Home » Misc » Exercises to find out who you are

Exercises to find out who you are


17 Self-Awareness Activities and Exercises (+ Test)

How self-aware do you feel you are?

In terms of psychology, self-awareness is often defined as the ability to engage in some kind of reflective awareness.

As you develop an awareness of the self, you begin to connect with your own unique identity. As you focus on yourself and start evaluating your current behavior, in comparison to your internal standards and values, you become self-conscious, and you become an objective evaluator of yourself.

There are many exercises and activities you can do to develop this self-awareness, from questions you can ask yourself to simple exercises.

In this article, we will take a look at some of those self-awareness tools.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Self-Compassion Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself but will also give you the tools to help your clients, students, or employees show more compassion to themselves.

This Article Contains:

  • What are Self-Awareness Activities and Exercises?
  • Common Self-Awareness Techniques
  • 23 Self-Awareness Questions to Ask
  • 2 Self-Awareness Activities for Adults
  • 2 Self-Awareness Training Activities for Youth and Students
  • 3 Self-Awareness Activities and Exercises for Kids and Toddlers
  • 4 Employee Activities for the Workplace
  • 2 Self-Awareness Worksheets (Incl. PDF)
  • Can We Measure and Test Self-Awareness?
  • 2 Useful Tests
  • A Take-Home Message
  • References

What are Self-Awareness Activities and Exercises?

Self-awareness activities and exercises are tools that can help you to not only reach your goals but also to discover who you are at core level and what you want out of life.

The more you ‘peel the onion’ per se, the more you will discover what lies underneath. Self-awareness and self-improvement go hand in hand.

Becoming more self-aware can help you understand your wants, needs, and desires as well as your strengths and weaknesses.

Self-awareness is also an important tool for success. Those internal mental processes guide how you behave and how you act. When you become more self-aware, you begin uncovering those destructive thought patterns and unhealthy habits.

Common Self-Awareness Techniques

There are many techniques you can practice to develop self-awareness. Some common techniques include:

  • Mindfulness Meditation.
  • Grounding techniques, and reconnecting to the Earth.
  • Tai Chi, Qigong, or Yoga.
  • Strength Assessments, such as the Values in Action Strength Test, from the University of Pennsylvania.
  • Journaling.
  • Having a Personal Vision.
  • Observing others.

23 Self-Awareness Questions to Ask

While there are probably hundreds of questions you could ask yourself, in terms of self-awareness, there are a few that stand out.

Self-awareness questions on values and life goals

  1. What does your ideal “you” look like?
  2. What kinds of dreams and goals do you have?
  3. Why are these dreams or goals important?
  4. What is keeping you from these dreams or goals?
  5. Rank 5-10 of the most important things in your life in your career, family, relationships and love, money, etc.
  6. Now think about the proportion of time you dedicate to each of these things.
  7. What would you recommend to your children to do or not to do?

Self-awareness questions on personality

  1. Describe yourself in three words.
  2. Ask yourself if your personality has changed since childhood.
  3. Is your personality like either of your parents?
  4. What qualities do you most admire in yourself?
  5. What is your biggest weakness?
  6. What is your biggest strength?
  7. What things scare you?
  8. Do you make decisions logically or intuitively?
  9. How would you complete the question: “What if?”.

Self-awareness questions on relationships

  1. Describe your ideal intimate relationship.
  2. How satisfied are you in your current relationship?
  3. Who would you call if you only had a few minutes to live? What would you say?
  4. Who have you loved the most?
  5. Of all the relationships you have had, describe the best moment.
  6. Describe a devastating moment in terms of relationships.
  7. Ask yourself if you treat yourself better than others?

These questions are designed to make you think. Answering these questions is a powerful method of self-discovery.

2 Self-Awareness Activities for Adults

Mindfulness and grounding are compelling ways to enhance self-awareness.

1. Mindfulness Meditation

Derived from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is an awareness that arises through paying attention to the present moment, in a non-judgmental manner.

In mindfulness meditation, you learn to focus on the present moment in the same way.

