To know yourself is to become fluent in a language no one else can fully ever understand.

The curious part of our unique “language” is that unless we choose to be a student of ourselves, we will never understand ourselves fully either.

However, one of the best, if not the best investments we can make during our life, and it is never too early or too late to do so, is to consciously enroll in our individual course.

While the duration of the course of ourselves isn’t fixed due to where we are when we enroll, the self-knowledge we already possess paired with our life experience thus far, there is a finite component comprised of fundamental skills that once learned change the quality of our entire breadth of life engagements moving forward.

In many ways the classroom of ourselves is fluid because once we have learned these fundamental skills, we equip ourselves with the ability to translate and comprehend all of the new information that will come our way as our life unfolds along our journey; it is upon learning the necessary skills (all of which are discussed and taught in both my 2nd book – Living The Simply Luxurious Life: Making Your Everydays Extraordinary and Discovering Your Best Self and TSLL’s Contentment Masterclass) that we step into the master class or doctorate stage of our life experience because now we know what we want to specialize in, so to speak. Now we know where we want to direct our focus, our energy. Now we know with clarity where our passion and purpose align, and now life becomes truly exhilarating.

If you have never felt exhilarated by your life, then I would wager, you haven’t truly gotten to know yourself.

Before you make an argument to the contrary, why would you argue for a life that doesn’t exhilarate you, even if for one tiny moment in one instance experienced long ago? Feeling exhilarated is not selfish or hedonistic. Feeling exhilarated means you have experienced something that tickled something within you that you may not fully understand, and all it asks is to be explored – by you and you alone – no explanation as to why is needed.

Upon speaking with a neighbor recently, she and I similar of age, she shared how much fun living is and how it becomes ever moreso with each passing year as she learns something new pursuing curiosities that pique her wonder. From finessing her bagel recipe (I recently had the opportunity to try one of them, and her finessing is as close to perfect as one can get – she’s nailed it (humbly, she shared, it took many attempts and much tweaking)!), to learning how to turn her grapes into wine, to living holistically for good health and diet, and if as our conversations have so far revealed, her list of explorations is never-ending making each exchange a delight as I never know what I will walk away having learned simply by her following her curiosity!

Simply the excitement to learn something equates to exhilaration – a desire to learn more, to discover what is currently unknown. And it is in heeding our curiosities, especially if they keep arising, that we, like a river flowing freely, discover not only our dharma, should we be brave enough to trust the opportunities that cross our path (and we will when we know ourselves well), but also discover the gift received when we know ourselves: inner calm, clarity, contentment and the ability to be compassionate not only to ourselves, but toward others. (We discuss this natural progression toward compassion more thoroughly in the Contentment Masterclass.)

This entire journey to contentment begins with getting to know ourselves, and then actually understanding who we “meet” without anyone else’s dictionary attempting to define us. To give you a bit more of an exploration of what we gain when we know ourselves, let’s take a look at the list below . . .

When we know ourselves . . .

…unnecessary or distracting yearnings don’t arise, and what does (curiosities, new ideas, changes, investments, etc.) are ideas worth our attention and exploration.

It took a while for me to understand this to be true, but here’s the thing: When you know yourself, you will continue to witness all sorts of offerings nudging you to explore – buy this, travel here, add this, become this, etc., etc., but now you unconsciously don’t even let them land. You dismiss them before they even arrive at your mental doorstep because you know what speaks to you, what feeds you, what supports the life you love living.

In fact, you have so much clarity, that you will at times find yourself considering ideas that your former self (the person who didn’t know themselves well yet) would immediately have assumed to be outlandish, too much, too extreme, or even impossible. But, no longer is that the case because you know yourself, and you know that if you can dream it or imagine it, it is being brought to your attention for a reason even if you do not know exactly what that it is yet.

As I mentioned, initially, these ‘big dreams’, in my case, studying abroad in France, becoming a full-time writer, traveling to France and Britain regularly, owning my own home, just to name a few I have shared over the years, my old self would have smiled and reminded me to stick to what was known to secure, and so did many of the people around me – directly or indirectly. Granted, many of them were living the life I was living at the time, so unconsciously or consciously, for me to dream of something different may have been an affront to the life they chose or were resigned to living. But that is what I want to share with you as well: Once you gain clarity about yourself, you know that the ideas, the curiosities, changes and investments that arise are not indiscriminate and not by chance.

