Knowing Myself
It seems so much depends in my life on me knowing who I am. How can I make the right decisions in my life if I don’t understand who I am? Self-knowledge may be a metric for measuring mental health. I believe the less you know about yourself, the less mental health you possess. So how does one learn about oneself? I’m not convinced that merely living teaches much. That’s my observation. It’s easy to talk about “knowing thyself,” but how is that accomplished? I think one can learn about oneself from big events that happen in one’s life and also from little events that happen in one’s life. Little events are things that happen daily. The little events might hold some promise for self-knowledge if one looks at them right.
The little events are those that basically happen in one’s daily life. Thus, they are common and are typically ignored. When you write your autobiography you won’t mention them. Perhaps we ignore and forget them exactly because they reveal so much of ourselves. These events often fall into our routines and habits. Addictions, I consider big events. These certainly reveal yourself and their revelations are useful, but now I want to consider only small events. It is small events that are the most unexamined. I see people wanting to understand themselves and they dive into the big events in their lives, like how their parents raised them. But big events are difficult to understand and are like a difficult knot. Any knot can be untied, but some require the untying of other knots first. Your life is a series of knots. Some are more difficult to untie than others. Untie the easier knots of your life first; then you will have the knowledge to untie the larger ones more easily.
An example from my life will be useful. When I have something to do that I don’t particularly like doing but that needs to be done by a certain date, I will wait until the last minute to do it. Such behavior may be called procrastination. I used to call it that but not anymore. I used to have some negative feelings and some anxiety about this behavior. I always tried to change but I would eventually relapse into this waiting until the last minute. I didn’t have a problem with getting things done on time; I just always put them off until the last. I am a behaviorist, and I considered the behavioral consequences of waiting until the last minute. Behaviorally, as one gets closer to a deadline, one’s motivation increases. Reinforcements are always delivered at deadlines. Intuitively, I was using reinforcers to increase my motivation for tasks I didn’t like doing. Now, that explanation sounds quite different from “procrastination.” I realized the motivation produced by reinforcement is an important aspect of my performance. I began looking at my life and noticed I always waited until the last minute to complete undesired tasks. I began to feel better about myself.
The important issue here is that the belief that I was a procrastinator was a negative self-image although small. These small pools of negativity, when there are enough, do damage to you. They can limit your performance and achievements in life. Such small puddles of negativity always lie among small events. A little examination can often turn these negatives into positives.
Some small events have negative consequences, and some have positive consequences. Examine both kinds. The ones that have positive consequences are rich in positive self-images. Failure to recognize them leaves important personal resources unused. Tap into these puddles of positivity and change the negative ones into positive ones.