Harvard researchers studied mindfulness and found that it seemed to change the brain in depressed patients. Studies have also shown some fantastic benefits of mind-body practices, such as lower blood pressure in hypersensitive patients after relaxation-response training.

Learning how to do mindfulness meditation is relatively simple.

Here is an excellent technique to get started:

  1. Find a place where you won’t be disturbed. You may sit in a chair or on the floor. Be sure to keep your back and neck straight.
  2. As you begin, try and stay focused on the present moment. Don’t think about the past or the future.
  3. Develop an awareness of the breath, and focus on the feeling of air moving in and out of your body as you breathe in and out. Notice your belly rising and falling, as the air enters your nostrils and leaves your mouth. Notice how each breath is a little different.
  4. Notice every thought that comes and goes. You can even name your thoughts. If you are worried, acknowledge that and let it go. Don’t ignore your thoughts, but make a note of them, using your breath as an anchor.
  5. If you have trouble staying focused on the present moment, bring your focus back to your breathing and don’t be too hard on yourself.
  6. Strive for a minute or so initially and work your way up to longer periods.

2. Grounding Techniques

According to Dr. Sara Allen, a psychotherapist, grounding is a wonderful way to calm down quickly, and it’s also an excellent tool for developing self-awareness.

Grounding is another term for connecting with the Earth and bringing your focus into the present moment, similar to mindfulness.

One simple grounding technique is called the Grounding Chair. (Allen, 2019)

  1. Find a comfortable chair to sit in and close your eyes. Make sure your feet can touch the floor.
  2. Start breathing in and exhaling to the count of 3.
  3. Bring your focus to your body next. Notice how your body feels and how your legs and feet feel. Notice how your back feels against the chair or surface. Notice the texture of the fabric and how the seat feels.
  4. Next, imagine your feet are pushing down into the ground. Picture your energy draining down from your mind, and out through your feet into the Earth.
  5. As the energy drains from your head, notice how heavy each part of your body feels as you relax those muscles.
  6. Feel this sense of heaviness going down your legs, through your feet and down into the ground.

You can do this same technique outside, with your shoes off. Something is compelling about connecting with the Earth in this manner.

2 Self-Awareness Training Activities for Youth and Students

There are many enjoyable self-awareness activities for youths and students as well.

One of these is the Sparks: Peer-to-Peer Interview worksheet. The basis of this exercise is the exploration of a child’s passions, interests, and talents, otherwise known as sparks.

The worksheet has six simple questions that can help someone delve into these ideas.

  1. What is one of your sparks (passions, interests, talents)?
  2. How did you discover that this is one of your sparks?
  3. How do you feel when you are doing your spark?
  4. Think of somebody who is really into their spark/passion. Describe what you see.
  5. Do you have a spark champion (an adult who helps you explore and develop your self-awareness skills)? If yes, describe how this person helps you.
  6. Do you set goals and make plans to get better at your spark/talent? If yes, give me an example.

This worksheet is also available on the actforyouth.net website. This kind of simple questioning can help someone identify and build upon his or her strengths.

Another great resource is the self-awareness worksheet for kids, available on the understood.org website for learning and attention issues.

The self-awareness worksheet has seven questions that can help a child to self-advocate. This worksheet can also be done with the child, to help them build an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses.

Questions:
1. I am strong in these areas:
.
.
.
2. I struggle with:
.
.
.
3. My favorite thing about school is:
.
.
.
4. Here’s what the teachers I’m most comfortable with do to make that happen:
.
.
.
5. The most stressful part of my school day is:
.
.
.
6. I’d like some help with:
.
.
.
7. When I need help, I’m comfortable asking for it in the following ways:
.
.
.

3 Self-Awareness Activities and Exercises for Kids and Toddlers

Toddlers and small kids can also benefit from developing self-awareness.

While a child this age may not be entirely self-aware, they do know how to create a mental picture in their mind.

As their self-awareness develops, so does their self-identity. For children of this age, self-awareness is more about noticing the differences and discovering their bodies and emotions.

Engaging in activities that help support this can go a long way to helping them learn and grow.

