Self Awareness
I spent the better part of my late teens and twenties trying to figure out how I was. Much of the time I was trying to be someone else, and escaping from myself. The problem with running from yourself is that you can never get away.
During those years I used drugs and alcohol to aid my escape. Many morning I woke up miserable. I didn't recognize the person in the mirror anymore. Every morning I'd smoke a cigarette after rolling out of bed, and I was severely overweight. I was on a path to chronic medical conditions and early death.
Then it donned on me: I have an obsessive personality. Not the debilitating kind that makes it impossible to have a normal life, but the kind that makes me think about and do a few things at a time. At the time, I was obsessed with destroying my health, and recording music, in that order.
Something else occurred to me: I didn't like the life I'd created. Over the next year I stopped drinking and smoking cigarettes. I lost ninety pounds in eight months. To many around me, I was unrecognizable. At least a few people in my life must have thought I had cancer. I was still me, but physically transformed.
I am a person who can change the course of his life.
I've thought about this one a lot. How is it that I could stop smoking, using drugs, and limit alcohol, while my friend Vinnie spiraled further into a hole until he eventually died of alcoholism at 42? I don't know why, but I am a person capable of it. And Vinnie wasn't. And there's no explanation as to why.
I can't tell you if it comes down to my innate personality, or the stories I tell myself (and tell you, here), or if it's a combination of the two. What I can tell you is that stories we tell ourselves put severe limitations on us.
"I'm not good enough. I will fail. I'm not capable." I told myself this story a lot. Not consciously, but it became clear that the story was undermining my attempts to improve myself. Could I make it as a musician? No, I'm not good enough. Could I get healthy again? No, I'm not good enough. Could I go back to college and graduate? No, I'm not good enough.
Somehow I became aware of the story and started to ask myself a question: "Why not me?" As in, why couldn't I live a happy, fulfilled, and productive life? Why couldn't I be proud of myself when I looked in the mirror. There was no good answer, so I tried to change course. This mentality gave me the confidence to graduate from college, and grad school, and be with your mother. Powerful results came from a deceptively simple question.
I am a person who can work hard and accomplish my goals.
Knowing yourself comes down to both who you are and who you aren't. Yes, I can accomplish my goals, but given my obsessive nature and my work ethic, I need to limit my focus. I am a person who can find any subject interesting, which is a blessing and a curse. But I have the same 24 hours in each day as everyone else. I'm not a person who brings singular focus to his life. I know someone who decided as a child that he wanted to be a film editor, and brought singular focus to that effort until he succeeded. That's not me.
I am a person with a deep sense of fairness and justice.
Maybe by fate, and maybe by accident I've leveraged this part of my personality into a successful career in business. I treat people with fairness and honesty, and that has paid dividends in my career.
At this point you might be wondering how to know yourself. The answer is reflection. Thinking, writing, speaking, meditating. Blocking out the world so you can sit with yourself and see what happens.
In life, you have many decisions to make about how to spend your time, and who to spend it with. Knowing yourself will help you find the right path.