I am me. Others may or may not know me. And I may or may not know others. But do I know myself? Knowing is an absolute term. And to say that we can know others is a bit far fetched. We can however, over time, understand more about others. This requires conscious effort and dedicated outwards attention. Getting to know myself is on the same plane of spectrum of getting to know others, as we are human. Fortunately, understanding myself has an edge for self growth. Simply because I can ask myself questions anytime I want to. And given that I am not deceiving myself when answering these questions, hopefully, then I should be closer to understanding myself. This is call introspection. Introspection is needed for self growth and is not an activity that we can just set specific time for as it should come gradually and naturally through inspiration. However, whenever the time does come for you to meet yourself, the state of mind we are in is very important. This means that our mind needs to be free from being occupied from other people distractions or from work or substances like drugs or alcohol. Because only in this state of mind can we meet our realest self.

Invest in yourself

The more time is spent with our free mind, the more we know ourselves. What is this free mind? And why do we need to know ourselves? Simple answer to the latter is so we can know what we want for ourselves that is best. Up till adulthood, many of us have spent countless time navigating this world either assisted by parents and mentors and other leaders or influenced by peers. Many decisions were made in the past. During teenage years, maybe rebellious and reckless choices were made. Whatever it was, you know what that means? That means our personal history was rich and is full of events, which is a lot to explore, and no one but the person who has lived through it knows better about it. We had made a lot of decisions in the past that we might not like to make again in the future. The sooner the exploration, the better for our self growth since we aren’t getting any younger and long term memory isn’t really everyone’s friend. Long term memory is affected by alcohol and drug usages by the way.

How to love yourself – Free yourself from…

Free mind can be described as a mind free from interruptions and under influence of alcohol and drugs. For many people, after a long week of work, the idea of relaxing with a buddy or having a drink or more is very rewarding. Simply because instant gratifications is to grab low hanging fruits as soon as they are available. But these fruits come at a cost, both present and future. Immediately after consumption, not being in a sober state because of drugs and alcohol can come in an expense of our time and consciousness, making it very difficult for critical thinking. Then follows a recovery phase in which our body needs extra time to adjust back into normal state. Depending on the amount consumed, there may even be a need for catch up sleep and failure to do so may be detrimental to the long term health which will also impact the amount of time and energy we have for other things. The point here is time. These are all very important times that we can make use of with ourselves for exploration.

Introspection does consume a large amount of our time. The more we spend time with ourself, the more we may find out during the exploration. Kind of like Pokémon, for those that have played any of the versions will understand this reference, the longer we walk around in the plains, the more likely we will find what we are looking for. For those that had a guide, they will know where to look for whatever they’re looking for. For those without a guide, they will keep looking around over and over running into same obstacles until they go out of the zone. At least I hope they know they are stuck and where they currently are at is not what they’re looking for.