You Gotta Know Yourself Before You Can Love Yourself

Ask anybody — would you like to be happy? With the exception of one chemistry professor I knew (who was rumored to have said she “didn’t really like to have fun”), the answer will always be a resounding “YES!”

Now ask anybody — what do you need to be happy? With the exception of the Dalai Lama (maybe), nobody has an answer.

Modern Western culture teaches us happiness comes from buying one more gadget or liking one more social media post. We are duped into believing enlightenment means affording a Balenciaga candle holder. But the feeling that comes with new trinkets is fleeting — the euphoria we felt wears off, leaving us in need of another hit.

Happiness comes from within, not from baubles. Happiness is the result of accepting yourself, which depends on knowing who you are, what you value, and why. The problem many of us face (I do, anyway), is that who we are might be embarrassing — even taboo.

Identity is expressed within socio-environmental factors, some of which make us feel insurmountable pressure to conform. Rather than defeat our fear, we choose to bury the knowledge of who we are. Or worse, we trust other people to tell us who we are, assuming another person’s label as a proxy for finding the knowledge of our identity on our own.

We choose unhappiness instead of being our true selves.

What is the antidote we need to find our identity and develop it? We need to introspect.

Loving yourself translates as loving others

Rollo May — an existential psychologist whose clinical work dates back to the 1960s — found an interesting connection regarding introspection. When May’s patients were encouraged to go within and understand who they were, what motivated them, and how that would manifest in their lives, they became capable of accepting themselves — quirks and all. Accepting themselves was a key element in ongoing contentment — happiness.

What May did not expect is that, by accepting themselves, his patients also developed a greater sense of compassion for those around them. As a person developed compassion for what was inside, the compassion overflowed, spilled into the outside. Being able to love yourself translates directly into a greater capacity for loving others.

What fuels this compassion? Understanding: being able to trace your motivations to your thoughts and to your actions. When you know what motivates you, it becomes easier to believe others have reasons for their behavior. It isn’t a tricky concept — on the level of “I’m OK, You’re OK.” But the ramifications for society run deep.

Identity runs deep

There is a reason the Temple of Apollo at Delphi has the words “Know Yourself” carved into the stone. Introspection leads to a better life.

But society can exert pressures that cause us not to want to examine ourselves. Perhaps more to the point, we hide things from ourselves without even knowing we hid them. There are aspects of yourself you already know…but you don’t know you know. (Before this turns into an episode of “The Honeymooners,” I will move on.)

The subconscious and unconscious parts of our mind hold treasure chests of knowledge for us to use if we can only reach them. What follows are three tools I personally use to dredge up knowledge about myself. The tools — in descending order of value — are persisting dreams, divination, and writing in a journal.

These dreams go on when you close your eyes

When I began trying to understand my dreams, I believed I didn’t dream at all, or — in the rare case I did — I certainly didn’t remember them. I was surprised to find I could learn to remember my dreams. There is far more to probe in dreaming and its resulting analysis, some of which I may return to (see here and here). For now, I only want to discuss the value of learning to do it.

Dreams are a direct link to our subconscious and unconscious. Although we dismiss dreams as simple fantasy or “an undigested bit of beef,” there is power in dreams. They tell us things we do not want to accept or would not choose to believe.

As an example from my own dreams, I worked for the CEO of a startup who simply expected me to kill myself for the company. I worked very hard — typically 80-hour weeks to keep the company running — and the result was that I felt I must not be very good at what I do. Not if it took that many hours, not if the CEO kept expecting more.

But my dreams indicated something different. As I thought about their meaning, I saw they showed a very capable woman — somebody who was doing amazing work — and they helped me remember my value.

(As a footnote, I left the company three months after these dreams. I won’t say my absence was the cause, but the company folded within a few months.)

Que será, será

When divination comes up in conversation, the idea of a crone hunched in front of a crystal ball in a dark, incense-filled wagon comes to mind. That isn’t what I’m talking about.

The word “divination” has the same etymology as “divine.” It originally meant speaking with the gods: for advice, to know their intentions, to feel them in your life. It was scarcely different from Thomas Aquinas’s prayer meditations. Only more recently has divination been cast as sinister.

But speaking with the gods is not fortune-telling. Divination is used for advice; it doesn’t tell the future — certainly not infallibly. Its value lies in seeing your life from another direction. Techniques typically relate a human condition (via a card, rune, tree, etc.) to a sector of human life (via a location in a layout). The combination is then examined in context of your life.

I receive startling revelations from considering cards. To continue the last story: in one reading, I found an immature, vengeful person in the shadows of my professional life. As I thought about my situation, I realized the CEO’s friend had undermined my capability. He made work more difficult. It was that realization that helped me see the situation would not improve. I began planning to leave shortly after.

Write me your life

The final tool for introspection is the most powerful — writing down what we think, feel, and experience. Remembering our dreams and considering our lives is good work, and it is purely fodder for writing.

I recommend a piece of paper and a pen to write (I love my LAMY 2000 fountain pen in medium point). Much of the power of writing comes from engaging other parts of our brain. Writing with a pen as opposed to a keyboard forces you into several practices automatically.

First, you consider what you have to say before you write it. I can type 100 words per minute pretty easily — I can type almost as quickly as I think. Writing with a pen means I slow down. Because I cannot hit BACKSPACE with a pen, what I write stays there, and that means sometimes I write a sentence that doesn’t make sense. When I go back and wonder what I was writing, I find new insights.

My brain — while I was writing one sentence — was thinking about another. This is the real power of writing (even with a keyboard): when you consider your story, you learn more about your story. And learning more about your story means you can direct your story better. You become more of an active participant in the story of your life.

Putting it all together

How do all these techniques fit together? That will be the topic of further articles and videos, but you can start now simply by getting paper and a pen.

Keep a small notebook by your bed; write down dreams when they happen. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you were likely dreaming. Write down what you remember.

Find a phone app with a divination technique. It can be simple, like the Ogham. It can be complicated, like the Tarot. Use the app for a token of the day at first, then expand into bigger layouts.

Write. That’s it — just write. Writing makes you think, and as you think, you write more and you know more.

We can know ourselves. And by knowing ourselves, we can learn to love ourselves.

Even I can.