1. Same Versus Different Activity

Children of this young age do recognize the similarities and differences, which includes things like skin color and other physical characteristics that set them apart from others.

A fun way to do this is to have kids try on different color socks or knee-high nylons, representing different skin colors. As they do this, you can emphasize the beauty and uniqueness of all the different colored skin.

According to childhood specialist Barbara Biles, this kind of simple activity can help a child learn to appreciate their skin color and the skin color of others.

2. Physical Awareness Activity

Physical self-awareness also expands with age. Growth activities are a great way to help promote this. Growth activities help a young child better understand and accept their developing body.

These kinds of encouraging, positive, interactive growth activities can be very helpful. Things like hanging a height and growth chart on the wall or having a child point to various body parts by looking in the mirror, are fun activities. Children can also draw an outline of their body or their hands and feet.

This kind of activity can help promote physical awareness and self-acceptance for a young child.

3. Self-Responsibility Activity

Teaching responsibility can also be considered a self-awareness activity. Young children frequently leave toys around the house without realizing any sense of responsibility.

Making a young child responsible for his toys or possessions in a fun and interactive way can go a long way to teaching them the necessary skills.

According to child educator Jean Warren, this kind of activity can also help a young child attain self-worth and group identity.

These activities and more are available on the healthfully.com website.

4 Employee Activities for the Workplace

Daniel Goleman, a psychologist specializing in self-awareness and emotional intelligence, suggests that people with a solid sense of self-awareness generally have more self-confidence, and they have a more realistic assessment of themselves.

Some activities that can help improve self-awareness include practicing how you feel throughout the day, considering how your negative emotions impact others, thinking about ways you can better manage your emotions as well as taking an honest look at your strengths and weaknesses.

According to Goleman, it’s essential to recognize that emotions can be fleeting, and they shouldn’t be the foundation of decision-making or communication.

As you consider how your negative emotions impact others, like your boss or your co-workers, you also begin to realize how emotions like anger, jealousy, or frustration have a negative impact. Building self-awareness can help you acknowledge the fallout and the repercussions of such behavior.

Learning to manage your emotions better can also make a big difference. Doing so can help you avoid knee-jerk reactions or saying things you don’t mean.

All of this requires taking an honest look at your strengths and weaknesses. You can do this by looking at past performance reviews or asking for feedback from someone you trust like your peers or from your boss. When you do this, you can actively work on improving those weak areas.

2 Self-Awareness Worksheets (Incl. PDF)

The Proust-Questionnaire is a fun game, and was previously used as a parlor game.

The questionnaire contains 35 questions which lead a person into self-discovery and can be seen as a fun way to become more self-aware.

As a sample, questions include:

  1. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
  2. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  3. Who are your heroes in real life?
  4. What is your greatest regret?

These questions can help build self-awareness and strengthen defense systems against harmful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The Setting Valued Goals worksheet is another useful tool to help someone identify what they want out of life, based on personal values.

Using this type of tool can also help motivate someone who may be struggling in life. Identifying goals can help someone be more self-aware as they start to get an idea of what it will take to achieve this goal.

The reader is prompted to reflect on personal values, with questions such as:

  1. What do you consider most important in life?
  2. What makes you feel energized?
  3. What makes you happiest, most satisfied, and most fulfilled?

Can We Measure and Test Self-Awareness?

Dispositional self-awareness can be conceptualized in different ways, including insight, reflection, rumination, and mindfulness. (Sutton, 2016)

According to the research, self-awareness is typically associated with positive psychological wellbeing with varying outcomes.

Self-awareness is generally defined as the extent to which someone is consciously aware of their internal state as well as their relationships or interactions with others. (Sutton, 2016).

This idea can be further broken down into situational self-awareness and dispositional self-awareness.

Situational self-awareness is an automatic process that helps you know where you are and what you can do. It enables you to compare your current actions to your internal standards helping you foresee if you need to make any adjustments. (Silva & Duval, 2001).

