Who Are You Really?

Who are you really? What makes you the unique you that you are? What is deep inside you that you haven't yet expressed? I believe that living an authentic life, being the real you, having congruency between what you say and do and who you really are is the key to happiness. I also believe that you can't have true and lasting happiness until you become who you truly are. The more you express YOU, the happier you will be.

So many of us don't know the real person that lives inside and yearns to be set free. We typically start out our lives being and doing what our parents want us to be. We add additional ideas and modes of behavior from our teachers, our peers, our extended families, our culture, the media, our churches and other signficant or authority figures. For most of us, it isn't until adulthood and often middle age and beyond that we start to break free from these constraints. It is when we ask questions, we notice our feelings and ideas and become self-aware that we begin to ask important questions about who we are, our place in the universe, our purpose and what will make us happy.

Happiness is a universal longing for all humans. Most of the actions we take, the talk we share and the motivations we have are all in the name of happiness or feeling better.

It continues to amaze me that here I am, well into mid-life, that I still don't know all the ins and outs of me, the person I have spent the most time with in my life. How is it that I do not thoroughly know myself? You'd think by this time, I would know every last atom of myself. I am lucky (or was it courageous?!) that I have done a great deal of personal growth work over the last 35 years and feel like I know a lot about myself. Even so, there are still areas of my life that cause me discomfort and stress. Things I am still working out. Things I still want to explore.

Exploration questions you may want to try.

1. List five accomplishments of your life that YOU are most proud of.
2. What traits of yours contributed most to these accomplishments?
3. What was the last thing you did that surprised you?
4. Do you still have secrets which need to be brought out into the light of day? What would need to happen for this to occur?
5. What are your strongest, most prevalent traits?
6. Describe yourself in ten words. Describe yourself by writing one page about yourself.
7. What traits did you pick up from your Father? What traits did you pick up from you Mother?
8. What traits need development or no longer serve you?
9. If you could share three life lessons with the world, with your own children or grandchildren, what would they be?
10. What's the one thing in life you want more of?

Did you gain any insight from these questions? What was it? Are there actions you are ready and willing to take to express more of who you really are?

All blog content is copyrighted, all rights reserved, Mary Anne Fields and Life Unfolds, 2006