Who is your true self?
What Affects Our Self-Identity?
You are an accumulation of information learned unconsciously and consciously over time. It is important to know who we really are without interference from others. What are the things that affect the way you see yourself?
“…things have happened to us, are happening to us, and will happen every day for the rest of our lives…“
Sarah Raasch, Ice like fire.
What does it mean to know your true self?
Self-definition is the understanding or determination of one’s own nature or basic qualities (Collins dictionary). To know your true self is to love yourself.
In psychology, there is a concept called “the psychology of self”. Defined by Wikipedia as the study of either cognitive, conative, or affective representation of one’s identity, or the subject of experience.
Now let’s simplify these definitions to lead a path down the road of our discussion on self-definition.
- Cognitive: The states and processes involved in knowing, which in their completeness include perception and judgment (britannica.com). Simply put, it is the process of learning.
- Conative: The way the attitude we have influenced how we act or behave. simplypsychology.org
- Affective: Relating to, arising from … feelings or emotions (Merriam-Webster). Simply put, emotional reactions.
To break down this definition further. A person’s self-identity is a depiction of their thought process, attitudes, and emotions.
Therefore, I define myself, not by my physical body but by my state of mind. My definition would be influenced by how my mind reasons in different situations or generally.
Basically, my attitudes, intentions, and modes towards situations, and emotions in different settings.
These factors influence one another. Moreso they are often influenced by external factors. In finding who is your true self, know that Your mindset, attitude, and emotions are influenced by one another in such a way that:
- your thought process affects your disposition and the choices you make, as well as your emotions
- Your emotions can affect the choices you make, your attitudes toward varying circumstances, and your thinking process.
- Your intentions can affect your emotions and thinking process.
Who Is Your True self?
To know one’s true self is the awareness of oneself. It is based on one’s mode of reasoning, thinking, temperament(s), and underlying emotions under different conditions.
These bases are largely dependent on external and independent factors. I Would refer to them as “Agents of socialization”, in this article.
Socialization is the process where an individual internalizes the values, norms, ideologies, habits, and cultures, of his immediate society.
In social science, agents of socialization are the primary institutions, contacts, and groups which give a person introductory life experiences.
These agents are family, peer groups, media, schools, religion, and culture. They work together consciously, subconsciously, and even unconsciously. They influence our mindsets, attitudes, and emotions.
These agents literally influence everything about us. This is because we are surrounded by them, grew up with them, lived with them, are among them, etc.
It may surprise you to know how many things you heard, saw, or lived with, that has affected your individuality. Moreso how many new habits you can pick up when living with someone for a long period of time?
These are the factors that affect our sense of self ;
Knowledge:
Whatever useful information you have at your disposal is knowledge. It affects everything about you.
The level of information you have determines your reaction, attitude, and emotions toward a situation. It also facilitates your learning process toward having about yourself determines the way you define yourself. One thing I love to talk about is my anger management journey or life development journey.
Previously. I used to define myself based on the knowledge I had of myself. I had a bad temper and I didn’t like it, hence I saw myself as an angry and out-of-control maniac.
Consequently, I was unable to have friends or cultivate good relationships. I didn’t trust myself around people. I was very sure people would hate me if they knew the monster I was. As a result, I closed off myself in an attempt to protect myself from hurting myself and other people.
I was filled with constant hate for myself because I couldn’t get past the stage of seeing myself as flawed. Information on yourself is very much a factor in every action you do whether you’re aware of it or not.
Your brain is a very beautiful and complex machine that works with or without your consent, it helps to be self-aware in order to modify knowledge that could be destructive to your journey of personal growth and development.
With the information of yourself, you can always apply the brakes and apply patience to see what can be done, undone, or give the go-ahead for whatever goes in and out of you, mentally and physically.
Patterns:
A very regular way of doing things.
A regular of reacting to things, of behaving, of processing thoughts. Your definition of yourself depends on your life patterns.
Sometimes you fall into patterns without knowing. While other times, patterns can be created consciously. Growing up with a mother who had mega anger issues, laced with heavy passive aggression was never easy.
Distinctly, when it came to chores and helping around the house, I was helpless on what to do. So I’d hang nervously around, and wait for her orders. They never came, but you could feel the anger radiating.
She would punish me heavily and physically because I didn’t help her do anything.
It was like she expected me to be a mind reader. Deeply hated the whole thing. You just could tell me, an 8-year-old child what to do to help because I literally have no idea.
Interestingly, when I had my first apartment, my boyfriend stayed with me from time to time. So when it came to chores, I would be passive-aggressive. Clearly radiate so much silent anger that he wasn’t helping me out. In reality, he was just waiting for me to split the chores.
Sometimes he would ask and I’d give very snarky comments and just pass on more silent anger and passive aggression, just like my mother used to. This is an example of an unconsciously built pattern.
Again, I had another thing on my list of things to make me feel emotions of hatred towards myself and blame my family for everything wrong with me. Joking!
Consciously built patterns are built with sacrifice and commitment.
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The only way I was able to redefine was self was to counter my negative patterns with consciously built patterns. I tried to become more attentive to myself and encountered a lot of setbacks and errors on the way.
It’s never easy undoing or unlearning something, letting go of old behavior that you’ve known your whole life. But trial and error, falling and standing again led me down the road of grey balance.
You can not be perfect but you can strive to be better than you were. Whenever I find myself slipping into destructive patterns that taint my self-identity. I try my hardest to offset my tendencies with what I’d love to do instead. Because I want to identify myself as a better person.
Relationships Affect How You Know Your True Self:
This refers to the connections you have with other people. You define yourself by the relationships you form with other people and yourself.
- How do you form relationships with yourself and with other people?
- What makes you stay with people?
- Name the connections that bind you together with the people and yourself.
