“I’m going on a trip, and I am going to pack…” Do you remember playing that game as a kid (or if you are a parent, perhaps with your kids or grandkids)? If you don’t remember or have never played that game (no judgement!), it is basically a memory game when each person provides their own new thing after listing everyone else’s thing before them and you can’t repeat. I haven’t played it in years (my own children are grown, and my childhood is even further away) but it popped into my head as I was musing over today’s blog entry.
Think about the last time you went on a trip, doesn’t have to be far. I choose to think back to when my family and I travelled to Europe for a choral tour I was associate conducting for. Three weeks trucking around Europe to perform 9 concerts. It was a whirlwind, but an experience I will never replace or forget. Specific to this topic, I am recalling the packing/preparation process. There was so much to do. Do we have power adaptors for our phones? Did I let the bank know we would be abroad, so they don’t block my card? Did I pack enough underwear? And thousands of other details. If we had been playing the trip game, I would have had so many things to add.
The lesson learned is that to have a good trip, you want to be well-prepared. You want to know everything you need to pack and everything you plan to do. Sure, you might want to leave some things up to chance (spontaneity can be fun too), but you don’t want to get to day 5 and realize you don’t have enough of your prescription medication to make it until you are back home.
Self-discovery is often thought of as a journey. It is an exploration of inner self and the destination is the best version of ourselves. It is not a journey like going to the grocery store or someplace else familiar, it is more like the expeditions that are made to new places where no one has been. When Captain James Cook first explored Antarctica in 1773, there were no maps, no travel guides, and no Trip-tiks (for those of you old enough to remember them!). He probably figured it would be cold and a lot of snow, but that may have been it. Likewise, there is no travel guide for your inner self and no one else has been there. So how do you prepare for it?
Before you take a journey of self-discovery, you must decide if it is a trip you want to take. Why would you want to go on this journey? What will you gain from it?
If you find yourself wondering if you are in the right career, chances are a journey of self-discovery will help you make that decision. If you are thinking about whether the relationship you are in is fulfilling your needs, it’s a safe bet you could find some use for self-discovery. If you are looking to decide whether college is the right move at this point in your life, I am certain that self-discovery might point you in the right direction. Basically, any time you are looking to make some sort of change, big or small, and you find yourself “on the fence” about what to do, there is probably an opportunity to engage in some self-discovery. Just like any other trip, the journey of self-discovery doesn’t have to be a long journey, sometimes is just a run to the store to pick up some groceries. However, if you are taking the journey of self-discovery for the first time, it might be good to take a short trip and get used to the process. You can always plan a longer trip for the next time.
Once you decide to go on a journey of self-discovery, you might be asking yourself, “Where do I begin?” Fortunately, there isn’t a lot to pack for this journey. Just two things, an open mind and self-awareness.
An open mind is important because self-discovery is always a journey into the unknown. And if you go into it with preconceptions, you will ALWAYS find what you are looking for. If you go into the journey thinking, “I am going to find out I am an awful person,” I promise you that will find a variety of reasons to support that conclusion, as your mind is very powerful. The same would happen if you were going to Europe and you decided before you left you were going to have an awful time. It is likely that you will. Why would you want to go on that journey? Bringing it back to your self-discovery, start with an open mind. Say to yourself, “I am going on a journey to get to know me better, I can’t wait to see what I am going to learn on this trip!” Be open to any experiences that might come your way. Be willing to travel down some unexpected paths. Be brave and bold!
Self-awareness is the other ‘thing’ you need to pack. Heightened self-awareness is important because it allows you to see who you are. Along with an open mind you need to reflect on who you are and experience all the things that make you, you. I am reminded of a line from the musical, The Producers, where Nathan Lane’s character says to Matthew Broderick’s character, “there is a lot more to you than there is to you!” In a previous blog, The Power of Reflection, I wrote about how to use reflection to improve your self-awareness. If you want to learn more about reflection, check out the link above.
Alright, you have packed your open mind and your self-awareness. It’s time to set out. Before you can head for where you are going, you need to know where you are. This is where the reflection process comes in. Take some time to reflect and figure out the following things:
· What are your strengths?
· What are your weaknesses?
· What are your skills?
· What are your values?
· What are your beliefs?
If you are travelling for a specific purpose (e.g., career, relationship, etc.) think about whether the answers to those questions match with where you are now in that area (e.g. does my current career match my strengths/weaknesses).
Once you know where you are it’s time to decide where you are going. Perhaps you think you might want to try sky diving. You look at your strengths and weaknesses and you love flying, but you aren’t sure about jumping out of a plane. The next step is to take action, do something! The journey of self-discovery must be active. You can’t just think about where you are. If all you do is think about going to Europe, you will never get there…you need to do something. Call a travel agent or talk to people who have already gone. So as a first step, you decided to try diving into a pool from the high dive. You must jump off the board, there is a period of weightlessness, you have the safety of a water landing. It isn’t jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet, but it’s a start. And you will find out if you enjoy the experience. The important thing is that you have acted.
Once you act, there is a critical, often forgotten, next step. You need to reflect again. What did you think after you took the step? Were you successful? What skills did you pick up? Were there places where you were challenged, and what weaknesses did you discover? Perhaps you found that you valued the safety of two feet on the ground. The point is, if you don’t reflect, you miss an opportunity to grow from the experience. The information you gain in the reflection will inform you what the next thing you do is. If, after reflection, you find that you were good at diving into the pool and you enjoyed it, maybe you will decide to make your next action bungee jumping. After that, you reflect again and so on.
Self-discovery is about finding out who you are and trying new things to see who you can be. As I mentioned in the reflection post, who you are today does not and should not be who you are tomorrow. It is only through self-discovery that we find out who we can be in the future.
Is your bag packed?
Are you up for the journey?
Get ready and go discover who the best version of you might be!