Know Thyself

Understanding of oneself is one of the most essential elements to a content and successful life. It is next to impossible to interact with others harmoniously if we do not have self-knowledge. Self-knowledge can actually help to understand why others act the way they do, by drawing comparisons to ourselves, and understand how to react to their actions. Self-knowledge also allows us to reflect upon past events and comprehend the personal factors that affected their outcomes. With this awareness we can improve our actions in the future and strengthen our foresight. Without self-knowledge our past would be a disconnected series of events which would have no meaning for the present or the future.


So what is self-knowledge? Self-knowledge means comprehending our motivations in actions initiated by us and our processing of actions that happen to us. It is not just an understanding of our desires, nor is it just an understanding of our view of the outside world. It is a mix of the two. After all our life is a complex composition of many different factors which each play a role in determining who we are and what happens to us. Self-knowledge is to be able to break down each decision that we make and be able to trace that back to our processing of the conditions of our environment and what we desire our environment to be. What are we attempting to accomplish by acting the way we do? How do we believe that acting a certain way will accomplish that goal? It is a very cognitive and intellectual skill which is why many times people avoid trying to analyze themselves or just can’t even do it.


One of the hardest, but most important aspects to self-knowledge is the ability to rise above our bias to deny our weaknesses and responsibilities and take a straightforward look within ourselves. To believe that you understand yourself while denying some of your own faults and mistakes is not self-knowledge at all. We are required to admit our shortcomings and their significance in our lives. No one is perfect. In fact, we are quite far from it. We must identify these problems and be able to easily spot them even when they affect our view of the past.


Though some aspects may be difficult, I believe the benefits of self-knowledge are very clear. Knowledge of ourselves allows us to recognize how our perceptions and desires affect our conclusions. We are also able to see how the strength of the emotions tied to those conclusions affects our following actions. Understanding why we act the way we do to problems allows us to deal with our difficulties clearly and directly so that our conflicts may be resolved in the fastest and most beneficial manner. Like in the case of an argument with a friend over the decision to drop a class, recognizing that the real reason we are angry is because he or she did not consult us first before dropping allows us to handle the conflict much better. Later, when similar problems arise we are able to deal with the issues efficiently and head on from the start. We are also able to predict when a conflict will occur and either avoid the situation that will cause the problem or be prepared to deal with the problem when it comes so that we can reduce its magnitude. This is the definition of foresight, to predict future conflicts and prevent or reduce them.


I mentioned before how self-knowledge helps us to understand others. What occurs in interacting with others is that self-knowledge enhances our ability to understand their perceptions from their responses. Then, like dealing with our own problems we can directly assess the actual issue from a much greater understanding than just its face value.


I have many weaknesses; I’ll go right ahead and admit it. However, I have found a way to link nearly all of these shortcomings into one central idea. I struggle with maintaining a level and objective perspective. Impatience, impulsiveness, and becoming overly fixated are all products of an insufficient perspective. With impatience I fail to realize that the problem at hand is not significant enough in the long run to warrant my complaints and objections. I am focused only on the present which causes even brief events to appear long lived. Impulsiveness is caused by a rash assumption that whatever problem is occurring in the present must be eliminated. Unable to realize that life is not an emergency, thank you Mr. Roy and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, I am easily convinced that I must decide now with whatever I may know in the moment. The product of inadequate perspective that I suffer from the most, yet is a part of one of my greatest strengths, is my habit of becoming overly fixated on an event. What did I do wrong, how did that affect the outcome of the event, and what could I have done so that things would have turned out differently? It becomes a vicious cycle of repeatedly beating myself up for events that have already occurred and that I have no control over. I lose sight of the reality that what has been done is over and the only thing that I can do is to learn from it and move on. And many times I try to learn too much from one event causing me to over analyze every little detail.

Maintaining a level perspective is a problem that nearly everyone my age deals with. Compared to the majority of the world we, as teenagers, have experienced very little. Therefore, the events that we can recall appear to have a much greater significance than they will have later on in our lives. The only way to really enhance perspective is to experience more. This is what makes dealing with my shortcoming so difficult. However, I’m not completely powerless. Experience is our recollection of past situations and events, our reactions to them, and their outcomes. Thus by reflecting more upon the past and realizing its significance to today I am able to improve my perspective. Of course I have to be careful not to reflect too much, which is many times the case. I attempt to take myself out of the specific situation that I am in and look upon the state of affairs alongside the events of the past with as much of an unbiased perspective that I can achieve. Hopefully with this strategy I am learning the most from my mistakes and getting closer to the mature, wise young adult that I aspire to be.


