Get to Know Yourself

For most of my life I have spent every waking second trying to please everybody around me. I want to make my parents proud, I want my friends to think I'm the greatest friend of all time, and I want everyone I meet to think I'm the coolest cat to walk on this planet. In doing this, I lost who I truly was and tried to morph myself into something I thought the world wanted me to be.

This caused me to spiral out of control. I felt lost and alone. I felt confused about who I was and what I wanted out of this life. I had no idea what really interested me, because I would just pretend to like what everyone around me seemed to like.

I found myself in a dark place. I was filled with depression. I didn't want to get out of bed. I felt like a stranger in my own body. I didn't know who Ryan Ginsberg even was.

So, recently, I have decided to focus on myself. I want to spend as much time with myself as I can to find out what is truly going on in mind. I want to find out what things make me truly happy and what things I actually enjoy. It's like I'm meeting myself for the first time.

A common saying that is tossed around is, "You cannot love somebody if you don't truly love yourself." And I am discovering that this cliche couldn't be truer. 

Here are a few signs that you may not know yourself as well as you should.

1. If you are asked "What is an interesting fact about yourself?" and you have no idea what to say. This is a question that is often asked on the first day of school, and a question that often left me speechless. But if you were asked this same question about your best friend or significant other you would almost always think of an answer immediately. That is because you have taken the time to get to know them on a deeper level, but why don't we take the time to know ourselves at a deeper level?
2. If every time you are alone you find yourself bored out of your mind. If you truly know yourself you know exactly what it takes to occupy your mind. Sometimes we excuses like, "But everything costs money, there's nothing to do." However, when you hang out with friends you don't need to always spend money to have fun. You know what each other like so you go out and do that or you sit at home and have a conversation. Why can't we do that with ourselves? Get to know your mind. Get to know your interests. Get to know your passions. This way you will find yourself bored a lot less often. Trust me.
3. When a relationship ends and you feel lost. A lot of times people will invest most or all of their time into a relationship. They indulge their being into it and begins to define who they are as a person. And then when that relationship comes to a sudden end, they feel lost. And this can go with any type of relationship. It can happen with friendships, it can happen with significant others, it can happen with mentors and mentees, basically it can happen to anybody who has any type of strong with relationship with any other person. The reason this can happen is because you allow your idea of yourself to morph into who you are with that person, which is a completely different than who you are when you are alone. So now that that person is gone, you lose all sight of who you are without them. That is why it is important, so very very important, to know who you are alone before entering into a serious relationship with another person. 

The reason it is so important to know yourself is because your knowledge of who you are as a person are your roots. If you have little knowledge of yourself your roots will be short. If you have a lot of knowledge of yourself your roots will be deep in the soil. You as a person are the tree. As you grow as a person you grow in size. But sometimes life comes at you and begins to shove. It takes away your job, it takes away your money, it takes away your significant other. It exerts all of this energy trying to destroy you. 

There are two possible scenarios: 

• The person with shallow roots is knocked over.
• The person with deep roots continues to stand tall.

Sometimes life may take everything you know away from you and leave you all alone. Will you know what to do?