Dispositional self-awareness, on the other hand, is the tendency for one to focus on and reflect on their own psychological processes as well as their subjective experiences and relationships with others. (Fenigstein et al., 1975)

Fenigstein also breaks this concept down further, by differentiating between public and private self-consciousness. Public self-consciousness is about how we appear to others where private self-consciousness is more about developing an awareness of our internal state.

One tool for measuring private self-consciousness is The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale or SRIS, (Grant, Franklin, & Langford, 2002)

This scale was developed as a measure of private self-consciousness, which assesses one’s internal state of awareness or insight separately from self-reflection.

Self-reflection refers to the extent to which one evaluates and pays attention to their internal state where insight is more about clarity of understanding.

By developing measures of self-awareness, we can continue expanding our awareness in these areas.

2 Useful Tests

The DISC personality test is designed to not only help you become more self-aware but also to help you increase your personal and professional success.

The test measures your DISC personality type:

  1. Dominance
  2. Influence
  3. Steadiness
  4. Compliance

This can help you better predict your behavior towards others as well as those things you do every day.

The test contains 28 groups of four statements. The questions are to be answered honestly and spontaneously. The test only takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete.

Some of the questions include:

  1. People look up to me.
  2. I tend to be a kind person.
  3. I accept life as it comes.
  4. People say I have a strong personality.

The idea is to study all of the descriptions in each group of four, and select the one that most describes you.

You may also examine the three remaining choices, and decide which description you consider the least like you.

The full version of the test can be accessed via the 123test.com website.

The Jung Personality test can help you explore things like how you think, how you make decisions, and how you deal with others.

The test also helps you explore whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. The test is similar to the Myers-Briggs type model, initially developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.

The Jung personality test can help answer the following questions:

  • What is your personality type?
  • What are your Jung types?
  • How does your type fit certain kinds of jobs?

The Jung test was developed by the work of Carl Gustav Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist and the originator of Jungian Psychology, which breaks the personality up into four archetypes:

  1. The Persona
  2. The Anima/Animus
  3. The Shadow
  4. The Self

The Jung personality test has 60 choices. Participants choose the statement that best describes them.

A Take-Home Message

Being self-aware is vital for both personal and professional success. When you are self-aware, you can choose where to focus your emotions, your energy, and your personality so that you can better direct the course of your life.

Self-awareness helps you be much more aware of your thoughts and emotions and how these things guide your life.

The best way to continually develop self-awareness is to learn to look at yourself objectively and to try and see yourself as others see or perceive you. The more self-aware you are, the more you can improve and make changes in your life.

If you enjoyed this topic, for further reading we share a short selection of the 10 Best Self-Awareness books and explore the benefits of self-awareness according to science.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Self Compassion Exercises for free.

  • 23 Thought-provoking Questions To Boost Your Self-awareness. (2019, February 17). Retrieved from https://ourmindfullife.com/23-self-awareness-questions/
  • Allen, S. (2019, February 13). 7 Simple Grounding Techniques For Calming Down Quickly. Retrieved from https://drsarahallen.com/7-ways-to-calm/
  • Bhasin, M. K., Denninger, J. W., Huffman, J. C., Joseph, M. G., Niles, H., Chad-Friedman, E., … Libermann, T. A. (2018, May). Specific Transcriptome Changes Associated with Blood Pressure Reduction in Hypertensive Patients After Relaxation Response Training. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29616846
  • Davenport, B. (2019, March 12) Emotional Intelligence In The Workplace. Retrieved from https://liveboldandbloom.com/02/self-awareness-2/emotional-intelligence-workplace
  • Fenigstein A., Scheier M. F., Buss A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Counselling and Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 522–527.
  • Grant A. M., Franklin J. , Langford P. (2002). The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale: A new measure of private self-consciousness. Social Behavior and Personality, 30(8), 821–835.
  • Jeffrey, S. (2019, April 20). 15 Self Awareness Activities and Exercises to Build Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved from https://scottjeffrey.com/self-awareness-activities-exercises/
  • Johnston, J. (2019, January 10). Activities for Preschool-Age Children About Self Awareness. Retrieved from https://healthfully.com/512350-activities-for-preschool-age-children-about-self-awareness.html
  • Nguyen. (2016, January 11). 12 Self-Awareness Exercises That Fuel Success. Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254669
  • Powell, A. (2018, August 27). Harvard researchers study how mindfulness may change the brain in depressed patients. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/
  • Ron Tamir Nehr. (2019, July 17). Self Awareness: 10 Great Techniques. Retrieved from https://rontamirnehr.com/self-awareness-techniques/
  • Sutton, A. (2016, November 18). Measuring the Effects of Self-Awareness: Construction of the Self-Awareness Outcomes Questionnaire. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114878/
  • Wong, C. (2019, September 3). Mindfulness Meditation – How Do I Do It? Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/mindfulness-meditation-88369

