What would you consider the most important thing you should study that will give you unfair advantage in life? If you had to choose one thing to learn as much as you can about, what would that be?
We go to school to study all these complex subjects; mathematics, physics, archaeology. We study and learn all these things but fail to study the one important thing, that once we grasp a good knowledge of it would open doors of opportunities and growth beyond our imagination. In this video, you will learn about the most important subject you should learn and how to go about learning it, if you want be successful and live above average life. Before we get to it, be sure to subscribe to After School TV for more insightful videos like this.
The Most Important Subject
Imagine a world where an elephant can give birth to a lion and a peacock can give birth to an eagle. The elephant is most likely to raise its lion like an elephant; and the peacock will most likely raise its eagle like a peacock. The lion will grow up to think it’s an elephant and the eagle will grow to think it’s a peacock. They would both spend their life trying and struggling to be who they were raised to believe they were. The lion would struggle to live like an elephant while the eagle will struggle to live like a peacock.
The most important thing that can happen in the lives of these two creatures is to discover who they really are and spend the rest of their lives learning how to be that person. The lion will have to study what it means to be a lion while the eagle will have to study what it means to be an eagle. The learning process may take a lifetime, but it will be a more fulfilling life than settling to be who they’ve been told all their lives that they were.
The moral of the story is that, if you want to move past an average, and mediocre life, the most important subject you must learn is ‘Yourself’. And the consequence of not embarking on the journey of self-knowledge is that others will help you define who you are. People often believe they can look at you, and based on a tiny fraction of your complex life and personality, assume they have knowledge about you. It’s like reading a few pages from a Physics textbook and assuming knowing of Physics.
Growing up I’ve been called different things. I’ve even had someone I grew up with tell me I didn’t have what it takes to succeed in business. Everyone, except me, seemed to know a lot about ‘me’. At different stages of my life, I’ve tried to identify with the different things people had to say but that only made life more miserable. When you live by how people define you, life becomes miserable.
Don’t Outsource Your Self Knowledge
In the holy bible, at a point in the life of Jesus, he had to ask his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They responded that some say he was one of the prophets. He then asked them, “But what about you. Who do you say I am?” Then one of his disciples Simon Peter gave the answer Jesus was hoping to hear, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” Jesus wasn’t looking for suggestions from people to define who he was. He was taking feedback to evaluate his effort at demonstrating who he believed himself to be.
If you take the time to examine yourself, you’ll often find that most of the people around you are wrong about who you are. They may be right about a certain aspects of your personality. But most of the time, people rarely get a full picture of who you are as a whole human being. So if people are wrong about you most of the time, then it is your sole responsibility to discover who you really are at the core of your being.
All through our lives most of us were told what to do, where to and where not to go, what to study in school, what to do with our lives after school. Like everyone else, most people wake up in the morning; off to work with people and a job they don’t like. People know a lot about the lives of celebrities and politicians. We know a lot about the history of our favorite football club. We know about the latest designers, latest movies when each music artist released their last album. We know so much about all these things, but we know very little about ourselves. Most people just go about acting on impulse, controlled by the media while thinking they have a mind of their own.
For most people, once you take away the job they are working for or working on, they have no other identity of who they are. Knowing yourself is not about your favorite activity or the job you go to. Knowing yourself is about striving to understand your actions, reactions, and inactions, and knowing why you do things the way you do it.
For instance, most people will tell you they are objective and rational thinkers. They are not swayed by their emotions; they just know what is right and do what is right. But mountains of scientific studies and even daily observation have proven over and over again that we make decisions based on our emotions and then look for logical ways to justify our decisions.
Most likely, your political affiliation, choice of partner, money habits, and many of your life decisions are largely based on underlying emotions and not logic as you would want to claim. Studying yourself will lead you to ask important questions about why your life is the way it is, why you are the way you are, and why you do things the way you do. Questions like; why am I afraid of trying something new? Why do I have such hate for the opposite gender? Why am I so afraid of losing money? Why am I always broke despite earning this much income? Why do I always attract the wrong people? Why do I let other people take advantage of me? Why am I so afraid of hurting people’s feelings?
Instead of accepting that this is who you are, digging up answers to questions like this may lead you to discover that you have been living this way because of a past isolated experience and not because this is who you really are. This can lead you to an uplifting and fulfilling journey of self-discovery.
How to Develop Self Knowledge
According to a Chinese proverb, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power”.
Self-awareness is a trait that everyone can and should improve. It is, as one writer puts it, part emotional intelligence, part perceptiveness, and part critical thinking. It means knowing your weaknesses, and it also means knowing your strengths and what motivates you. There are two important things you should do to gain a better knowledge of yourself.
- Self Exposure
This is the practice of throwing yourself into the world and exposing yourself to new experiences. For me, it meant ditching my safe path in practicing petroleum engineering and throwing myself into the world of business. For you, it could be joining that music class, or getting out of your house and talking to people. Once when I told an old friend that I was preparing for a speech competition, her response was, “I didn’t know you to be a public speaking person” Well, I wouldn’t have known either if I didn’t expose myself to such an opportunity. Self exposure also involves exposure to knowledge and information. The more you read about things you don’t know, the more you encounter new ideas you didn’t know would interest you; and the more your thinking and beliefs change.
- Self Evaluation
Self evaluationis the practice of reflecting on and evaluating your experiences from your different exposures. What’s worth pursuing and what’s worth discarding? If you feel like backing out from an activity, ask yourself why and genuinely answer. It’s easy to evaluate your first public speaking experience and say it’s not for you. But if you are honest with yourself, the real answer could be that you are afraid of being vulnerable before people. Evaluating the way you react in different situations will help you to ask important questions about yourself and seek out the answers through more exposure.
If you spend your entire life going through this process of exposure and evaluation, it would be worth it. In fact, you never really get a full knowledge of yourself. It’s a continuous process of exposing yourself to new experiences and evaluating your emotions towards it.
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