With this month’s theme of Discover Yourself, I wanted to focus on what that actually means and steps you can take to do this in your own life. 

Our lives are filled with so many expectations of who and what we should be that it can be difficult to completely understand our true desires. However, this is key to finding happiness and living a fulfilling life! Discovering yourself is something that will take time and effort. This can be especially true if you have been repressing yourself in order to fit in or appease others. 

To start, ask yourself some personal questions, and try your best to give honest answers, even if the answer is “I don’t know”. If there are questions you don’t know the answer to, that’s a place to start researching!

• What is my biggest accomplishment in life so far? 
• What do I like to do alone or when no one is watching? 
• If I wasn’t held back by fear of failure, what would my life be like? 
• What would I do with a million dollars? 
• If all of my problems suddenly disappeared, what would my life be like?
• What are things that influence my thoughts and feelings? 

These are some basic questions to get you started. The answers can help guide you to what is most important to you in your life right now and help you find meaning and purpose in life. It is important to separate your values from other people’s expectations of you in order to find your true self. Take notice of what is influencing you daily. Are societal pressures or opinions of family and friends interfering with what makes you happy? Becoming more aware of what influences your choices is a great first step toward making decisions for your true self going forward. 

Once you have a better understanding of your true self, you can start to live your life in a way that aligns with your true values and goals. Remember that you are strong enough to start this journey, and you have the power to make big changes in your life to get there. 

Keep an eye out for your inner critic along the way, though. We can all be victims of our critical inner voice that tries to convince us we aren’t good enough to succeed or we don’t deserve to get what we want out of life. Stand up to this inner critic by repeating the positive affirmations we talked about last month. 

You are worthy. You can be successful. You deserve to be happy.