Do you know who you are?

Human beings have been searching to find out who they are, but while most of us ask this question at some time in our life time, very few spend the time to actually finding out the answer. Finding and understanding more answers will change your journey. So strap yourself in…and  let  us begin…….

Being Truthful

Finding yourself is not an easy task, it will be full of challenges, things you don’t like as well as truths and untruths about you, so your skin will have to be thick and your ego kept in check. While most of us have no problem being honest and truthful to others, and we would never consider being anything different, when it comes to our own self talk, well our honesty takes a back seat for what we want to hear.

Only our own soul knows exactly who we are, while other see stuff in us that we ourselves can’t see, it is our own soul that can or will tell us the truth if we allow it to speak to us and then we have to be ready to hear what it actually says.

Who we are to start with and then….

We all come to earth with a suitcase full of attributes, limitations and conditions which we are born with.  We all have birth numbers, zodiac signs, intellect, parents genes & their beliefs, ancestors, siblings, family positions, locations of birth and language.  Then we inherit the environment and society we are born into.

Our upbringing, friends and schools also have a mark on who we think we are.  They influence our beliefs, desires and dreams.  While every choice we have ever made has determined our future life, it is also our beliefs that have shaped these choices. So how do we put all these influences aside and find who we are at the core of us?

How to find the Core of who we are

1. Know your numerology — by adding together your birth numbers you will come up with a set of numbers that tell you so much about your personality, your needs and how to move forward powerfully in this life.
2. Learning about your Astrology sun and moon sign, although these might seem airy-fairy to some people, you will be amazed at how they affect your personality, and knowing your moon sign will give you amazing insight into your life after 50 as you take on these aspects as you mature.
3. Work out your enneagram number, this is an ancient personality test that works, it will give you your personality type also tell you valuable information about what type of behaviour you revert to when you are either in flow in life or being stressed about what is happening to you.
4. Make a list of your needs and do this every few years as they change. We all have the basic needs that need to be met, such as listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which are, physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, but understanding these needs and what they mean to us can be quite different.  Maslow says that if we don’t meet our own pressing needs first we won’t be able to turn our consideration towards others affecting our relationships and behaviour.
5. Make a list of your values, know what they are and how important they are to us. It is our values that dictate our thoughts, influence our words and determine our actions and beliefs.  It is when we compromise these values that regret, guilt, self-sabotage and shame comes into play in our life.
6. The place or country of your birth and your heritage background makes a huge difference. A Greek descendant will have a very different experience growing up to that of an African American even though they are both raised in America, as will an English descendant also raised in America, our parents and grandparents were raised with values from that culture which will have trickled down to us.  The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a great example of how culture affects us all.
7. What you learnt from your parents and how that affected you now in your adult life. My mother was raised during the great depression, she carried the pain of losing her home with her till she died and this pain was transferred to me, writing the 100 tips about how to save money was easy as a lot of these tips and the value of saving money was given and shown to me by my mother.
8. What role you took on in the family when you were a child. Each family has one of each of the roles and we all choose one to play which normally carries through into adult life, such as the good girl or boy, the scapegoat, the clown or funny one, the favourite, the rebel, the carer, surrogate spouse, the achiever or clever child, the sensible one.  Which one did you choose and how has that played out for the rest of your life?
9. Understand your ancestry, what happened to your great grandparents, their parents and their parents, what were their beliefs and what does that mean to the following generations, also is there any recurring themes going through your family, such as rags to riches and back again?
10. Problems in our adult life that stem back to events that happened to us as children which have shaped our life thereafter are often buried in the subconscious but acted out in our everyday lives, which is why it is so important to go back and do some inner child work and resolve what was happening to us at the time.  Finding someone to guide us through this is a great idea making sure we stay safe when we confront traumatic experiences.
11. The school you attended and your teachers would have shaped the way you saw life. I went to an extremely large independent girls school, which taught me the values of education and achievement, it also taught me that I had the choice to do anything in my life as there was no limits or boundaries, the teachers taught me I was just a number as there were so many other students all completing for their time so I wasn’t important as a person.
12. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Learning what you are good at and living life using these talents makes life easier and also knowing what you are not as good at means you can accommodate these weaknesses and approach things differently so you play into your strengths.

Being truthful to ourselves, considering our starting point, revisiting the environment of our lives and uncovering our core gives us the opportunity to know who we are. Our understanding of why we tick the way we do and why some things challenge us,  gives us the power in our life to change and live the way we want. We can start using our gifts to make this life a much easier journey.