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Why does knowing myself matter?

I felt motivated to write about why I think it matters that I know myself. Perhaps as a reference for myself, perhaps as a tool for others who stumble upon this and would like me to answer this question for them.

I started this because I felt like I didn't know myself. Like all the driving forces in my mind were external.  The voice of my family, the voice of my friends, what would so and so do in this situation.  I wanted confidence that my voice, my desires were driving my decisions, my pride in myself, my love for myself. 

As I have moved slightly deeper into the journey, a lot of my learning about myself has been from objective tools. Myers-Briggs, Astrology, other psychology-based things (learning style, for example).  My feeling is that these tools give us the objective feedback I crave, but in fact, are my voice, being presented in a way I am currently able to hear it.

These tools give me structure, they give me a foundation that I can reference when I am feeling uncomfortable in my skin. They give me reference material on myself, while I gain more trust in knowing who I am in the day-to-day.  They give me a guide to me, to compare to my actions. When I look back on my life and wonder why certain things were so challenging, it seems that it was because I wasn't accepting of my own needs. Perhaps, I could have used these things to my advantage rather than fighting against them.

For example, maybe if I had known (accepted?) that I was a Linguistic Learner in school, I wouldn't have beaten myself up for not learning visually from charts or Orgo models. Maybe I wouldn't have spent so much energy being disappointed in myself, that I wasn't studying or learning like my friends. Maybe, I would have learned how to take notes effectively, because they were useful TO ME, rather than feeling that my notes were useless but continuing to write them because it felt right.

Disregard the fact that that page says "how do children learn" and let me know in the comments what type of learner you are. Did you know that intuitively? Did you use that trait to your advantage or fight again it?

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