Source: quotationof.com
Knowing yourself is really critical, especially at these times where you can meet a lot of critics who can put you down or people who appraise and which raise and give you more merits than you actually deserve. Know yourself and the level at which you are in at your career or at different slices of your life and enable yourself the possibility of having a solid and objective ground which you can use for further improvements.
“If you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself you will succumb in every battle.” – Lao Tzu
This is a quote from “The Art Of War” that is worth paying attention to even though there have been thousands of years since the time they were written. Despite the fact that times and circumstances are now different, this quote is still valid today and we don’t have to be in a real war with guns to apply and extract bits of wisdom from it.
We are constantly in battles with different types of fears and bad habits that are part of our lives. We are afraid to take action and pursue our goals and we have a lot of doubts that steal our time and opportunities that we come across. We might not even be aware about the existence of these types of enemies that we have in our own selves and this in fact is a pitfall that we should do something about.
Knowing yourself and being aware of the types of thoughts and behaviors that you have and do most of the time is the first step towards having the courage to confront these bad habits and routines that are preventing you to enjoy a better quality of life. Without knowing the current state of your habits and behaviors, you might not be able to see any indication of progress and overall improvement, as you do not know your previous level.
One way I would recommend regarding this would be writing down our own thoughts each time they come across our minds. We should develop the discipline of writing extensively. By writing, I mean collecting notes in an organized fashion and not necessarily publishing them somewhere where anyone can read them. You can use writing to collect as much data as you can about yourself by keeping a note taking system with you anywhere you go. You might want to try to write each morning about the opinions and the things that are occupying your head during that time, or you might use your work break and go somewhere to jot down the things that are bothering and that are taking your attention.
As times goes by and after you have been successfully collecting a lot of notes, you can then start to analyze them and try to identify patterns of things that bother you the most and things that give you the most pleasurable experiences.
Having these information at hand and actually using them in the future is a probable way of improving your life.
