You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself. ~Alan Alda
How well do you know yourself? I asked that question to about thirty people yesterday, and was surprised to find that the descriptions people had of themselves varied widely from their test results. Want to take the quiz? Click here.
My test was hardly empirical but it goes something like this. Describe yourself for me, in writing. Ten brief sentences that describe the internal you, not “wife, mother, drummer…” Those are things that you do, not who you are. After you’ve written ten sentences about yourself, take the short test by clicking on the link above.
Follow that road of self actualization to....happiness.
So how well do you know yourself? My self awareness was pretty high – I noticed that at the bottom of the test, there is a “tell me more” so I ran the entire series. They are pretty accurate, I have to admit. It’s tough for me to make new friends, people do see me as fun and flirty most of the time, and I am a high (read:over) achiever. So what do we use this for?
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
There are sentences in my profile that make me pause. I don’t’ reveal my true self to many people. When I fall in love, it is both rare and life long. It’s tough to gain my trust, and almost impossible to lose it once you’re in my heart. I am given to live in my own reality, which is great for creativity – but also can lead to isolation. All of those points are things that I am working on in my own therapy model to create a stronger healthier me. What might you get from the test?
- A frank view point based on your answers. If you think that they’re being to complimentary of you and you answered honestly, it is an indication of low self worth on your part.
- A different sense of belonging. Knowing that you’re part of the human universe in your own special way validates how and what you feel.
- A sense fulfillment vs. wonder when it comes to “who am I, anyway?” We all get to that day in our life when we wonder how we got from childhood to mid life in the blink of an eye. Are you who you hoped to be now? Why or why not?
Tests like these give us something to think about on a coffee break, take just a few moments and may start a discussion about something in your closet of memories that may be worthwhile to examine. As I always say, embrace the life that you are living, suck the marrow from the bone of happiness and be all that you can imagine. It’s in knowing that we’re mortal that we become immortally hopeful. Everything from heaven makes it’s way to earth…sometimes whole, sometimes broken, sometimes lost or scared. Self actualization is the first step toward enduring happiness, no matter who you are.
It’s terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It’s particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966