Through this discussion of my greatest weakness it has probably become clear what I believe my greatest strength to be. I am a very pensive and introspective person. I spend a great deal of my time reflecting upon myself. I meditate on the past, attempting to learn all that I can so that I do not make the same mistakes twice, though I have never successfully accomplished that. I also consider what it is that I am really trying for in the present and how I am either helping or hurting my cause. Many times I find that my desire for some goal actually gets in my way of successfully achieving that goal. It has become apparent to me that while one should understand what they really want, it is a relaxed and easy-going attitude that obtains that objective. I have spent and continue to spend my time in thought trying to find that balance between the extremes that will help me to ultimately succeed. I look for the middle ground between fixation and inattention. Like the Greeks I am searching for the golden mean of human behavior.


I can actually recall the catalyst that allowed me to intellectualize this idea that our lives are a search for moderation. It was my sophomore year English class. I have come to believe that class has made one of the most significant impacts on my view of myself and my environment. What distinguished that class from all the other English classes, or any other subject for that matter, was its focus not on what the novels said or what they were meant to teach or could teach, but what I, as an individual, could learn from them. I began to see the rest of my life in a similar way. It does not matter what an event or book or anything else is intended to say or achieve. In the long run it is that item’s impact on our ways of thinking about ourselves and others that is truly significant. I started to focus on myself and why I was acting the way I was, how was I helping or hurting myself. Essentially, I began the search for self-knowledge. Sure, I would have begun that search eventually even without that class, but it was the time that I did and how I did that has left a lasting impact on who I am today. It is quite possible that the intellectual environment which stimulated me to initiate this search is what caused my greatest strength to be one of an intellectual nature. I am also very thankful that I have been able to learn what I have before the end of high school.

Clearly self-knowledge is not an easily acquired attribute. In fact, many times after thinking of ourselves in one way we discover that in reality we are motivated by things entirely different. We are constantly biased in confirmation of beliefs. I think this is one of the hardest elements of self-knowledge, detangling reality from perception. In searching for our weaknesses, we don’t want to find or acknowledge that shortcoming. It is partially because in recognizing that weakness we are also admitting our own hypocrisy. I have found, at least for myself, the qualities that we most vehemently dislike in others are the qualities we most detest in ourselves. In admitting that I suffer from an inability to utilize a wide perspective, someone may point out that is what I criticize the most about other people. And yes, I admit it, it’s true. There are times when I cannot stand short mindedness, and yet I am guilty of it too. There is something we all have that causes us to want to avoid owning up to our mistakes, but how else are we going to learn? We must be able to identify our weaknesses so that we can improve them.


It is also usually difficult to write about our strengths. We have been taught and have learned that we should not brag or attempt to make our strengths any more apparent than they are. However, many times we fail to realize that this does not mean that we should not recognize where our strengths lie. We are shy to admit that we have exceptional abilities in some area whether it’s socially, academically, or athletically. But if we cannot recognize these skills, how do we know what we want to do with our lives and what we can be successful in? We feel as though it is not socially acceptable to acknowledge our talents. What we must be able to do is to recognize when it is appropriate and when it is not. As with many things in life there is a time for it and a time for its absence.


In reality, however, identifying my greatest weakness and strength for this task was not difficult for me. No, it’s not because I believe I’m just smart or that I did not really think into this question. The reason this task was easier for me than it could have been is because I already have spent countless hours analyzing myself and identifying my best and worse traits. That is the nature of my strength. But now you may wonder if I believe this particular task was worthwhile. Actually, it has been more valuable than I can express. While I can identify my strengths and weaknesses it is still far more difficult to express these in terms that allow others to see them from my own perspective.

Expressing our thoughts on paper is absolutely necessary in understanding ourselves. It allows us to first to experience the benefits of vocalization of one’s thoughts which gives us a sense of relief and relaxation. Then the writing allows us to look back on those thoughts. Being able to review our own thinking is one of the most interesting and amazing things we can do. We can be amazed how capable our minds are and how powerful our thoughts can be. We can also see where our thoughts become illogical and unreasonable. This then allows us to gain a wider and more objective perspective. Writing is the easiest way to enlarge our self-knowledge. Finally, expression of our thoughts in writing allows others to see what’s going on within our conscious and sometimes even be able to read into our subconscious. They are then able to understand us to a deeper level and even help us to understand ourselves more. One should not underestimate the power of writing. I say this even as a person who considers himself a math and science person and plans on going to a technical school. I am just very thankful for this opportunity, even if I may not seem so enthusiastic at times, to realize the value of expression.