A Research Paper By Jill Zhou, Transformational Coach, HONG KONG
Rediscover Yourself: What Makes It Matter?
Being able to discover oneself is essential to accommodate the process of growth and improvement. And life has never stopped presenting new occasions and challenges in all possible ways. One can easily slide into a position of struggling with disconnecting with and no longer recognizing oneself, which might originate from significant changes in relationships, failure to understand their own personality, or unexpected shock of life circumstances. The rediscovery step is required to happen constantly to maintain self-connection and self-awareness. Here is where the life coach steps in as a listener, supporter, and witness of progress, with their 100% presence, mindfulness, and inclusiveness.
Why You Need to Rediscover Yourself?
Are you mentally and emotionally drained from living in a state of hollowness that a lost sense of oneself brings you? The specific state is unstable and exhausting, and barely provides any positivity to your regular life. You feel disconnected from yourself, lose passion for people and activities, and let yourself overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. At this moment, you are falling from the last string coming from your own hand, without even realizing the danger.
It’s universally understood that we have accumulated various responsibilities and roles of hats along the way, during which we got immersed, deprived of time and energy, and even taken away from our original selves by more and more demanding important ones around us. We are getting lost in finding ourselves. Imagine your 5-month-old crying loudly and nonstop in another room, while you are busy presenting a deck completed at the cost of staying overnight via Zoom. Or you got so helpless and hopeless watching your loved one walking out of the apartment you guys have shared for the past 5 years. What’s more? You lose track of your weight and other health indicator due to running between work and the hospital, in order to take care of loved ones… Your authentic self is floating away from you, in all kinds of ways. And the longer you fail to recognize it, the harder you can get back onto rediscovery. On top of that, you can barely feel any hope or passion, the catalyst of life, and open yourself a door to some kind of vicious circle: low level of self-esteem and confidence, shortage of energy, and lower, and less…
Are you freaked out by the vivid picture of negativities above? If yes, please allow yourself to enter a new phase of rediscovering. Rediscovering yourself means taking action to reconnect with the things you used to be passionate about and the goals you once had. It means taking inventory of what is important in your life and changing your priorities accordingly. It takes a journey to bring the lost identity back in alignment with you.
How to Rediscover Yourself?
Recovery
From Exhaustion
- Exhaustion is the most common barrier that prevents one from staying connected with their authentic self. We have allocated equivalently massive time and energy into different buckets in our regular lives, including people we care about and the determination we hold, making an inadequate effort to evaluate our priorities. Gradually we have arrived at the verge of being worn out, where we start getting used to giving up passion and hope or making sacrifices constantly for others without taking care of ourselves.
- If a bottle keeps pouring water out but never gets refilled, it will soon get drained and left out of the attention. Likewise, we need refilling and replenishment throughout our entire life, to fight the exhaustion from challenges, sadness, and frustration, and to regain the connection to ourselves.
From Limited Beliefs
- A limiting belief is a state of mind or belief about yourself that restricts you in some way. These beliefs often come from a place of negativity and fear that keep us from experiencing new opportunities and even cause a number of negative consequences. For example, if one of your limited beliefs is you are not a good public speaker, it’s highly likely that you have declined and will decline any opportunities to speak publicly, which grounds you in the corner without stepping forward for your entire life. Limiting beliefs can also keep you in a negative state of mind, hindering you from encountering new opportunities and life experiences while wreaking havoc on your mental health. That’s why it’s so important to not only work on your self-awareness and self-esteem but also recognize unconscious biases.
- Liberate oneself from limited beliefs via
- Think critically about your values. Try your best to identify the first five most important values to you.
- Develop your senses. Admit the power of the senses in yourself and release it to support you in shaping the future.
- Think of best-case scenarios. Empower yourself by allocating more energy to a visualization of positivity rather than burying oneself with complication and toughness only.
Reflection
Reflection requires courage. You only benefit the most by making it a habit. A few methods can be helpful to forge one.
