Created: May 10, 2020
Modified: May 22, 2020
Modified: May 22, 2020
I don't know who I am
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.- Normally I think it's valuable to know who you are.
- Having good models of your future self's actions and desires puts you in a position to make long-term plans to achieve those desires. If you know you want to be a professional musician, then you'll be more likely to devote the years of practice you need to get there.
- Knowing yourself is a step towards helping others know you. Telling people about yourself can help build connection; it's better to be paint a picture than to present a blank slate.
- Most importantly for the sake of this note, knowing yourself often means accepting yourself as you are. It can, and should, mean recognizing one's flaws and seeking to improve them. But it can also mean coming to terms with something about oneself that you didn't previously like.
- (skipping some thoughts…)
- I want to prevent myself from getting stuck in ruts by 'accepting' things about myself that I shouldn't. To be clear---I should still default to accepting myself. But it might be useful to build up a record of times when I was wrong about myself, and am now glad I didn't get stuck believing the thing I was wrong about. This might at least give me some evidence with which to start to build up a theory about what things I should and shouldn't accept.
- I used to think that:
- I didn't know how to connect with people.
- I didn't like dancing.
- I didn't like onions, peppers, or tomato sauce.
- hmm, tbd maybe. I haven't gotten very far with this exercise so far.