KNOW THYSELF - socrates

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Know thyself” – Socrates. Self-awareness is the act of being fully perceptive about one’s innermost self; an essential part to one’s life.

How does one really know themselves? You could recognize the exterior and know your own reflection. Sure you are 6'2 with brown hair and eyes. Not a bad-looking individual. But you are not your physical characteristics but your spiritual ones. If you could look into something and see your internal reflection would you want to? What would you see? What would you learn? What would that something be? What could possibly dig deep into your soul and reveal your innermost person? In ancient Greece, “Know Thyself” are other ways of saying self realization , or self knowledge . Knowing thyself is being able to know about everything, and by doing so it makes us knowledgeable all creation.

Self-awareness and its accompanying egoism profoundly affect people's lives, interfering with their success, damaging their relationships with other people, and undermining their happiness.

  “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment” – Tao Tzu. This introspection surpasses the ordinary understanding of life and grasps the aspect of one’s innermost self. Furthermore, the thought process one engages causes judging based on self-interest and major distortions in one’s view of others and ultimately of one’s self. These distortions one has over one’s self and others help him or her lose sight of who one actually is or who someone else could be. All the people we interact with, effect, influence, and touch regularly reflect who we are. We are who we love, hate, admire, help, and lean on. Every little action, emotion, or word brought out by various people in various situations are characteristics that are instinctual. They are what you do without thinking and therefore are roots of your personality. One may believe that he or she can make “reliable psychological ascriptions to himself immediately” based on fact or of past experiences, which may or may not be accurate. However, how others choose to view another person can be surprisingly  differentiating from how one tends to view one’s self.

Knowing yourself is not about the skimming the surface like finding a favourite colour or music you like. Knowing yourself is about delving much deeper. Knowing yourself is a journey. It is about discovering who is about discovering who you are as a human being. The journey is unpredictable and engages you deeply as it brings you face-to-face with your deepest fears, self doubts , vulnerabilities and insecurities. The journey around knowing yourself can be challenging and scary, however it also changes over time. Coming to understand how we appear to others is a key aspect of reflection. Self-knowledge can be divided into four areas: what is known to us as well as to others, what is known to others but not to us, what we know and others don’t, and what we don’t know and others don’t either. Discovering what no one knows takes time and intensive tactics. However, our biggest gain in self-improvement can be had by simply finding out what others know about us that we don’t. And they know more than we think they do. Knowing the self implies a deep level of understanding. It means arriving at a point where we can predict how we’ll do in specific situations and the effect our actions will have. It also means that we can be fairly sure of how others would describe our strengths and weaknesses.  

 

 

 

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