There was one phenomenon that came to light among the participants of the “Self-Worth” course. Three questions we encountered that play a key role in what will unfold next.
These three important questions will help you see yourself in a new way:
- Who am I?
- Where am I going?
- And why?
Within the scope of this article, we will examine the first question — Who am I? Find out how to know yourself if you remove everything external.
Introduction to the issue: if you remove everything external — who am I?
In the “Self-Worth” course, we address everything that internally prevents you from feeling “I am valuable in and of myself, without any conditions.”
The phrase itself sounds amazing, there is no internal resistance, the mind says: “yes, yes, yes, I want it with all my might,” but in reality, there are a huge number of situations and stories where “I cannot do it.”
We have selected many different tools to see what you stumble on — it is evaluation, comparison, reactions to approval, criticism, disagreement, and so on.
In several exercises, we reached the topic of switching from external to internal.
I keep saying — shift the focus to yourself. Who said what, did what, liked it or didn’t, approved or disapproved — it should make no difference to you.
This is that very internal support, that inner core that you build for yourself.
We encountered such a phenomenon — if you remove all of this, what remains? If you remove comparison with other people, dependence on others’ approval, dependence on praise, if you remove all these external evaluations, what remains?
The first question the course participants arrived at in their reports: “And who am I now? And what am I like?”
The phrase “I am who I am. I am the way I am. I am valuable the way I am. I want to be myself” sounds great on its own. But it’s all built on the external evaluations of other people, complete strangers.
It would be fine if there was someone authoritative there, but most often there isn’t.
As a result, when we learn to detach and turn inward, we approach this global, large-scale question: Who am I without all of this? How valuable am I when no one is watching me? How valuable am I when I’m not doing anything at all, not occupied with anything?
And it turns out that many people don’t know themselves at all.
It sounds beautiful: “To be yourself.” But yourself — who is that?
See also Why it’s so hard to be yourself and how to convey your truth
Example of selectivity. Experiment with horizontal and vertical surfaces
There is an interesting example that shows how selective our vision is, how when we are focused on something, we don’t see something else.
Scientists conducted an experiment regarding horizontal and vertical surfaces. They took newborn kittens, kept some of them in an environment with exclusively horizontal surfaces, so that there was nothing vertical.
And they placed another group in a second room where, on the contrary, they tried to maintain exclusively vertical surfaces without horizontal ones.
When the kittens grew up, accustomed to the new circumstances, they were moved to a normal space, and they became lost.
Someone once recommended me the mineral water “Shishkin Les”. I go into a grocery store, and there are rows of all kinds of water, all bottles are oblong. I walk past once, don’t find it; a second time, don’t find it. I approach a store assistant, say I’m looking for “Shishkin Les” water, and she leads me over and shows me.
Instead of vertical, tall bottles, there is a square, chubby one standing there.
And that’s when I caught myself realizing that I indeed have a certain image in my head of what a water bottle should look like. Accordingly, no matter how many times I walked past the display, I didn’t see it, because initially, without thinking, on autopilot, I didn’t consider that a water bottle could look any different.
Self-identification. The example of the white room
I once came across another example on the topic of identification.
Imagine a white, white room, everything is white: white furniture, white curtains, walls, floor, ceiling, and you are sitting there, white.
If you imagine yourself in such a state, where there is no contrast, no differences, psychologically, mentally, people start to go crazy.
The main thing is, there is no answer to the question “Who am I?”. Because everything around is the same, white.
But as soon as, for example, a fly or a mosquito lands on the wall, small, yet contrasting, some other point appears in the white, white something.
It doesn’t matter what that object is; the main thing is that a different color has appeared. At that moment, the psyche works in such a way — you can compare: “Oh! I am not like that.” And the process of identification kicks in.
You have a reference point. But when everything is the same, this is impossible to do. You need something different so that you can see that there is something else in you. And then two parameters appear: similar and different.
Psychologists call this mechanism identity — a system of self-perceptions formed through comparison with others.
See also Just be and stop being someone. The value of being who you are
Loss of bearings
When you stop comparing yourself to others, detach, or at least try to detach from dependence on others’ opinions, approval, criticism, you lose that fly on a white wall where you yourself are white.
The point of identification is also lost, because what your self-understanding was built on is gone. You need to look for some other reference points.
Hence this feeling of helplessness and loss of bearings.
In basic courses, I hear this regularly: “I removed everything — work, the role of mom, relationships — and I don’t know who I am now.” This very feeling of emptiness is the beginning of true self-knowledge.
Switching to comparing yourself with yourself
To initially switch from outside to inside yourself, you keep everything the same: both approval and criticism, and comparison. You simply remove the direction, the focus.
If it was outward, toward other people, now you direct it toward yourself. Comparison, as such, remains. You simply compare yourself today, at this moment, with some other version of yourself from your life.
It is useless to try to dismantle the house, the roof, and the foundation all at once, and do everything simultaneously. Anyone who has ever done renovations knows you cannot do everything at once.
First you move out the furniture, then you try to break something, clear it out, but it is impossible for everything to fall apart in one moment.
Everything happens sequentially. So instead of trying to tear everything down, first learn to switch from outside to inside yourself.
Okay, I love to compare, comparison remains. Super! Only now I direct it at myself:
- a year ago and today,
- in a resourceful state — and not in a resourceful state,
- healthy — slightly ill,
- tired — full of energy,
- with a feeling of “yeehaw” — crushed below the baseboard.
The mechanism of comparison itself still remains, but each time you redirect it from the external world to yourself: “Why am I comparing myself to my friend?”, “Why am I looking at some authority figure, guru?”
As you understand, if you have lived your entire life in this endless comparison, including at the instigation of parents or close relatives in childhood, and have sat in it for many years — this is hard work. It will not happen on its own.
The same goes for criticism. The external critic — we transfer it to ourselves. External approval — we transfer it to ourselves. Do I approve of myself? Do I support myself?
And until you are totally settled within yourself, you will continue to be shaken, scattered.
Is it possible to dive from the external immediately into yourself, into your own essence, who I am? I am not sure. Therefore, such confusion remains: Who am I? What am I? and so on.
And when you have learned to work with yourself, to compare yourself with yourself, to approve yourself, to scold yourself, then you move on to the question: Who am I?
Have you already found the answer for yourself to the question “who am I” without external reference points?
In the second article of this series, we will consider the next question: why? or what drives you.