Self-knowledge: how to understand yourself in a complex and uncertain world
The search for self-knowledge has been recognized throughout the ages as one of the most fundamental truths: from the inscription “know yourself” on temple entrances in ancient Egypt and taken up by Socrates, to the Buddhist belief that mindfulness represents the first factor of enlightenment. More recently, a document entitled”How to Become A Better Leader” published in the management review Sloan from MIT, cited it as the most important ability for leaders to develop. A fact today and still confirmed and established by dozens of other studies on the subject.
Self-knowledge is precisely at the heart of leadership and more specifically self-leadership; it allows you to consciously work on your strengths and weaknesses, but also to progress towards Roles that fully satisfy us. But how do you understand each other? How do we know who we are? That is the difficulty, as we live in a complex and uncertain world.
Is self-knowledge an impossible quest?
Let's do a little exercise. Stand in front of a mirror or turn on the camera on your computer, or of course your smartphone. And describe yourself physically. Surely you are going to say that you are a man or a woman, that you are young or old, that you are short or tall, that you are thin or, conversely, that you have a few extra kilos. Here you understand each other in your condition. What you are. But let's now imagine that you are among a group of people. Are you old or young? Are you big or short? Your answers will probably not be the same, because your description will change according to your environment. Among teenagers, you will identify yourself as an old person. Or among retirees, like someone young.
When we define ourselves, we are actually always comparing ourselves to something. We do this in relation to our environment and above all according to societal norms, which, which are constantly evolving today, make it even more difficult to understand our state. We have one identity in one context, and a different one in another.
Understand each other in our actions (If I do that, that happens) is just as well. Do you know exactly what will happen if you take this or that action? Of course, here we are not talking about simple actions like drinking or eating, but rather actions performed on your environment. That is impossible. As it is constantly changing, we cannot control everything. Norms are evolving, becoming more and more vague. What was obvious is no longer obvious now. Take stealing for example. I steal so I will be punished. This is what we were taught as a child, and it is what our society has established. But that rule has since changed. Morally, it remains the same. But in action, it no longer has the same connotation. Every day we see in the media that the people who make the laws can also steal. Some therefore dare to do this act a little more, thinking that a small theft can be carried out without consequences.
Our interactions with others have also evolved. Until now, a kiss (very western) was the norm to greet each other. It is now hardly admitted since the Covid crisis.
Understand each other in one's condition and in our actions compared to its environment has thus become almost impossible. Faced with the complexity and uncertainty of our world, the only possibility is then to Understand yourself in its essence : to understand who we really are, what is important to us, what we want to go towards, and this, without the influence of our environment.
Understanding yourself means accepting yourself no longer in relation to the outside but in relation to yourself
An inner work that involves an observation of oneself and in particular of one's automatic mechanisms. In fact, to find our way around our world, we unconsciously create mechanisms. If we are tall, we automatically bend down to kiss. If we are small, we stand up slightly on tiptoe to greet our interlocutor. This is only a simple example, but each of us has built automatic systems in relation to our environment: thoughts, reactions, behaviors. The whole objective will be to recognize and accept them or not.
Knowing your values is also essential, because it comes down to understanding what you are looking for in any project, in any action. But what are they really? To this question, 9 out of 10 people respond with projections of their social environment. They define their values according to norms dictated and rooted in our heads: what is good or not good, what to do or not to do. Here too the influence of the outside world is powerful. Let us then ask ourselves what really represents us, what is most important to us, without comparing ourselves or worrying about what the result will be.
Rather than looking at our world and therefore defining ourselves through it, we must do the opposite: connect to its essence, understand it, and then reconnect it to our world. If we really understand each other, we will then be able to adapt and even benefit from the dynamics of our environment.
And that is the whole point of the Self-Leadership program, a personal journey whose first goal is self-discovery.