An Exercise to Find Out Who You Are

You are not your job. You are also not your Instagram account, your Facebook account, or the number of followers you have on Twitter. You are not your car, nor your house. You are not your muscles or your fat. You are not your acne nor your perfect skin. You are not your children, nor your friends, nor people you impress at cocktail parties and/or at dive bars. Glad we got that out of the way!

We’ve established what you are not, so let’s dive into who you are — what your purpose in life is. Complete the following exercise either on paper or online in your MyMLC Journal (a free service we offer to help you keep track of your Soul Workout exercises). Answer each question as honestly as you can. Don’t think about what the answer should be. Instead, answer from your heart. Write the answer that intuitively emerges from the still, small voice inside you. You might read What It Means to Be Honest With Yourself — another Soul Workout post — before you start. It will also help to read The Journey Begins by Rabbi Simon Jacobson, which explains the process of discovering your personal mission, based on thousands of years of mystical teachings.

For some of you, the first answer that comes to mind will be the answer from your soul. For others, the questions might require thought, journaling, or meditation. Do what works best for you.

Question One: In three words, describe your personality.

Question Two: List five of your most dominant interests.

Question Three: Describe your character, including your virtues, vices, strengths, and weaknesses.

Question Four: List the past four opportunities that opened doors for you. Who faciliated those opportunities?

Question Five: In the coming year, what opportunities would you like to have open to you?

Question Six: Who are the people who you most often deal with? List the greatest joy(s) and the greatest challenge(s) in dealing with them.

Question Seven: If you have a mentor, describe what you admire about your mentor. If you do not yet have a mentor, describe what qualities you’d like your mentor to have — qualities which you would like to emulate.

Question Eight: List the places where you have lived. What possibilities did each place offer you?

Question Nine: List the places where you have traveled to. You can list just the ones that had a clear effect on you, or all of them. In each place, what changed in you as a result of your visit? What did visiting each place teach you?

The next step is to review your answers with a trusted friend or mentor. What conclusions about your life’s mission can you draw? Where have you been in life, and where do you want to go in life? Your answers to the nine questions above should give you a picture of what you can contribute to the world — what you can contribute to your community, to your friends and family, to your work. Look out for the unique life experiences that have shaped you, as well as what future experiences you would like to have. Your purpose in life will emerge from reviewing your answers.

 

Go deeper into this subject: The Journey Begins, All Articles About Your Mission, Your Purpose,  How to Figure Out Who You Are

Join the Soul Gym to Unlock Your Trapped Potential
Get free exercises to your inbox for self-mastery and growth.

  • Name*

    First Last

  • Email*

 

 

 

Soul Gym: Who You Are When No One Is LookingSoul Gym: How to Figure Out Who You Are

6-Step Program

Discover Your Personal Mission Statement

Get out of survival mode and enjoy living again!

REGISTER

Did you enjoy this? Get personalized content delivered to your own MLC profile page by joining the MLC community. It's free! Click here to find out more.

What am I really? 3 exercises to help you know yourself better


Elena Isupova

Each of us is a whole universe. But often we are so busy that we do not have time to study it. As a result, we don’t hear our real dreams, we don’t think about the meaning of life, we follow stereotypes and other people’s expectations. Many of our books help to correct this. We chose 3 exercises with which you can start the path to yourself.

