The road to self-discovery

Some would say I’m having a bit of a mid-life crisis (and I know who you are), and I did make a tangible decision when I turned 50 earlier this year to reassess myself and my life and try to improve my attitudes, my outlook and my self-awareness and confidence.  Scary.  I want to be a better person and I need help establishing that.

The self-discovery journey is not always an easy path to follow. It can be scary, confusing, complicated.  Revisiting childhood that started to mould beliefs and values, and choices made as an adult can be good and bad to relive. 

I have also started to recognise people and events that no longer fit with my values, or that are one-sided and “takers”.

I have tried a number of techniques to help with varying degrees of success:

• meditation – I just don’t seem to be able to sit still and focus that long when I know there are other things to be getting on with,
• assessing my values and behaviours – this is ongoing as I experience different things, but I am making a conscious effort, don’t always get it right though,
• figure out who I am and what I want – still having difficulty with that one.  As soon as I think I’ve worked it out I get a dose of imposter phenomenon,
• reflective thinking / writing – I am now much better at this and am able to assess my actions objectively and take whatever appropriate action needs to follow,
• gratitude – I’ve really struggled with this one.  Not because I’m not grateful for things, but find it really hard to express it.  For example, I am grateful for the fact I have a decent job, decent salary and able to have a good sense of work/life balance, but I’ve worked very hard over a number of years to achieve it. I’m grateful that I have a stable and loving home and family, but do I need to give them presents all the time to express that? Is saying “thank you” to C when he makes dinner and “I love you” to R in the hope that she feels valued and loved adequate? I’ve never got the hang of writing a gratitude journal. When you read that you should write three things every day that you are grateful for, how do you think of different things?  Surely it just starts to repeat itself,
• finding my purpose – I’m still not convinced I’ve discovered this yet.

I have discovered things about myself that I had long forgotten about or buried.  I have reset expectations and reassessed some relationships along the way.  I have looked again at my personal style and how I want to feel about myself and those around me.  I have started to be a little bit selfish about my time and energy and no longer spend so much of it trying to please other people.

I may have joined the party late, and I have a very long way to go, but I am determined to be a better person.