Knowing yourself better to live better

What is the use of empowering our self-knowledge, and how to achieve it?

Knowing yourself better is the key to live a full, rich and healthy life.. This process can last a lifetime, as people change and evolve.

Even if our temperament remains more or less stable over time, life experiences can lead us to change our opinions, interests and even values or moral principles.

People evolve throughout their lives. And that's what makes this inner journey so fascinating, don't you think? However, this makes the process of self-knowledge something more complex, but no less valuable.

Benefits of self-knowledge

Knowing yourself well means living better for many reasons:

• A personal map is created that works as a guide even in the most stressful situations.
• Improves your emotional self-control.
• It makes you a more autonomous and creative person.
• It favors states of fullness and inner calm.
• Reduces stress by channeling energy into the things that are truly important to you.
• It leads you to surround yourself with people who enrich and contribute to you.
• It reduces inner conflicts caused by lack of coherence.
• Friction with your loved ones decreases, as you anticipate (and anticipate them) your reactions more easily.
• Your work performance improves as you become more aware of your strengths and limitations and use them to your advantage.

In short, being conscious of how you are leads you to make better decisionsdecisions that, although not ideal, will be aligned with you and your personal values.

Keep in mind that making decisions has more to do with coherence (that there is harmony between what you feel, think, say and do) than with the certainty that you are making the best possible decision. When deciding, we are embracing uncertainty and the possibility of being wrong.

The important thing is that self-knowledge leads you, decision by decision, step by step, towards the life you really want and deserve, towards the life you really want and deserve to live.. But... what does it take to deepen this knowledge?

• You might be interested in, "Do you really know what self-esteem is?"

Requirements to know yourself better

To know yourself, you need to pay attention to yourself. It is necessary to to raise the volume of that inner voice that speaks to us even if we do not listen..

Many times, we pay more attention to the voices around us than to our own. Whether due to insecurity, low self-esteem, fear of disappointment, failure, rejection... we tend not to prioritize our inner voice.

It is necessary to listen to the inner voice in order to know oneself. Self-knowledge also requires a large dose of patience and self-criticism, since it is a matter of getting as realistic an idea as possible of our strengths and strong points since it is a matter of getting as realistic an idea as possible of our strengths and strong points, but also of our weaknesses and shortcomings. And this is not always easy to accept.

Here are some practical ways to get to know yourself better.

1. Go to a quiet, natural or special place for you.

Silence helps you connect inwardlyHave you noticed? Try to get out of your usual environment, or schedule some time alone in a quiet place in your home, better if it is special.

2. Write, write down, review

A very powerful exercise is the following: write down anything that crosses your mind, no matter if it makes a lot of sense.It doesn't matter if it makes a lot of sense.

You can also create an emotional diary, in which you can record how you feel, what sensations you have over time, what things worry you...

You can go back to what you have written later to be a witness of your own evolution.. It is important that you try to understand what your habitual patterns are: what you usually do when faced with a certain emotion, how you relate to your thoughts, your emotions...

3. Think in terms of need

Not all of us need the same thing at every moment.. Understanding what you need helps you to give it to yourself, in a gesture of love. And this is part of who you are to know where you really want to go.

4. Use creativity

Both the use of artistic tools such as painting, dancing, singing, sculpture, and trying to be creative mentally will help you.

An example of creative thinking is the followingImagine that you are witnessing your own funeral. Recreate the people who would be there as well as the things you would like them to say about you. How do they describe you? What words do they use to refer to you? What events or actions do they point out as relevant to your life?

This creative visualization invites us to reflect on what we value.

In conclusion

It is not always easy to maintain sufficient objectivity to know oneself in depth. Going to therapy gives us the opportunity to learn to know ourselves better, with the help of professionals who can help us to understand ourselves better.We are guided by professionals who accompany us and who work as a flashlight where we cannot see.