Values, interests, abilities

Rada Agrawal says in Together, our values, interests and abilities (VICs) determine who we are and what we want. If we don't take the time to analyze them, we can get bogged down in relationships that drain us and connect our lives with a community that doesn't serve our interests. Try to identify your CIS and fit them into 3 circles (look for an example below).


Together

Values ​​

Dig deep and ask yourself what is important to you? What really matters in your life? Success, wealth, fame - all this is important to you? Or maybe love, trust, leadership are more important to you? Spirituality, harmony, self-sufficiency? There can be no wrong answer to these questions. Values ​​are the lens through which you look at the world.

Interests

Values ​​are an integral part of our nature, what characterizes us as a person. Interests are more tangible. Think about everything that interests you: drawing, video games, poetry, reading, diving, meditation, smart consumption, or something else entirely?

Abilities

Our areas of interest and ability often overlap. In this circle, write all your skills that you can share with the community. Are you a good cook? Can you organize people? Make them laugh? Do you like to tidy up? We often take our abilities for granted. Often, a skill is a skill that its owner does not see anything special in.

Perform this analysis at least once a year. ICC will help you understand yourself better and see which social circle is right for you.

Chasing Do's and Don'ts

This exercise is from the book Enough is Enough! will help you understand how much you live for yourself, and not for others. The first step to finding the obstacles to your authenticity is to identify your "musts". Many of us have been infected with the belief in "must" and "should not" by other people who do not understand who we are. Sometimes these beliefs concern small things, and sometimes serious things. Often they come from the outside world, but sometimes we grow them ourselves.


I've had enough!
1. Take a diary and find a time and place for this exercise.

2. Write down all the do's and don'ts that come to mind. If you don't know where to start, think about the current task. Have you faced a certain dilemma or have you reached the point where it is time to make a decision? What kind of "should" and "shouldn't" beliefs are associated with it? For example: "I want to quit my job, but I can't do it because it's irresponsible."

3. Now let's dig deeper and look for the reasons for these beliefs in the subconscious thought process. Try to complete the sentence using the words "because". For example, "I have to go to this party even though I don't want to (because I believe it means being a good friend)" or "I have to stay in this relationship (because I promised)".

4. Then check to see if you can identify higher personal values ​​and principles that justify this decision. Your value system includes a set of qualities that you consider important. For example, kindness, honesty, loyalty, creativity or freedom. Virtues are the essence of your character, and you feel best when actions match your most valuable qualities. For example, you might say, "I'm staying in this relationship because I made a promise, and one of my qualities is loyalty." Ideally, your belief in what you should and shouldn't do is backed by principles and values ​​that mean something to you.

Now, if you have to supplement statements like "I have to" and "I can't" with a nonsensical justification "because people do it" or "because it happened", study it carefully. This is how you identify beliefs drawn from the outside world that do not necessarily match your unique set of values.


What values ​​are really yours and what values ​​are imposed by other people? — Source

5. Select one of the beliefs found in Stage 4 and ask yourself, “Is this absolutely true? How do I know that this is so? When, from whom and how did I learn this? Work through your beliefs one by one. It may take time for you to go back in time, find the sources of these beliefs, and explore how they relate to your life today.

6. Now take three minutes to check how you feel physically and emotionally whenever you let go of the do's and don'ts. Approach the exercise with a mindful, meditative mindset and play with the idea. This does not mean that you should immediately take some action or change something, so relax. The purpose of the exercise is only to warm up your mind and gradually make room for new possibilities.

7. Try to imagine how your life will change when you get rid of this particular "should" or "shouldn't". Since you most likely have never considered a life path other than your current one, this step can cause some anxiety. Try to approach him easily and playfully. Consider this: Would you make any other choice if you didn't have this belief? How different would your life be? Where would you be? What would you do? Notice if you can imagine a vivid picture.

8. Describe your experience in a diary. You don't have to decide when (if at all) to drop do's and don'ts beliefs. Just allow any ideas to arise and trust that the necessary changes will come at the right time.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life is what helps us flourish in good times and stay afloat in dark times. The authors of the book "Free Yourself" help to find it.


