Why knowing yourself will set you up for success

Most of my life growing up I followed the path of accomplishment that is widely accepted in our culture. Go to school, graduate high school, go to college, graduate, get married and have children. I excelled in gymnastics in my teen years and did my best to pursue my dreams to be a professional actress and filmmaker as an adult.

Eventually I came to a place where I felt really REALLY stuck in my late 20’s and early 30’s. I had no idea why I was so stuck. I had no words to even articulate this feeling of “stuckness”. I felt like I wasn’t growing and I didn’t know what I really wanted in life so I was floundering around trying different things. In the midst of working and raising my children I had this this feeling of being utterly lost inside.

I didn’t realize that for all of my accomplishments I hadn’t really faced the one thing that had caused so much pain growing up. I never even thought that it had any bearing on my success. I literally didn’t think that mindset work was as important as actually producing work that other people could see. I have really changed my tune since then! lol!

The problem was that I hadn’t really done the work to know myself. Funny enough my journey started when I started my first business as an Arbonne Consultant. I loved blessing women with healthy products but what I REALLY loved was the self-development workshops that we would do. From there I started reading more books and I began to go to therapy. Over the years I dove deeper and deeper into the inner work of healing and knowing myself which included growing in my faith in God.

Today I continue on my inner journey and have gained the words to articulate my struggles much better. I’m much more aware of my triggers and can make choices about how I react. I had to gain the courage to talk about the things that have stayed hidden inside for so long waiting to be seen and talked about.

During the time of adolescents when most of our identity begins to form I was busy trying to just survive and maintain. All I could do was put a wall up to protect myself from the racist American society that refused to allow me to acknowledge who I was beyond race. While my white counterparts were free to figure out who they were, what they liked or didn’t like I was navigating the quadruple consciousness of being Jamaican, Indian, first generation American and a person of color in a country with a racist foundation.

But eventually I had to give myself the space that was never afforded to me as a child to cultivate my identity. I had to realize I had a right to do explore who I am and who I was created to be even if it was a little later in life. I’m so proud of myself for going on this journey. I truly feel like my journey of finding my identity and making progress towards my dreams has been a parallel one.

The truth is as you increase in levels of success you will face tougher obstacles. I mean if there weren’t any obstacles to success everyone would be there! But that is not how life works. You overcome obstacles and challenges when you know who you are and in turn, each achievement confirms and validates you making you stronger and stronger.

Here are four benefits to giving yourself space to know who you are:

Become more confident in the decisions you make for your life.

Of course no one is 100% confident in their decisions 100% of the time but you can become MORE confident in your decisions. When you know who you are you know what you will and won’t do. You will have a sense of what choices will move you towards the life that you want and what choices will take you away from those goals.

Become more confident in the people you let in your life

I am a recovering people pleaser. I’m the oldest daughter of immigrant parents, I’m super resourceful and I love seeing people happy. Not a good combination for a people pleaser. It put me in bad situations in the past. I let people have way too much power in my life. the sad thing is that I thought that was the right thing to do because I had no confidence in myself. I thought I needed to allow people free rein in my life so I could be a better person. Weird logic I know but it’s the truth. the weird truth.

As you move through life we encounter many different type of people and relationships. People who want to be our friends, our lovers, our business partners, our spiritual advisors, etc. We have people who influence us online through social media, offline marketing, and places of worship. There is never a shortage of people trying to get your attention, money or your time. When you know yourself you basically have a super power. The reason that we let so much into our lives is to solve a pain, heal a hurt, make us more desirable, cool, etc. In effect, we are trying to make ourselves whole by allowing who or what we think we need into our lives. The more I got to know myself and either heal the broken parts or recognize where my trauma was showing up the less power people had in my life. Now I’ve learned to give the Holy Spirit the power of say so in my life. I’m much more happier and less anxious.

You’ll have less mental clutter that can literally rob you of your energy your joy and your focus

When my son was diagnosed with ADHD I realized that this might be something I struggled with as a child as well. I started to learn more and more about it and even talked to my son’s doctor about it. She told me that she sees it all the time that parents begin to realize that they might have ADHD too when they get help for their children. So believe me when I say I know how much mental clutter sucks. How much it can rob you of your joy and focus. I’m still obsessed with figuring out ways I can have more focus in my life. I realize the benefit of removing extraneous things out of your life that are not beneficial for you. Part of that journey was getting to know myself more.

For example when I learned what an introvert was in my 20’s I felt so liberated! I realized that I didn’t have to be every where with everyone all the time. I needed time to myself to recharge and I stopped feeling guilty for giving that to myself. I knew that if I gave myself the time to recharge I could be better for the people who were most important to me which is my family.

When I was unsure of myself I looked outside of myself for validation and confirmation for who I was. As a mixed culture person I was never going to find anyone who could 100% understand and 100% validate who I was. It’s just impossible. I had to instead make a decision to get to know the one who created me more. I figured the more I learned who God was the more He could tell me who He made me to be. I coupled that with doing more inner work and going to therapy. This triple threat solution has brought me to a place of more focus. My energy isn’t taken up with as much self- doubt and questioning of myself. I never thought I would get to this place but I’m glad I have.

You don’t have to get pulled off center so much and if you do you know where to go to feel centered again

I think this was one of the biggest benefits of taking the time and space to get to know myself better. In the past when things would happen that threw me off like getting into an argument, being offended, or doing something I was ashamed of it would take me days or even weeks to come back to myself. I would process the incident for so long trying to figure out what happened, why did it happen and if there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It makes me sad to think back on the young woman who literally thought she was broken inside and deserved the things that were happening to her. But I learned that there wasn’t something wrong with me on a foundational level. I started to be able to take a healthy look at situations and take responsibility for my actions. If I was offended I could let the person know and talk it out. If I was the offender I could apologize and talk it out with my friend. But it didn’t mean that there was something foundational wrong with me. I had to accept I was just an imperfect human like everyone else. Do you understand how much of a burden was lifted off of me? I now could just assess that I was feeling a certain way because I was moved off center and since I had done the centering work on myself - I knew where I was trying to go to re-center myself.

I hope that these reasons encourage you to make the investment of time, money and resources to get to know and love who you are as God’s child.

You know what else is helpful? Speaking postively to yourself. I’ve made a free gift to help you do just that. It’s called the Mixed Culture Manifesto. It’s a 3 minute audio you can play for yourself every day to put yourself in a happy headspace to start your day.