The Value of Knowing Yourself ~~ Dick S. Forbes, MA

When Thales of Miletus, one of the sages of ancient Greece, was asked, “What is difficult?” he is said to have replied, “To know yourself.”

Many of us live in denial, but we keep asking the same old questions, “Why does this keep happening to me?” “Why do I end up frustrated and stuck in the same situation?”   Until you know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, it will be difficult to move forward and get unstuck. Success will only happen at a superficial level until you decide to change.

The first step to knowing my self is get out of denial. As Thales suggested, knowing me is no easy task because we resist it. “I really don’t want to know what’s wrong with me.” We tend to think everything is fine no matter what. The Grateful Dead said it best: "When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door." When you get too comfortable at the top, look out below.

The problem continues to be that we fool ourselves. Denial is blissful. About 150 years after Thales, Socrates came along and reminded his audience that “self-deception is the worst thing of all.” Before him, the prophet Jeremiah had said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9), and he offered a lament: “I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). In other words, we can’t even trust our own minds, because the human mind is incapable of seeing things in a completely honest, straightforward manner. We hide things from ourselves.
Humility is what works for overcoming the denial of what we want to see. It allows me to face the reality of who I am. A humble heart and mind set lets me make changes about how life is working for me. I can admit to myself and others that I am not perfect. I am able to come to terms with my weakness.  When this happens we get better, and we become real and authentic people. We make a difference in this world that is looking for authentic people. Education professor Howard Gardner concluded that “extraordinary individuals stand out in the extent to which they reflect—often explicitly—on the events of their lives, large as well as small.”
The more I know myself the more I can understand how I relate to the world and how the world relates to me. I do believe that understanding myself gives me a greater appreciation for the challenges that other face. The result is a world view that allows us to treat others as we want to be treated and to love others as we love ourselves.

Dick Forbes can be reached at 770.386.0608 or Email: dsforbes@bellsouth.net

www.forbescounseling.com