Free yourself
Write down the most important of your long held beliefs. Next to each one, note when you got it and when you last reviewed it (if ever). Put a checkmark next to those that make you happy and a cross next to those that make you upset. Put another check mark next to the belief that you think gives meaning to your life. And finally, formulate and write down this meaning. For someone it will be something conceptual: “do good”, “make the world a better place”. And someone has something more specific, for example, "to protect the family."

The meaning of life is not necessarily something grandiose, outstanding. Your meaning may well lie in work. Or in the time you spend with friends. Or in football. In the evenings alone with your dear person. At family dinners. In simple joys or in what your whole existence is built on and what makes up your personality.

Don't stop! There will be many more interesting things on the journey through the universe that is in you.

Based on the materials of the books "Free Yourself", "Enough!", "Together"

Post cover — unsplash.com

Exercises to help you find yourself in life

December 3, 2014 Inspiration

Do you know how to understand if you are going your own way? Pretty simple. If you wake up every morning filled with energy and creative ideas, you are on your way. If you hate the sound of an alarm clock and get up in a bad mood, it's time to change jobs. Here are some exercises to help you understand what you really need to do.

Exercise 1. Return children's interest

Do you know the difference between a genius and an ordinary person? A genius defends his right to do what he loves. This usually happens at a very early age.

Ask yourself what you liked to do as a child. Even before your parents began to shove in you the attitudes that “you can’t earn money by drawing for bread” or “dancing is not serious.” Write down three things that really fascinated you as a child. This is a small hint where you should aim.

Exercise 2: Finding Patterns: 20 Favorite Activities

Now let's make a list of your 20 favorite activities. Let some of them seem banal to you (for example, eating delicious food) - write anyway. When the list is ready, take a close look at these classes. See the patterns? Maybe things related to helping people predominate on your list? Or some sports? Or things related to calm monotonous work?

Understand what groups you can break this list into. It will help you figure out the kind of life you would like to live.

Exercise 3. Your ideal environment

If no one believes in you, it becomes even more difficult to believe in yourself. That is why the environment that produces winners is almost always made up of winners. Unfortunately, the environment in which we grew up is not conducive to the creation of geniuses.

Imagine that the world has changed overnight to suit your needs. And in the morning it will be filled with such people as you want. What will these people be like? What qualities do they have? Maybe they are all creative, or, on the contrary, are they people who passed the sopromat with five plus? Maybe they do everything quickly, or, conversely, would you like to slow down the world?

What have you learned about yourself and what do you need to fully express yourself?

Exercise 4. Five lives

Now imagine: you will have five lives. And in each of them you can become whoever you want. How will you live these five lives?

This exercise, like all the others, you can customize for yourself. If you manage three lives, take three. You need ten - do not deny yourself anything. I chose five only because I like this number.

So, imagine that you devote one life to biology, the second to professional travel, the third to having a large family with lots of children, the fourth to become a sculptor, and the fifth to become an astronaut. Which one do you like more?

The most important thing to understand here is this: if you have to choose only one life, even the one that you like best, you will still miss the rest. Because they are an integral part of you. We were hammered into our heads: “Determine!”. This is sad.

There are people in the world who are born for a single purpose, but this is a rare exception. Each of your lives contains something that you love and need very much. And you can bring it into your life.

Exercise 5.

My Ideal Day

Now we are going to take a long walk in your imagination. Grab a pen and paper and let's go. So how do you see your ideal day?

Live this day in the present tense and in full detail: where do you wake up, what kind of house is it, who lies next to you, what do you eat for breakfast, what clothes do you wear, what do you do, what work do you do, at home or in the office?

Do not limit your imagination. Describe the day you would live if you had absolute freedom, unlimited means, and all the powers and skills you could ever dream of.

After the list is made, divide all your fantasies into three groups:

  1. Which of these do you need as air.
  2. Which is optional, but would still be very desirable.
  3. What you can do without.

Our lives are made up of life experiences, stories, roles, relationships, earnings, skills. Some of these we choose. Some of what we call our choice is actually a compromise.

Learn more