- Name the limits to your relationships.
- Define the compromises you put for other people and yourself.
Relationships are defined by communication, intimacy, and by commitment.
How you interact with relationships and how you allow relationships to affect you are key pointers to your identity. The relationship between children and their parents is one of the most important relationships in an individual’s life.
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Growing up with a parent or guardian meant being subjected to their beliefs, expectations, flaws, and humanity. So we mirrored whatever they showed us, whether it was conscious or unconscious. This affects our patterns in relationships our selves and other people.
The way you relate with your friends is also telling of who you are.
- Are you the friend who is often easily overwhelmed by insecurity when with your other friends?
- Do you find yourself trying to become other people, please other people, are you easily jealous when your friends experience good things?
- Do you have good communication skills with friends and acquaintances, are you consistent with your playing your part as a friend/ acquaintance?
- In intimate relationships with your significant others, what is the dynamic of your relationship with them?
- How well do you communicate your feelings with them?
- Are you consistent in relationships? Do you play team or just never do your part and share, take, or give away blame?
Your relationship with other people affects your relationship with yourself and how you define yourself.
Inspirations:
The people you look up to, admire the things that give you a fresh burst of confidence to achieve your dreams, and the nature of such things influences the way you know your true self. Successful people and self-made success stories inspire me.
Inspirations raise your spirits to higher levels. You literally feel the rush and the push in your body which drives you to feel like you can achieve anything, break limits and exceed the ordinary.
It’s suitable to say that anything which makes you feel strongly about something is capable of influencing the way you see yourself.
My mum would taunt my brother for having pictures of some of the biggest hip-hop stars on his phone because they looked ungodly, and she believes he will become ungodly too.
Although it seems I’m exaggerating, you understand how inspiration affects our identity. If your inspiration is a gangster who makes art that promotes delinquency, rebellion, crime, promiscuity, infidelity, etc. then you might need to take another look at yourself and compare these people with who you want to be.
Do you really want to identify yourself as someone who celebrates murders and crime and the rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases and infections? Drug use, violence, and just negativity?
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What you look up to, and what inspires you is a part of your identity, it affects your thinking because you would want to think like your role model so you can achieve what they have achieved.
Inspirations affect your dispositions and attitude towards life as well as your emotions.
Inspirations and role models affect the way you think so it’s necessary to be conscious of who you emulate.
Personal expectations affect how you know your true self:
What are you about?
You’re the most important factor here because everything revolves around you.
What kind of expectations do you have for yourself? Are you doing what you want right now? Are you doing what makes you happy?
There is such a thing as personally inflicted high expectations. You pressure yourself to do more than you can handle. One of the best things to do for yourself is to know when to take a break or when to stop, and when to discontinue completely.
Sometimes these expectations placed on yourself are a result of expectations of other people which have influenced or clouded you to your own expectations. It’s painful to go on a hard power ride only to realize you’re burning your energy for someone else, not you.
Spend some quality time with yourself, talk to yourself, and be your friend so you can understand yourself and easily identify when you’re doing too much to handle by yourself, wasting your, wasting someone else’s time, or wasting time on someone else.
This is especially important in relationships. It’s very necessary to outline the fine print and end goal of relationships in order to make better decisions and create reasonable expectations for yourself and the party (ies) involved.
Be acquainted with yourself so you live free from other peoples expectations.
rythmfiend
Content consumption:
we can not deny the impact of social media on our world today.
The internet has tons of good sides, it allows ease in so many ways but the bad sides have capsized our society as a whole. There are various studies that highlight the dangers of social media, especially among young adults, teens, and kids
The dangers extend beyond moral and mental borders like suicide, mental disorders, depression, low self-esteem, identity theft, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and cyberbullying, among many others.
I remember spending my teenage years consuming social media I spent so much time stalking beautiful women, beautiful girls, and teen luxury, following pages of girls who were clearly living the life I was not and I remember how bad it used to make me feel about myself.
The kind of content you consume will always affect you. Affect how you know your true self.
I realize spending my time on social media influenced even my financial decisions. I had a very bad case of cystic acne, I had hip dips and I hated that so much.
All I wanted glowing skin and a curvy thick body. I followed the “right” influencers to know what products they used to get better and clear skin with curves and perfect bodies. I spent my entire savings buying beauty product after product and body supplements which never worked.
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Thinking back now, social media does influence bad decisions, I took the advice of self-proclaimed social media beauty, relationships, and lifestyle gurus.
By the time you actually realize that the people with a seemingly perfect life, don’t have a perfect life and everything they do is curated to perfection, with marketing intentions, you’d probably have had a few regrets under your belt.
In many ways, our society became more and more toxic.
People are comfortable with being the most toxic versions of themselves because it’s cool king/queen behavior; saying horrible things to others, their children, and their families.
It’s like you can’t make a mistake anymore and the concept of forgiveness and kindness is becoming more and more alien in society, you either conform or become canceled. When does judging people become bad?
Social media impacts views on real-life severely. The rate at which relationships break apart now is alarming. Now more than ever, negative content is selling the most. It’s uncool to be kind. You’ll be a loser. It’s like everyone is stuck in high school mode, making it so popular and cool.
Social media affects the way you see society and can sway your orientation in life. It’s like there is an all-around pressure to succumb and join the bandwagon. Doing otherwise will have you facing neglect from netizens and even real-life society because you support an ideology.
I had to learn to restructure my FYP across all social media handles and thankfully the algorithm responds very well to your inputs. My FYP now encourages my goals and dream lifestyles plus, informative, educative, and very much my style and pace.
I use social media to foster my hobbies, learn new internet and cultivate old ones. Maybe check up on entertainment.
The content you consume does indeed and undoubtedly has the power to affect your thinking process, your disposition towards life, and your emotions.