Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom, a phrase coined by Aristotle before centuries ago which seems to be absolutely correct in today’s world too. We are so busy in evaluating everybody else that we sometimes forget to peep into our own self. The fact is “happiest person are those who are evaluating and improving their own self and the unhappy people are those who usually indulged in evaluating and judging others.” Thus we can say that Self- evaluation is the key to all success.

See the small poem that will surely engross you in you:

In the morning , into the mirror
I always see a person, whom I have met but don’t know her
Yes I can smell her yes I can see her but I can’t understand her
Yes she is my favourite yes I adore her but I don’t know her

She runs whole day she sleeps whole night
She laughs with all she cries in alone
She talks to everyone she is near to everyone but I don’t understand her

Once I stopped, looked into the mirror
Ah it’s me, myself
I realised I lost myself in being “She”
I want to be me and I want to know me and understand me!

It seems philosophical, but when one enters the world called corporate it becomes difficult to take time out and understand one's own self. We get so busy in balancing our social and professional life that we start knowing everything and everyone but forget about ourselves. Thus this blog is an effort to make you feel the need of knowing yourself in spite of your busiest schedule.

When its comes to knowing ourselves, we either become too arrogant or we become extra underestimator. If one can know him/herself the best then he/she will have a drastic change in his/her Work and personal life. Nobody can be the better assessor of you than you. If you know your loopholes then and only then you can eradicate it to climb a step ahead in success. Likewise , if you know what you have in you then you will be the one writing your own success story.

In our work life, we always think about the one who is not doing anything but still getting more pay than you.(Well, proudly our Emipro employees are quite mature and they never think of comparing themselves with others, but this is a common corporate notion). In spite of the fact, if we will evaluate and improve ourselves it may happen that you surpasses the other one. If not this, at least you will be then able to overcome the loopholes in you. Self-evaluation is not that much easy. We are humans and we have a tendency to be quite liberal in evaluating our own self. Thus to make this job easy for you, below are some of the classic ways to evaluate yourself without any bias which will help you to reach your professional and personal goals:

You should not be afraid to face your weaknesses and loopholes. Instead, you should have guts to assess your own weaknesses and the best way to do that, is to take it in the most sporty way you can. Here I can quote my own example, being an HR it becomes my duty to reach on time to my workplace but somehow there was a period when I was not at all able to reach on time even after many efforts. Suddenly when I was just evaluating my time allocation and management I realised it is just that I am habituated to be “Not in Time”. If I wish I can definitely overcome all the hurdles which I was facing and can maintain my punctuality. Thus let the worst out of us come in front of us we should not be afraid but should face it and should eradicate it from our self.

The biggest enemy for us of being “I” is a jealousy and comparison that we do with others. As I mentioned earlier we are so busy in knowing others that we often forget who we are actually. If we will compare ourselves with others then we will never understand our own capabilities. See the picture below which will show you how wrong our comparison can lead us:

In the picture, we can see that during appraisal we compare ourselves with those who are not of our concerned area. Being an elephant, if we think why a monkey is getting an extra pay for climbing a tree then just imagine how badly we are underestimating ourselves. In this activity of comparison, we forget that we are so huge and strong that no one has the power to fight with us.

As stated above, we humans are liberal when it comes to us but that is not the right way. One should be very honest and should try to dig out the most genuine feedback about one's own self. This doesn't mean that one should be highly pessimistic and should have all the list of negatives he/she have. The motive behind being honest is to have both the parts equal. Positive will make you motivated and negative will lead you to become perfect by eradicating it. There is an incident that popped up into my mind when I was writing this point is, in our Campus placements of current year there was a boy I interviewed whose mouth seems to be filled with tobacco. So I and my senior both told him that we do not allow any alcoholism at our office premises so the boy answered that he know that this habit is not good but under certain circumstance he was habituated and now he has already realised it and has left the tobacco since past few months. Well, that’s the spirit!

It is often that we ask enormous questions to our colleague or to the one sitting next to us in our cube but we never ask a question to ourself. We never ask ourself why we want to have two leaves when the purpose of leave can be solved in half day leave. We just prepare our mind to have leaves and get relax. Of course one should work as their own priority and there is nothing wrong when we opt for leaves which are not that necessary, but at least one should question him/herself to know to what extent he/she is satisfied or convinced after taking this  decision. This is just an example, there are many such questions which one should ask thyself to evaluate and assess yourself. 

To see yourself as others do is the most candid way to know how your reactions and actions are being perceived by them. Just try to keep your foot in other’s shoe and evaluate how they really look at you. You should silently observe how somebody is reacting and behaving with you as it is the mirror of how you are doing with them. It sometimes happens that our colleagues suddenly don’t talk to us much but when we try to see what he/she is seeing we come to know that it is we who were not paying proper attention to them and thus, as a result, he/she has now started to talk less with us.

There are times when someone else know us better than we know ourself. Thus getting feedback from others is the best way to know your assessment. But to get flattering feedback is dangerous. To know the honest feedback we should always opt to have a feedback from the one who is close to us and does not have a fear to loose us while giving any negative or corrective feedback. Also, feedback should be taken from different individuals and from different groups to whom we are connected in different ways like our family friends, our colleagues or some “buddy” with similar interests as yours. One very important aspect here is to not to be defensive and listen to every feedback with a positive attitude only then you can have the best one. Well, you should know who will wear a black hat and will demotivate you instead of providing you with the true feedback. Thus one should always have this kind of causal feedback with a motto to work on it and re-evaluating the changes out of it.

Thus before closing I would say, take the time to know yourself and see the magical changes that take place in your life. See you soon with more personnel hacks, till then remember,