6 Steps to Discover Your True Self

PERTH, Australia - Feb. 21, 2015 - PRLog -- Would it come as a surprise to you, if you are told that you are not living your life but somebody else’s life. You need not be surprised. This is indeed a fact of life that has been known for a very long time. Most of us lose our authenticity as we grow up and by the time we become adults we are living other people’s lives.

We are constantly driven by the outside world and lose touch with reality and land ourselves in a make believe world drawn up by society.

In view of this, it is imperative that we choose to step out of this vicious rat race and attempt to discover our true self and become congruent with who we truly are. What is required here is a genuine commitment to change and to be all that we truly are and bring out and discover the core being inside of us.

The process involves doing the following 6 steps :

Step 1

Discover where you are in the key areas of your life

Before we start to discover who we are, it is a good idea to find out where we are in this journey of life that we have lived till now in somebody else’s clothes. This will give us the right perspective in terms of our achievements and failures and will also set us on the path of self discovery.

We basically look at 7 Key areas of our life. These are

1.Personal / Family
2.Physical / Health
3.Professional / Career
4.Social / Relationships
5.Emotional / Intellectual / Mental
6.Financial
7.Spiritual

We need to score ourselves on a 1 to 10 scale and see where we are in each area of our life. It would be even better if we can further break these areas down into specific sub-areas and then score ourselves.

Once we have done this, we need to spend some time analysing the score card. The sheet will look something like the one shown below.

This gives us a snapshot of our life as it is right now.

Step 2

Discover your Values

It is an emotional state that we want to experience on a consistent basis. Values are the embodiment of what we stand for, and becomes the basis for our behaviour. Values are the rules by which we make decisions about right and wrong. They also tell us more about priorities, which can be used when we have to trade off one value over another.

List out all the values that you can think of. Once you have done that, go through the list and retain all the values that are important to you and that you relate to. Spend a considerable amount of time on this activity.

Once you have listed out all the values that are important to you, the next step is to prioritise them and arrange them in order of importance. Once this is done,move to Step 3.

Step 3

Discover your beliefs

Beliefs are the foundation upon which we build our expectations. Beliefs determine our behaviour and may make us do something or stop us from doing something. A lot of times key decisions are taken based on belief and not on facts. Hence it is important that we understand in detail what our beliefs are.

What we need to do is to list down all our beliefs and these beliefs have to be around the 7 key areas that we discussed in Step 1. For eg. We list down all our beliefs around money or around success or around relationships. We do this for all the key areas and sub areas.

What we then do is to separate out the list under 2 categories. One is the Limiting / Disempowering beliefs and the second is the Empowering beliefs.

You will only be able to do this once you have gone through the process of goal setting and have clearly identified your goals. The limiting beliefs are the ones that hold you back from moving closer to your goals and the empowering beliefs are the ones that help you achieving your goals.

Step 4

Discover your passions

The next step is to discover your passions and this is done by doing what is called the Passion Test. Passions are compelling and powerful emotions or feelings that generally originate from the heart and gives you extra energy and power to do something.

The Passion Test consists of several steps. The first step is to make a list of 10 passions. Do not mix passions with goals. Passions are how you live your life, goals are the things that you aim to achieve. Passions are about process, goals are about outcomes. What you can do is to identify those things that you love the most, those things that are most important to you, those things that are most critical to your happiness and well being, those things that would give you a life of joy, passion and fulfilment.

Now shortlist the top 5 passions and identify with them. Look at each of them and see what kind of feelings and emotions arise. As you move forward, whenever you need to make a decision,  you need to make it in favour of the passion and that way you will never go wrong.

Step 5

Discover your defining moments

This is an opportunity to explore your own past life experiences and understand how it has impacted you and shaped your personality and made you who you are. Everyone has defining moments in their lives. Moments that shape who we are and the choices we make.

These moments have an impact on us and on our beliefs and thinking. We give these moments some meaning which stays with us throughout our life and defines our behaviour and the way we deal with the external world.

What we are trying to do here is self awareness. We need to revisit those defining moments and relook at the belief and meaning and see if the meaning serves and supports you in achieving your goals. If not then we need to give it a different meaning or no meaning at all. Start with a clean slate and you have complete opportunity to grow anew.

Complete this exercise by discovering as many defining moments as possible.

Step 6

Discover your language

Language is extremely powerful. Words can shape your destiny…..more than you think. The language we use not only has an impact on the people around us but also on our own internal dynamics. Both our physiology and psychology is impacted by the kind of language that we use. Therefore it is imperative that we recognise this power that our language can bring about and manage it before it starts managing us.

What needs to be done here is to list down all the commonly used words that can have an impact on us both positive and negative and then try and consciously cut down the usage of the words / phrases that are negative in nature.

As you go through this process step by step, the real you will start to unfold and unpeel and you will get a feeling of exhilaration and this feeling will only become stronger as you move forward. It is an incredible feeling when you know that you are being authentic and an energy that was unknown earlier makes its presence felt.

Happy Discovering

Sunil Kumar

About the Author

         Sunil Kumar is the founder and CEO of The Inspiration Academy. The company’s ultimate goal is to help people to live an inspired life and realize their full potential. The Inspiration Academy offers Leadership Training, Customer Service Training and Life Coaching.

Visit Website : http://www.theinspirationacademy.com.au/