5 Best Ways To Get To Know Yourself Better

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Do you really know yourself when you aren’t around others?

More and more people fear to spend time on their own or just simply sitting in silence with themselves.

Oftentimes what scares us most has the biggest potential of growth.

If you want to get to know yourself on a deeper level, here are some activities that might help you understand yourself better.

When tending to yourself it’s important to let go of any judgment. Awareness is key. Just be aware of the emotions coming up. We all have our own story and some are hard to look at but be assured that there’s nothing as healing as self-compassion and self-forgiveness.

If you got a hard time sitting with yourself take it slow. Take one step at a time and be proud of yourself for trying. You will make discoveries that will surprise you and also make you way gentler with yourself.

Understanding the patterns we play out, gives room for healing and change. Keep that in mind while going through this list.

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Journal Prompts For Self-Discovery

Journaling is one of the best ways to get to know yourself better. You deal with big questions about yourself and answer them from your heart.

Understanding your wounds, triggers, behavior patterns, how you respond in certain situations, or what makes you happy are the most important things for you to know in the world.

Only through awareness we can change patterns or create more happiness in our lives. With journal prompts you get nudges that can cause a domino effect and you realize more and more things about yourself the deeper you dive with the questions.

Here are some examples you can use for your journal sessions:

What do I value about myself beyond external accomplishments?
Can I be happy when I am just on my own? If not, what am I afraid of? What is the root of this fear? If yes, what do I love to do on my own?
What do I love doing in my free time when there are no other responsibilities?
What I always wanted to try out but never did:
How do I respond when someone or something is triggering me? How can I change or improve my responses?
What character traits do I value most in others? Am I embodying them as well?
Which area of my life I would like to give more time and energy to? (family, career, personal interests, health,…)
What habits would support me to build my dream life?
How does my ideal daily routine look like?
What topics I would like to know more about -> make an extra research list or a list with books you want to read

Self-Date

The perfect way to get to know yourself better and to increase your confidence is to date yourself.

Take yourself out to do something you always wanted to do. That way you prove to yourself that you are capable of leaving your comfort zone and that it’s safe for you to try something new, just by yourself.

You realize that you don’t need people around you all the time to have fun. You can make yourself happy and you show yourself that you value yourself.

Planning your own date lets you think a lot about what you actually do like to do and what not. Maybe in your research, you come across activities that you never knew you wanted to try out.

Make it a habit every month to enjoy your own company and plan something nice just for yourself. Your confidence will increase with every time you are brave enough to leave your comfort zone.

Solo Travel

There’s no better way to get to know yourself better than traveling alone. You are confronted with so many new situations every day.

You need to act out of instinct rather than out of experience. You will find yourself in scenarios you’ve never been and got no other chance than to adapt to your new surroundings.

It’s maybe a bit frightening at first but after a bit, you get used to not knowing what to expect next. But with adventures, you’ll never know what to expect. And getting to know yourself is probably your biggest adventure.

Track Your Emotions

Use short and simple phrases at the end of every day to describe your overall mood.

Over a period of time, you get a good picture of your general wellbeing. Are you mostly content with your life? Or are there small things that bother you so much that they ruin your day pretty often?

Keeping track of your feelings makes you more aware of what is causing your happiness but also sadness and frustration. From that point, it’s easier to make changes.

Is it truly worth it to get upset about things that won’t matter in a year? With the self-discovery questions, you can journal about what you can do to change your energy? What are the small things that always lift your mood? Just choose a thought that feels good to you, put on some music and dance off the negative energy, or take a walk in nature.

Over time you know yourself so well that you know exactly what will help you out of a negative day.

Journal About Your Day

Writing about your daily experiences makes you aware of your whole perspective on your world.

You get a better feeling of what you’re focusing on and can later reflect objectively whether you tend to focus on negative or positive events.

Also, write about how you’ve felt throughout your day. That way you can see more clearly what triggers you but also small things that make you happy, that you might not notice before.

Overall, you get the bigger picture of your life with all the emotions you are feeling about what’s happening in every-day-life.

With that knowledge, you can start to make changes if you feel they are necessary.

Maybe you start to give more attention to what brings you joy on a daily basis or you start to do healing work around the patterns that keep on triggering you.

This practice is also incredibly valuable for when you look back in a few years.

You can read about what you were going through and also how you felt. You can see how much you’ve grown over time. Things that trigger you now may not worry you later on because you used your chance now to deal with them.