The Quest For Self Discovery
I was at a cafe today talking with a new friend.
Halfway through the conversation, I realized we were both on the same quest. That quest is called “Self Discovery.” What is it you ask?
It’s about finding yourself. Now that’s a big useless, ambiguous statement. Simplified it means:
- Understanding your beliefs
- Knowing what’s important to you
- Finding your purpose
Self-discovery can only happen when you are prepared to make the tough decisions. You will not make progress on your quest for self-discovery unless you push past the fear and doubt, and cut off from all other possibilities.
Where does the quest begin?
Change has always come about for me from a pain-in-the-ass problem. Maybe someone told you that you were fat and you had enough. Maybe you finally got a bill you couldn’t pay and said, “I’m sick of being dirt poor!”
The quest begins when you decide to no longer settle for your current circumstances. To begin a quest that may reveal parts of you that could be uncomfortable or even scary, requires real courage.
All of us will attempt some form of self-discovery quest in our lifetime. The trouble is we may not journey far enough to get to the end of the quest, or at least make some tangible progress. I empower you to not be in that group.
What I discovered during my quest
I always thought that I had more to learn or more mentors to talk with. On my journey of self-discovery, I figured out that for the last five years, every answer I have received has been similar.
Every answer I got was essentially the same, said slightly differently. See the thing is that I already had the answers.
“The part I was missing is that I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t have the confidence to execute on what I knew”
This quest is about finding you. I am certain that finding yourself is about coming to the realization that you control everything. Once you understand that all the power you need exists within you, you can conquer almost any enemy. You can get over almost any struggle.
My advice is not about some invisible force that was hiding within you that came out after you drank some mystical potion. The advice I’m trying to make clear is that you do not require any external force.
It’s about discovering who we are and looking within ourselves. It’s easy to see what we don’t like about ourselves, but much harder to look at what we love about ourselves.
Trusting ourselves and leveraging what is already within us comes from learning to love the good parts of us, and the flaws as well. It’s knowing that the flaws are critical, and beautiful at the same time.
To go even deeper, it’s about knowing that the best you requires your flaws and your good attributes. It’s about exploiting the parts we love about ourself, and then optimizing what we believe are our flaws or weaknesses.
To exploit the parts we love, and optimize our weaknesses, we need personal development. That’s why I drank the Kool-Aid of this self-help phenomenon. I wasn’t looking for a pump up; I was looking for ways to continuously grow.
All this “Purpose Talk”
I don’t know about you, but the word purpose is being thrown around like a used tissue full of snot these days. This post is a lot about simplifying things that are a must in life.
I think that the purpose part of your journey of self-discovery is about finding meaning. When you know your purpose, you know why you’re here on Planet Earth.
For me, I realized that my purpose has consistently changed. I’ve used different vehicles such as djing, sound engineering, business and blogging, but the road of my purpose has stayed the same.
That road/purpose for me is about inspiring people through making them have an emotional experience. Emotion is what drives us to action, and makes us pay attention. So I tell you all of this so that you understand that the way you thought about your purpose may need reshaping.
Maybe your love of fitness, food and business is all related to the desire to coach and mentor. Maybe that’s your purpose and the fitness, food and business are just vehicles on the road called coaching.
“Finding the answer to ‘What is my purpose?’ takes some serious inner reflection”
Put another way, finding your purpose requires you to go on a journey of self-discovery.
What’s probably confusing is that many of the concepts I’ve presented overlap and are dependent on each other. This is because life is complex, and the concepts I’m presenting are your life’s work.
I know you are smart enough to understand that your life’s work is not meant to be easy. The great thing is that it’s phenomenal when you start making real progress. It’s incredible when you start to answer your life’s biggest questions.
I’ve found that as I’ve answered some of the deepest questions related to my purpose, I’ve seen the following:
- Increased confidence
- Calmness of where I’m heading
- A sense of what I need to do next
- A reason for existing
- A way to help others
- A fearlessness in doing uncomfortable tasks
Now that list should give you some motivation!
The result of this quest
If you make the choice to stop being mediocre and head out on the quest for self-discovery, there are again, four simplified outcomes you will get. These outcomes make it all worth it, and should get you jumping out of your seat.
They are:
- You’ll discover a deep sense of happiness
- You’ll gain a sense of fulfillment (a must for success)
- You’ll have this crystal clear clarity about your life and what you must do
- You’ll become enlightened (simply put: you won’t need external validation and you’ll trust yourself)
The purpose of a person’s life is the most important question for any human being. If a person decides that he is a person with specific qualities or characteristics then this decision/thought will help him to act in a specific manner even in a difficult situation.
This may be called goal oriented approach.
Hey Tim,
I’ve also been noticing the same pieces of “advice,” just being expressed in slightly different ways. I even have this tendency now to look for different/counterintuitive perspectives, especially on psychology … and adversities in life. There’s definitely a boom of the “feel-good” kind of info around, and you know, I don’t blame anyone … it’s just that sometimes these info can be dangerous. Maybe that’s the reason I’m starting to love the “feel-bad-but-realistic-and-actually-helpful” approach to the self-help realm.
I’ve only been in my second year blogging or “starting,” and like you, I noticed the trend. Sometimes I wonder whether I should be doing more, or perhaps different instead.
Anyway, my point here is that I believe I’m also in the phase of self-discovery, and that what you said I also observe: we’re actually okay and don’t need some outside force or anything like that. I see successes (who I admire) and I think, sure they might have stuck to some “best SEO practices” or whatever–they did the basics, and it’s totally fine–but maybe there could be a lot to be said about creating their identity more than following some advice that can be found everywhere, which could be so shallow if you try to analyze where that particular advice came from. (But that’s just me, of course.)
You definitely gave us something to think about here, thanks.