Self Acquaintance is a Rare Condition
Hi, my name is Mandy and I am an eternal self-explorer. Every since I was a teenager, I enjoyed exploring my internal self. I have always been a deep thinker and a sensitive soul. From a young age I was always questioning things and always trying to understand myself. For my seventeenth birthday, one of my friends got me a small book titled The Book of Questionsand I loved it. In fact, I remember harassing some of my friends with questions from the book after that (unfortunately, most of them didn’t enjoy pondering questions the way I did).
A few months later, I bought a book titled Self-Acquaintanceand it was also full of questions; it was formatted like a journal but with questions on every page meant to help you delve deeper into yourself. I remember one page had a quote that has stuck with me throughout the years: “Self-acquaintance is a rare condition.” I was determined to be among those with this rare condition. I spent many hours going through the questions in that book and writing out my responses (though I had to use a separate notebook because the three to four lines provided for each answer was never enough for me).
At seventeen, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of naïve enthusiasm. Trying to figure out myself and my place in the world was a top priority. But like many young people, I didn’t even really understand what that meant—it was important to me, but it was also illusive. Each time I thought I had figured it out, something in my world would shift and I would be confused all over again. Turns out, this whole self-acquaintance stuff was harder than I thought. The older I got, the more I understood why it was such a rare condition to know oneself.
Even though I spent years trying to figure out myself, it was only over the past few years that I discovered the field of positive psychology. Reading books about this topic helped me see how much growth I needed in my life, and each new book encouraged me to dig a little deeper into myself and uncover weak spots in my character that needed improvement. I realized that while self-acquaintance is a worthwhile goal, it is only a piece of the larger puzzle. It isn’t enough to know ourselves if we don’t improve ourselves. This new world of discovery was exciting for me, but it shouldn’t have felt so novel.
Growing up in a small town in the Southwest with my parents and three sisters, I was given a strong foundation for living well. They were living the principles of positive psychology before it became a big deal. In the money arena, my parents taught us the importance of saving, living on less than you make, and giving. And when it came to core values, they taught us to treat all people with kindness and respect. My mom especially, drilled home the principle of having a good attitude. She really believed that having a good attitude could change your life. Perspective and personal responsibility mattered on a fundamental level.
Despite my strong foundation, I didn’t always put her philosophy into practice in my own life. Near the end of college, I went through a difficult experience that really tore at my mental and emotional well being. I became more and more negative, tending to see the bad in situations rather than the good. I would place blame everywhere but at my own doorstep for the things I was unhappy about—my boring job, my small income, my missed opportunities. I whined a lot. I complained even more. It took me a lot time—years, really—to find my way back to my mother’s philosophy. As I began to read more and more books on positive psychology, I saw my mom’s philosophy over and over again. Yet even as I saw it, I struggled to put it into practice in my life.
That is often the way of things, I suppose. While I have always admired my mom’s kind heart and positive attitude, I didn’t realize how far my apple had fallen from her tree until I began to explore the world of positive psychology for myself. And I came to see that she had been right all along (something I’ve said over and over in regard to advice my parents gave me as a child, and something my parents never tire of hearing me say: “you were right”).
My knowledge of her philosophy had not translated into living that philosophy. I have discovered this reality in many areas of my life over the past few years—possessing knowledge is not enough. It is only by applying the knowledge we have that change can happen. When our actions begin to align with our philosophy about life—and that philosophy is grounded in our core values—that is where we will be happiest. I believe that is where we will find our purpose and move into our best life, the life we were meant to live.
I have spent years asking questions that led to a deeper understanding of the self. I have spent years experimenting with different techniques to help me improve my habits and understand what works and what doesn’t. What I have discovered is that we all have different “best practices” and what works for me might not work as well for my husband or my best friend. But there are core practices that help drive us toward our best selves, and those are the ones I want to explore and share with you.
I am starting this blog to share my learning with others. I believe that when we share, it helps others and it helps us. We are communal creatures and we were meant to help each other along the way in life. Many times I have found encouragement and inspiration from a blog or book or video, and I hope I can pass along that same level of encouragement and inspiration to others.
I have always felt that it is a worthwhile endeavor to have a written record of the important events and moments in my life. It is my hope that this blog will serve as a catalog of lessons learned, growth strategies obtained, habits formed (and shed), failures overcome, and goals reached. And being a writer, one of the best ways I can do that is through writing and documenting my journey.
I would love to hear from you. Please share if you have topics you’d like to read about here or if you have tips to share from your journey of growth. I look forward to building a community of individuals who are all working toward the same overarching goal of creating a meaningful and purpose-driven life!
