Self-Exploration

You can’t love someone you don’t know. And that goes for yourself as well. So the first thing you’re going to have to do is explore who you are and why you do things the way you do.

Defining ‘Self-Exploration’

Here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary gives for “exploration” /ˌɛkspləˈreɪʃn/:

1. The action of examining thoroughly; investigation, scrutiny, study; an instance of this.
2. The action of travelling to or around an uncharted or unknown area for the purposes of discovery and gathering information; (later also) the action or activity of going to or around an unfamiliar place in order to learn about it.

So self-exploration, I’d argue, is the act of investigating or examining oneself, in order to discover (more) about oneself and to become familiar with oneself. And yes, that may sound a little strange. How could you not be familiar with yourself? Most of your time is probably spent by yourself. But as funny as it sounds, it’s easy to distract yourself from yourself. So take this as seriously as you can and set the intention of getting to know yourself (again).

How?

There are a number of ways to explore yourself. Here are some suggestions:

• Interview yourself: write down questions as if they’re for an interview with someone you’ve never met. What would you want to know about them? Write down the answers or record yourself answering them. Or buy one of those fun question booklets, like Q&A a Day for the Soul by Rachel Federman. It has 365 questions and provides space to answer them up to 5 years, so you can look back at your previous answers each year.
• Personality tests: do some personality tests ranging from the Meyers-Briggs and the Enneagram test to what kind of cheese you’d be. Then read the outcome and determine what it means to you.
• Why: get into the habit of asking yourself why. Why did you (dis)like that particular film? Why did you get mad during that conversation? Why do you feel guilty when you’re unproductive? These are not meant to make you judge yourself, but to discover patterns in your thinking and behaviour.
• Spend time alone: take a walk, go to the movies, have a spa day, go on a solo holiday. Even if you’re someone who loves surrounding themselves with people most of the time, try to take a break from socialising every once in a while. If you try to commit to being alone with no distractions such as Netflix or social media for even an hour a day, you commit to getting to know yourself a little better day by day.
• Memory lane: dig up old foto’s, art projects, home videos, diaries, and whatever else you can find from your childhood. Most children intuitively know who they are very well. Chances are, if you revisit your childhood, you might realise some stuff about yourself you’ve forgotten.
• Friends & family: it can be beneficial to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. Ask people you trust what they think are some of your most authentic behaviours, manners or sayings. See if these resonate with you and if not, ask yourself why.
• Astrology: a great way to get some kind of blue-print of your personality is to explore your birth chart. You could get a reading from an astrologer or try to teach yourself about it. (It doesn’t really matter if you ‘believe’ in astrology or not. You can use it as a means of trying to understand yourself in different areas, not as an excuse to be an asshole because “you’re just a Capricorn”.)
• Mirror work: a part of who you are is the way you look. One way to get familiar with yourself, is to simply look at yourself. Try and look in the mirror for a little while longer than you usually would. See what comes up.
• Feel yourself: another part of you is the way you feel. Try to get familiar with the shape of your body, the texture of your skin and/or hair by just feeling your way around, preferably with your eyes closed for the ultimate tactile experience.
• Therapy: do it.

The Non-Happy You

As also goes for really getting to know someone else, you truly find out who you are when things don’t go the way you want them to. Make an effort to notice the thoughts and feelings that arise when you face adversity. You don’t have to do anything with it yet, we’ll come back to this. But try to not only explore the you that’s happy and calm. Because you probably aren’t 100% of the time. Nor could you expect yourself to be. Get curious about your angry, scared and sad selves too. Trust me, it’s worth getting to know them.

Exercise of the Day

Make up different characters that represent different aspects of yourself. You are a multifaceted being, after all. Take it as far as you want to. Mine all have different names, appearances, ages, hobbies and dream jobs. Go crazy, make one a pirate! Everybody loves pirates. This exercise will hopefully help you bring out different parts of yourself, maybe even parts you forgot or just never think about when you think of your ‘whole self’.