Who are You?
by Paul Hokemeyer, JD, PhD(c)

I’m constantly amazed by how easy it is for us to describe other people- and how difficult it is for us to describe ourselves. When asked who they are most people act as if I’ve asked them for the square root of 734. They have no idea. Or if they have an idea, it’s usually based on a description that is more about what they do in the world rather than the personal qualities they possess.
 

And so why do we care who we are? What’s the big deal? Well for one thing, if we don’t know who we are, we’re going to have a hard time living a life that has meaning and purpose. In short, we’re going to spend our lives living up to other people’s constantly shifting expectations while ignoring our own authentic needs. We’ll remain a volleyball that gets whacked from one player to another while wondering why we never have a game of our own. Not a lot of fun and not a very fulfilling way of living a life.

But there is a solution. Through engaging in the following exercise used by yoga teacher Seane Corn in her Off the Mat workshops, you can begin to understand yourself and what is important to you. The exercise consists of four parts that are discussed below:

(1) The exercise begins by asking for words that your dearest friends would use to describe you. You don’t need an extensive list, a handful of words will do. So how does your best friend see you? Driven, kind, sensitive? Come up with words of your own and write them down on a piece of paper.
 (2) Next think of ways you show these qualities in the world around you. Here it helps to be as specific as possible. For example, are you driven by your desire to be a great mother and express this by cooking healthy meals for your family? Do you feel compassion for animals and demonstrate this by maintaining a vegetarian diet? Do you care for the planet and express this by recycling and using your own grocery bags? Again write down these actions on your notepad.
(3) Now think of a vision that you would like to see manifested in the world. Allow yourself to think big and dream. Do you want a cancer free world? Do you want a world where children are safe from violence? Perhaps you want an end to war…whatever it is, grab a hold of it and write it down in your piece of paper.
(4) Once you have these three elements spelled out, put them together in a single statement. It’s that simple. So using the above example, your statement will read something to the effect of  “I’m a driven, kind and sensitive person who uses nutrition and consumes responsibly to create a healthy and nurturing world.”

There- you now have a meaningful description of who you are and how you want to live in the world. Armed with this description, you can make more conscious decisions about what works for and what is meaningful to you. You may never know the square root of 734 (it’s 27.09), but at the end of the day, I suspect it doesn’t really matter.