Thinking you know yourself and finding out you know nothing

I pride myself on knowing who I am (among a few other things). However, over the past few years, I have realised that this is a never ending work in progress. You have to be confortable in knowing that it is near impossible to know yourself completly. So long as you keep asking yourself those burning questions, things will be fine.

 

I know myself in the fact that I don't know myself. It's like a huge building in a large city you walk my every day to work, or a large university campus when you only attend classes in a few of the buildings; you "know" it, but you don't really. Exploring is the best part, because you realize you know very little details, and you constantly find new things and new place and realize that things and places change sometimes...you may have favorite nooks and crannies, but the fact of the matter is you often forget what you've seen and what you haven't, or aren't quite sure of what you know or don't.

How's that for an extended metaphor? Either way, accepting yourself is the first step towards understanding yourself, which is the first step to understanding and accepting others.

 

I believe that we're consistently inconsistent.

People are always changing depending on the environment. We may tend to act a certain way in many situations, but there are those times where we don't act like the way we "should", from our point of view.

That being said, this world is and will always be in a state of conflict. It's the way of the world. If conflict, good and evil, right and wrong, didn't exist, we wouldn't have the ability to think differently, and I'd personally think it'd be dull.

Realize that conflict will always be around, but also realize that most people are here to make the world a better place. It's just that some help in different way than others.

 

I think of myself more as a process than a particular product. The moment I define who I am doesn't account for the next influence that reshapes me. I have some sense of being fluid, like water or wind, in a state of evolution. Even though I am in my late 30's, I have remolded myself in fundamental ways over the last year to adapt to my new life. I don't know what I am, but I know how I respond.

 

People are conditioned by genetics, society, upbringing, and life experience to view certain thoughts, behaviors, and actions as part of the "self" and others as "non-self", hence the remark "I wasn't acting like myself today". Psychologists refer to this as Ego-Systonic (agree-with-self) versus Ego-Dystonic (disagree-with-self) thoughts, behaviors and actions.

In terms of Jungian personality psychology this is expressed in the four functions that are under some degree of conscious control and are in any case ego-systonic (Ni, Fe, Ti, and Se in us INFJs), and the 4 "shadow functions" that are unconscious, repressed, and ego-dystonic (for us Ne, Fi, Te, Si), which come out when we are stressed.

This is especially true with Enneagram 1s and 2s like myself (1w2), we have a strong Super-Ego complex intensifying this ego-systonic and ego-dystonic distinction, we punish and criticize ourselves when think or behave in ways that violate our super-ego complex.

 

that explains a lot

 

The human brain is not fully understood. You will not completely understand youself until someone is able to master the mind.

Point made.

 

I like this. I know that I am amorphous.

I also really like this, too!


The only thing I absolutely know about myself, is that I am always changing and adapting to new circumstances and information. At the core, I know that I need harmony and peace and so I adapt to the chaos in any way to find that balance.

An old boyfriend used to make fun of me when I said, "I am everything and nothing at the same time."

I may not know exactly who I am, but I do sense when my boundaries are being encroached upon and when someone is invalidating me.

 

Another thumbs up to Julia. I also think that the moment I define who I am, I start using it as an excuse for things. "No, I can't meet new people--it's uncomfortable because of my personality."

The only thing that keeps me challenging myself is knowing that I am always in process and will never fully know myself.

 

Yes, this is how it starts.

 

It starts by people not taking responsibility for their own emotions. Your friend isn’t doing anything to make you bad, you’re allowing yourself to feel bad but too often people would prefer to blame someone else for their own emotions, when they do that it’s easy to lash out and react with anger and violence. Own your emotional reactions and you'll understand yourself better.

 

Knowing yourself is I believe an impossible process. But one it is important to undertake anyway.

I can know myself as I am or as I was at any particular moment in time. This does not mean that I will know myself tomorrow.

Personality development is not something that terminates abruptly at puberty when we emerge as fully formed "static" adults.

Rather it is a dynamic lifelong process. Therefore I can never know all of me, all possible aspects.

However I can live in the now and find ways to understand better why I respond as I do now, why I have responded as I did in the past and any adaptive lessons to be taken forward from the process.

 

Supposedly NFs are the only temperment that take 'knowing themselves' seriously to the point of making it a life mission. I think it's interesting we spend our lives getting to know ourselves only to die..

 

I hadn't thought of it in that way before, that's interesting. Once in awhile I'll try and imagine being in the shoes of friends who have told me "existential thought does not interest them" and it's a struggle to comprehend. I feel envious sometimes with the way they are able to dissect life's trials and tribulations with what appears to be a certain ease.

In response to the original post... I second that yes, emotions can play a large role in your actions and thoughts if you allow them to.

 

I think it is IN's more then anything actually. I know a few ENFJ's and ENFP's that are actually quite oblivious who who they are, and several of them don't even try to.

 

I've just read that intuition coupled with feeling form the sort of temperment in which the individual's main motivation in life is to achieve things that are central to their values, and to achieve this by discovering who they are and what their values are.

I wonder if it only seems that the ENFJs and ENFPs you know aren't concerned with finding themselves. Some of us may be farther along in our exploration than others.

The ENFJs and ENFPs I happen to know are pretty self-aware people who seem to be guided by their subjectively derived ethics... and they're still exploring their personality.

 

I think the top thing I've learned in my self exploration is that there is no permanent "me." I'm an ever changing creature, and I should never define myself as being one thing or another.

It is this realization that has brought me to do such things as try jalapeno peppers for the first time. Yup, 23 years old and never ate them because I defined myself as someone who wouldn't like that sort of thing.

Exploring yourself is just that...exploring. You must leave the boundary of definition just as explorers of old would leave the boundary of country and land.

 

I don't think any temperment is the ones that do this specifically. I think it's just developed or people interesting in developing that do this. I've even known an ISTJ (you would think SJs just want to stay who they are and not develop at all) who is into self development.