Hello Reader,

Today, I am going to explain to you how to find who you are.

Your transformation begins when you understand who you are, what you stand for, what excites you, and what gives you energy. Your life experience, upbringing, culture, values, opinions, beliefs, dreams, passions, and hobbies are some elements of who you really are. The variety of these ingredients makes you unique.

It is easier to tap into your passion when you know who you are and what gives you energy.

Unfortunately, finding the real you is a long journey that can take years.

Following are a few reasons people struggle to make actionable progress.

Reason #1: Finding the real you is a long journey.

Depending on how deep you want to go, it can take months and years of consistent observation of your actions, thoughts, and feelings.

Reason #2: False impression of your professional identity with who you are.

Your profession does not define who you are. Your Job titles only indicate roles and responsibilities within an organization.

The clarity of “who you are” and “what you stand for” comes from soul searching and observing your feelings, thoughts, values, actions, and energy.

Here’s how you find yourself,

Method 1: Journaling is one of the best tools to learn about yourself.

Journaling does not require special training or education. Anyone can start journaling by writing about their feelings, emotions, thoughts, aspirations, and dreams. Reflects on recent events & actions.

Journaling will help you organize your feelings and thoughts and clarify your mind.

As a result, you will notice which activities gave you energy and which situations depleted you.

Energy typically indicates passion.

In your journal, answer the following powerful questions daily based on your recent observation. And reflect weekly during your weekly review. Take notes of your feelings, emotions, and energy level while working on various activities.

⚡What gave me energy?

🤯 What drained my energy?

Tasks that give you energy are typically indicators of your passion. These will be valuable clues to identifying who you are and what you love.

It’s a long process of self-reflection, but it changes everything once you identify your passion.

Method 2: You can learn much about yourself using basic and advanced meditation techniques

Meditation helps observe your feelings & thoughts.

It is an introspective technique that can help you discover who you really are and what role you play in the world. It allows you to focus on yourself and discover much more of you.

Meditation also helps us understand our mind, its limits and capabilities, and how it shapes our identity. When our sense of self-identity shifts, we begin to recognize previously unseen aspects of ourselves.

Yoga is one of my favorite activities, and it bundles exercise, meditation, and breathing (pranayama).

Method 3: Find your core values.

Your code values significantly influence what you like and dislike, what you stand for, and what you can let go of. You will observe similarities between these and your deep identity.

There are hundreds of articles, videos, and step-by-step guides to identifying your core values, such as Defining Your List of Values and Beliefs (with 102 examples) by Lyn, a coach, consultant, TEDx speaker, author, and founder of SoulSalt Inc.

Method 4: Hire a coach

Coaching is a painful process in which your coach guides you to uncover your thoughts and feelings.

My coach, Nikki Trotter, told me I do not express my feelings and keep it all inside. She coached me when I was feeling lost. My aspirations were unclear, and I was unsure about my career goals. I felt stuck and running in circles. Coaching helped me dig inside myself to understand what I was feeling, what I wanted, and what I could do.

Now, I care for myself as a person, knowing what excites me and gives me energy. I highly recommend you hire a coach.

Some organizations provide EAP (employee assistance program), and you can use these free EAP sessions to scratch the surface before hiring a coach.

Method 5: You can use the outcome from the personality tests to dig deeper into your behavior traits and patterns.

Personality is not an accurate indication of “who you are.” Still, it can provide excellent information to work on, such as your behavior style, traits and patterns, motivation factors, and the effect of pressure & situations.

You can use 16 personalities (free), Myers-Briggs (paid), and DISC (paid) tests to learn about your personality and behavior. DISC is often the “universal language of observable human behavior.”

Method 6: Reflect on life events

Our life is similar to a dot-picture game in which we work on the left, top, bottom, and right sides of the dot picture, and at some point, we see the big picture.

To do this, make a list of your life’s significant events, activities and milestones. Look at the overall picture and find patterns.

In a dot picture game, you connect the dots on paper to uncover the hidden image. Please look at the following picture for an example.

Last year, through this method, I discovered my storytelling passion and one of my childhood fascinations: learning about people and their lives and how they grew and achieved remarkable things. The Career Journey podcast was an outcome of this realization.

So, let's start now

I encourage you to start your new year with one of these techniques to discover yourself. It will help you discover your dreams and decide what to become.

Remember, finding the real you is a long journey that can take years. Don't wait that long to create momentum in your life. Use my Quarterly Planning Workbook 📔 to plan the 1st quarter of 2023.

Pick a focus area and one or two projects (goals) in that area. Small actions will create massive momentum for you. Trust me, this system will work for you, too. So use it and take my help.

I wish you the very best in 2023!

This is a wrap!!

As always, I would love to hear from you.

So hit reply and send me a quick one-line comment with a few encouraging words. It will mean a lot to me. You can also DM me on 👉 Twitter @VinodSharma10x.

Your Friend,
Vinod

If you like my newsletter, then you will love my free offerings.

🎓 Career Jumpstart Email Course to 🎨 craft your dreams

📔 Quarterly Planning Workbook to achieve your dreams one quarter at a time.

Use them to start your 2023 with a blast ⚡🚀.

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