Ask yourself questions.
The practice itself is all about learning, looking back on the day (without bias or regret) to contemplating your behavior and its consequences. It requires sitting with yourself, taking an honest moment to think about what transpired, what worked, what didn’t, what can be done, and what can’t. At this moment, you are in the process of seeking the authentic self along the storyline of your own, during which you locate the alignment between reality and your values and carry on, or the misalignment and make corrections.
Redefine yourself.
Everyone has experienced a great deal of events before they arrived at who they are today. Every single piece of the past constitutes the picture of the present. We all understand. But have you thought about reforming these pieces and transforming the whole model of yourself into a different one? Let’s investigate more details on how.
- Get rid of bad habits.
- Retrieve your old passion.
- Visualize an expected future.
- Equip with more lightness about opinions/judgment from others.
- Become realistic and stay present.
Regeneration
A growth mindset is a useful tool here. We were given the original life by our parents, yet we constantly refine it by striving to recognize, adjust, and improve along the way. It is completely ok to show vulnerability and even break down to the world because we were not born to be perfect, but authentic. Therefore, we collect the falling parts, add takeaways from on the spot and elsewhere, and regenerate a new self, holding tight to our true values and passion, keeping open-minded to embrace opportunities of growing and glowing. The key point of regeneration is to unleash the potential to cope with anything new ahead of you. Below are a few ways to realize the regeneration.
- Higher frequency.
Higher frequencies include love, gratitude, optimism, joy, acceptance, courage, and vulnerability- basically, any state that pulls you out of panic and negativity, fills you with hope and optimism, and expands you instead of constricts you. It’s a mind-body-energy thing. The higher the frequency you live on, the lighter you feel physically, emotionally, and mentally. This is a state where we feel love and optimism, and it is never too much of a challenge to get there, but to stay there.
A higher frequency has a significant correlation with one’s worth. Making oneself be acknowledged and valued works most efficiently to enhance the level of self-worth. The achievements don’t have to be massive, only if they validate one’s value in any area. For, lifting 1kg more than the day before keeps up the confidence in your physical strength, or connecting two people from your circle for mutual benefit leads to a belief in your social capability.
A big tip to keep a higher frequency is to use, exercise, practice, and excel…
- New friends
We grow and thrive with our friends around, and we also drift from some of our friends due to the growing and thriving of one another. Either they may no longer be able to adapt to our circle, or we are the ones who cannot accept the divergence. We need new friends constantly.
New friends bring new air and thinking into our lives, supporting us to feel and interact with the dynamics in a refreshed mindset.
- New passion/hobby
Step out of your comfort zone and put your feet into a new territory. The beauty of adulthood is that you have the freedom to explore and experiment with a wide range of passions and interests. Whether it’s signing up for a painting class, attending winetasting dinners, or experimenting with the most popular K-pop dancing steps, the possibilities are endless.
However, not everything you try will be a perfect fit, and that’s perfectly okay. Embrace failure as a valuable part of your growth journey. Every experience, even those that don’t go as planned, is an opportunity for learning and personal development. That’s how you know where your real creativity lies or how much more potential you can unleash.
- Journaling
It differs among people. You may record a flow of life, mark a change, or comment on whatever is around or inside you. It can be about your thinking of achieving fulfillment, your regretful feelings for not having taken a certain action or even just your random curiosity about what you exactly want from life. Make the journaling a witness of all your self-talk, brainstorming, and other forms of self-reflection. Accumulation of changes will ultimately lead to substantial transformation.
References
https://www.joyfulthroughitall.com/rediscovering-yourself/
https://asana.com/resources/limiting-beliefs
https://hbr.org/2023/06/how-to-overcome-self-limiting-beliefs
https://hbr.org/2022/03/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-self-reflection
https://womanitely.com/wise-ways-redefine-yourself/
Single on Purpose, by John Kim