and the world is understanding who they truly are.
"This is the root of everything we do in life. And it is vital if you want to live your life to the fullest and most importantly, be valuable to the world. But for you to get to the core of this, you need to be intentional and be prepared to put in much effort, for this process involves shedding layers and layers of that we thought mattered or defined us,” she says.
Take time to be still
It is believed that observing yourself is the necessary starting point for any real change.
Sparing sometime alone to think deep and reflect on your life; meditating, prayer, among other things, are some of the ways that are recommended in terms of personal reflection.
The counsellor is of the view that it’s hard for anyone to discover who they are until they take the time to be still.
"Seek silence once in a while, away from family and friends, away from social media and work. Sit still and let every flaw stare back at you, evaluate yourself and be totally honest with yourself, that’s how you will be able to see every aspect of your life.”
In order to uncover who we are and why we act the way we do, experts recommend knowing our own story.
An individual who wants to know who they are has to be willing to explore their past. Research has shown that it isn’t just the things that happened to us that define who we become, but how much we have made sense of what’s happened to us.
Events from the past have the ability to inform the ways we act today. Therefore, being mindful and making conscious decisions in the present can be a great tool in discovering our true selves.