What it Really Means to Find Yourself

21 December 2016

With things quietening down over the holiday season, this allows us the time to contemplate I think it’s important to get a bit philosophical sometimes, and to gain new perspectives. I believe this to be very healthy part of holistic wellbeing as it enables us to define, create and determine our own ideas, concepts and beliefs that reign true for us personally. I particularly enjoy using this quiet time to reflect on norms, ideals, and the many things we take as the standard truths of life. One in particular that I have been deliberating recently is the notion of self…and the importance of finding it.

What is the self really? And why is it that we work so hard to finding ourselves”?

There is so much hype around the idea of finding ourselves – that we have to go on great journeys of self-exploration and seeking to find our true “self”. If you actually think about it, the self isn’t something that can be really be found can it? – For one, it doesn’t exist ahead of us in time; it is not tangible in any way, and it wasn’t really “missing to begin with either. So many of us spend our whole lives searching, fixating, obsessing over finding ourselves – but what are we really searching for if who we are exists already? In order to grab onto something or find it – it would have to be stationary - static – unchanging. Yet as humans we are constantly changing, shaping, moulding, improving and re-inventing ourselves through the new experiences, thoughts and ideas to which we are exposed daily.

If we break this down into its component parts, the self is simply a constellation of experiences, impressions, actions, interactions, ideas and thoughts that have synergistically amalgamated over time to create “the self”. And these experiences, impressions, actions, reactions, epiphanies etc are happening to us daily, therefore the self is in constant motion - changing, adjusting, improving, and remoulding. “The self” also adjusts situationally – and our ability to adapt and be fluid throughout different spheres of life is what enables us to be so well adjusted to our environment, which itself is perpetually changing. It is these very parts of ourselves that in essence define us – or rather, define this notion of “the self”.

So what then are we really looking to find if we already have access to the very parts that make us who we are? We don’t always have control of the contents of our experiences and impressions, but what we can control is the thoughts and ideas that form around them, and how we fashion these outcomes in building onto our future.

Our journey then is not so much about finding “the self”; rather it is about creating ourselves…creating as we go along, moulding remoulding, improving, adjusting, and correcting as we see fit.

Think about how much more power we have when in a position to create.

In finding ourselves we are passive…here we are seeking something which exists already – we have not had any input into the formation of that which we are in search of.

But in creation…now there is huge power in that! To have the creative license to be whoever we want to be! Creating the self is active – it requires innovation and thought! Creating ourselves means that WE can determine what affects us and what doesn’t, through the vehicle of our very own thoughts and actions. For creativity to be sustained, it must adapt - grow, improve and assimilate new learnings with every new design –and so we too can adapt and grow based on our own new learnings, interactions and experiences. We are the sole determinants of who we are – there is nothing left to find, there is everything to create!

It is to create the self that is our ultimate path – out ultimate goal – for if we are always adapting and growing, we are aligned to the perpetual flux of our surroundings - the essence of which remain constant, but the form of which progresses always.

adapt –– make – create – Yourself!