… taking risks or doing something you’ve never done before or seen personally someone you know do before is filled with less fear and more excitement and anticipation.

Let me begin with an example from my own life. Traveling alone abroad. There is not one ounce of hesitation to travel alone each time I sit down and begin to plan my next trip to either Britain or France. To me, doing so is nourishment; it is analogous to water – a necessity. The challenge invigorates my mind, and what I will experience and discover exhilarates my entire being. Each time I return, I feel more ‘Shannon’, as though more clarity has been earned, a shedding of a false or old self that no longer needs be part of me is now gone.

This is not to say that my first trip to France, and it was a trip I made alone when I was 21, as I detail in The Road to Le Papillon in the June chapter, was not filled with fear or angst, but interestingly, it must be shared, those feelings didn’t arise until I arrived in France, after I had settled. Prior to leaving I was blissfully ignorant of the obstacles I would encounter, and that too is helpful in nudging us to do something that is meant to be part of our journey if only we would take the leap and give it a try.

As my own life journey evidences, each trip since to France has been ever more delightful, and fear-free, but I had to face the fear first in order to understand why I was being drawn to this country that I really knew absolutely nothing about prior to my first trip.

… you find an intrinsic source of energy to care well for your health and well-being.

With each new morsel of insight into ourselves, we subtly or significantly tweak our lives. Some of the tweaks may be to improve the moment right now that we experience in our everydays, and some will be to strengthen the quality and lengthen the duration of our life because we love living it. We want more days to share what we can uniquely give to the world, to contribute, to savor, to drink up and discover all that life can be.

And one of those tweaks is our health and the environment we live and the people we surround ourselves including the job and career we work, all of which directly influence and affect our well-being.

I will be sharing in September’s A Cuppa Moments a challenge to members that I am taking on (and will welcome them to join me), and it involves embracing this intrinsic source of energy, to do something we know will benefit us even if it may be hard or unenjoyable at first, but because we know it will benefit the quality of our lives, we do so – we engage, and the motivation need not come from outside of us when we know ourselves.

When we know ourselves, we want to take better care of ourselves so we can live and enjoy our lives without unnecessary stress and unnecessary hardship or setbacks.

… saying no becomes easier (and eventually easy) when what is asked, offered, etc. doesn’t work well for us and our well-being.

If we have been someone who immediately replies with a ‘yes’ when asked to do something or provide something – it could be from anyone, but when a loved one, close friend or family member, maybe our boss, we have been conditioned to think we need always say yes to someone else’s ask or need, understanding this gift that saying ‘no’ becomes easier to be true might possibly prompt disbelief. However, when we ignore what we need, first of all, ignore what we need by minimizing ourselves in order to fulfill someone else’s ask, we slowly cause the disintegration of the foundation of our well-being. Of course, there are one-off situations of emergency, but when we don’t know ourselves, it is harder to stand by what we need, and so we go along – and say ‘yes’.

When we know ourselves, it’s not rude or hurtful to say no; it is a matter of fact. No, I won’t be able to accommodate your request or preference or need. This actually helps the other person out because it points them in a new direction of finding what they are looking for because now they know it cannot be us.

When we say no without judgment or apology or reason, it is simply a matter of fact, and the more we exercise this option, the easier it becomes to do so when we know saying ‘yes’ wouldn’t serve us well.

The only way we know what we must say no to is to know who we are. And the ‘no’s eventually lead us to a life that opens us to what we want to and will want to say yes to. In other words, much like a maze, with each ‘no’, we are turned around and must go in a different direction, to try something new, and eventually, if we courageously persist, we find our way to what will be nourishing, what will set us free to live a life we love.

The key, as it pertains to the example of the maze, is that we can’t keep going back in the direction of the people and ‘asks’ we said no to because we cannot control others. In other words, we cannot assume, cajole or hope they will change and stop asking us to do something we don’t want or cannot do because it runs counter to the life we know is best for us. Which leads me to the next gift we receive when we know ourselves . . .

