25 Questions to Help You Know YourSelf Better
Wondering where to start with knowing yourself? I've gathered together some of my favourite prompts to help you get to know more of the real you.
The more you know yourself, the more you understand what warrants your yeses and nos. I thought it would be fun to put together a selection of prompts to help you gain insight into yourself so that you have more self-awareness and self-knowledge. Maybe you’ll go through all of them, or perhaps you’ll pick a few that particularly resonate. Notice the themes, character traits, desires, needs, and even boundaries that emerge in your answers. Be kind and emotionally generous to yourself, as you would any other loved one. And have fun! There are no ‘bad’ answers here.
When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? What did you love as a child? Before we absorbed a load of shoulds and shouldn'ts, along with ideas around what would make us ‘good’, ‘happy’ or ‘successful’ or ‘unrejectionable’ (yeah, I made that word up!) people, we took innocent delight in certain things and had various ideas about what we’d like to be when we grew up. Obviously, we based our ideas of who and what we could be on the limited awareness we had at that time of what was available to us (and how the world was then), but those early interests and stirrings offer clues about who we really are.
What do you go out of your way to be perceived as, and what does that stop you from being and doing? e.g. Maybe in your quest to be perceived as your version of the Good Girl/Guy/Employee, you find it near-impossible to prioritise yourself and say no when you need to or even should, and then you wind up feeling resentful and burnt out.
What do you keep trying to prove about yourself, and what does this tell you about what you need to acknowledge and accept? For instance, maybe you keep trying to prove that you’re not the “dummy” people thought you were or that you’re not “selfish” like a family member accused you of being. When you consider how trying to prove this affects your thoughts, feelings, behaviour and choices and how it stops you from being more of who you really are, you can give yourself a lot more grace and compassion. A lot of us are trying to prove things we already did a helluva long time ago!
I’m a big believer that you discover who you are by discovering who you’re not. Think about some of the things you’ve been and done that turned out not to be a fit for you. Own them without shaming yourself. What do they tell you about who you are? I used to be Cool Girl (remember her in Gone Girl? I did an episode on this), who didn’t have needs and contorted herself to fit her romantic relationships. The more I’ve allowed myself to have needs, desires, expectations, feelings and opinions, the better I’ve felt.
Think back on some of your more painful/difficult relationships. What were you trying to ‘get’ or avoid? Your answers offer clues about what you need to give to yourself and find healthier means of attaining these, but also where you might need to do some healing and self-supporting work so that you feel safer in being more of who you really are. For instance, a recurring theme for people who have a pattern of being involved with emotionally unavailable and shady people is that they’re trying to meet old unmet needs around status, acknowledgement, and recognition, along with trying to meet seeming needs around control and duty.