How to Know Yourself and Become Who You Are Meant to Be

Many of us are wandering the earth accomplished in many ways

and capable of fulfillment,

but we carry a fundamental wound that prevents us from

becoming who we truly might be:

we do not quite know who we are.

It is not that we cannot remember the basics of our biographies;

rather, we are unsure about two things in particular:

we do not have a stable sense of what we are worth,

and we do not have a secure hold on our own values or judgments.

Why Knowing Yourself Matters

Without knowing who we are,

we tend to have trouble coping with either denigration or adulation.

Vulnerability to Public Opinion: If other people decide that we are worthless or bad, there is nothing inside us to prevent us from swallowing their verdicts in their entirety, no matter how wrong-headed, extreme, or unkind they may be. We become helpless before the court of public opinion, always asking others what we deserve rather than looking inside for an answer.
Hunger for External Praise: Lacking an independent verdict, we become unnaturally hungry for external approval. The clapping of an audience matters to us far more than is wise. We rush toward whatever idea or activity is currently in vogue, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny, and neglecting our truer talents for easy, popular wins.

Ignoring Your Inner Barometer: By trailing public opinion slavishly, we constantly check the world’s whims rather than consulting an inner compass. To know what we should want, feel, and value, we must learn to rely on ourselves.

No one is born with an independent ability to know who they are.

We learn to have an identity because,

if we are blessed in our early years, someone else takes the trouble

to study us with immense fairness, attention, and kindness.

They play our identity back to us in a way that makes sense,

providing a portrait that we can later enrich

and use as a defense against the distorting verdicts of others.

Validating Feelings: A parent might say, “Oh, that must really have hurt,” in response to a child’s upset, thereby validating their feelings. Or they might say, “It’s okay not to feel happy on your birthday,” delicately upholding a child’s less typical response to certain events.

Interpreting Positively: Ideally, a child is not just known; they are interpreted as likable. A good parent offers generous interpretations, always ready to put the best possible gloss on moments of ill-temper or failure, which forms the basis for resilient self-esteem.

It is common for this process to go wrong.

Mirroring Out of Sync: A parent may offer feedback that is out of sync with the child’s reality. For instance, insisting a child is “happy” when they are clearly upset scrambles the child’s ability to connect with their own emotions.

Punitive Interpretation: A parent might lend a child a harsh, punitive way of interpreting themselves, repeatedly suggesting they are ill-intentioned or no good.
Emotional Neglect: If a parent shows little interest, the child may grow up feeling not only that they are not worth cherishing, but that—because they haven’t been adequately seen and mirrored—they don’t quite exist. A feeling of unreality is the direct consequence of this emotional neglect.

Realizing that we lack a stable identity is a sobering realization,

but we can begin to correct the problem at any point.

Seeking Guidance: We can seek the help of a wise and kindly other person, perhaps a psychotherapist, who can study us closely, mirror us properly, and validate what they see.
Studying Your Feelings: Through these new eyes, we can learn to study how we really feel and take seriously what we actually want.

Trusting the Inner Barometer: By being witnessed generously, we learn to take our own sides and feel increasingly solid inside. We begin to trust ourselves more than the crowd, enabling us to say no without always swaying in the wind.

Having come to know ourselves in this way,

we become less hungry for praise, less worried by opposition,

and more original in our thinking.

We learn the vital art of both knowing

and befriending who we really are.