… moving away, letting go and distancing yourself from those who choose not to let you be yourself or refuse to see you fully as you are becomes easier than you ever thought would be possible.

Quiet days filled with unexpected everyday delights and simple pleasures to savor. More than a few friendships and romantic partners didn’t share my love of quiet, calm and at the same time, exploration without a crowd into unknowns – near or far, and while temporarily, I assumed something was wrong with me and tried to become more extroverted, fall more in love with big crowds and gatherings, I eventually realized, we were just different. Nothing was wrong with either of us; we just weren’t compatible.

So instead of begrudging them and also beating myself up for not being someone they wanted to be with, I started to live my everydays largely in my own company, delighting and exploring and traveling, often with my pups as my companions to do and go wherever my curiosity would take me. And that really is when it all began, when I began to know I was living a life that enlivened me.

Many friendships and family connections floated away, but it didn’t hurt to see them do so because there was no contention, but rather our lives going along on separate paths. And for the few relationships that did end due to frustration and often my trying to force both myself into being someone I was not and then becoming confused as to why I couldn’t enjoy the relationship being someone I wasn’t, it was an ignorant self in those couplings that now takes responsibility as a conscious self-knowledgeable person for why they didn’t work out.

To become informed of ourselves makes saying goodbye easier (and kinder), letting go easier (because we carry with us self-knowledge that is concrete due to our knowing what we need not abstract and nebulous like a wish or dream that hasn’t been experienced), but also not even entering into something that would be ill-advised becomes easier.

… the courage to cultivate a life you love living each day becomes a priority and clarity is gained regarding how to do it.

With clarity of ourselves comes an awareness of the world and its finiteness. This awareness can be seen as a wet-blanket or it can be the ‘compost‘ we need to get about living the life we love, and if we aren’t doing so yet, to start putting the steps and foundation in place to be able to do so for as long as we are fortunate to live.

As similarly suggested in the first point on our list, distractions no longer pull us off track because we are lasered in on what would support our life journey and what would pull us off track. And in the instance we don’t know if something would be helpful or harmful, we now have the skill of knowing the difference of responding versus reacting, exploring instead of being rash, so that we gather more information if need be to then eventually know what would be best. This is all to the good and eliminates unnecessary detours.

Now this is not to say that detours are bad. Nope, in fact, as has been shared many times before, unwanted events, delays and roadblocks all have something available to us to help us along in our journey if we choose to explore them rather than disparage them.

And so I leave you on that note. If at this moment you feel confused about ‘who you are’ or ‘which direction to travel’, etc, etc., this is not a bad piece of information to have at hand. Rather, it is a road sign saying you just need to do a bit more work to understand yourself, and without hesitation I can say, as someone who chose to enroll more than a decade ago, graduated and remains a student, it will be worth the investment of your time, focus and energy.

On the other hand, if you are reading this and you found yourself nodding along, having discovered these gifts to be true in your own life, first pat yourself on the back for taking the journey you did to arrive where you are to knowing yourself well. I am more than fairly confident that the road to where you now find yourself wasn’t easy, was full of momentary frustration (that in the moment likely felt permanent), occasional doubt, and at times loneliness whether you were with others or not, but if you, like me, are nodding, then you too know you had to go through those ‘exercises’, those ‘lessons’ to discover what you now know to be true about who you are. If there were an easier and less angst-laden way for you to discover this priceless information, you would have known it and wouldn’t have needed to go through what you did. Celebrate those perhaps ‘distasteful’ blips or chapters in your life journey and instead extend gratitude for them, and then continue holding yourself in the now, savoring what is and heed your curiosity with great delight and exhilaration.

Bonne journée !

SIMILAR POSTS/EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY

A Life Truth to Remember: Things Often Fall Apart for Something Far Better to Have Space to Enter Our Lives

episode #384, 6 Things We Gain by Honoring Our True Selves

episode #307: How to Step into Your Fullest True-Self —The Way of Integrity, as taught by Martha Beck

A Skill to Learn for a Deeply Fulfilling Life: To Savor rather than To Want

~Learn more about TSLL’s Contentment Masterclass (explore the detailed syllabus, watch the trailer, read reviews from students and more)