I have a thing I do when I’m nervous – I like to hold something in my hands and repeatedly twist it in circles.
It’s like I’m trying to twist the nerves away, wringing its neck until I feel better.
This brings me to last week, when I was invited to be on a panel of Boise State Honors College alumni speaking to a room full of students about life after graduation. You better believe my water bottle was doing flips in my hands.
But I did something I was really proud of: I put the water bottle down. Funnily enough, not having the water bottle in my hands made me less nervous.
The solution wasn’t to wring the nerves away, it was just to set them down elsewhere.
A thought occurred to me just then: you’ve heard the phrase “what’s important is not what you know, it’s who you know?”
I think there’s a key ingredient missing there: included in “who you know” is…yourself, right?
It’s something I’ve been focusing on a lot over the past few months. I’m getting better at it, and I’m not quite there, but there are some excellent takeaways that I’d love to share.
So here’s some tips on how to get to know yourself.
Diaries Aren’t Just for Teenagers
This one was a suggestion from my therapist, and it’s one of the best things she’s ever done for me.
Keep a journal!
It only takes a few minutes before bed each night, and I’ve found that not only has it helped me calm my brain down and get to sleep quicker, but it’s helped me be more reflective.
The key is to write entirely stream-of-consciousness. You’ll find thoughts hidden up there that you didn’t even know were there.
I have a few things often coming up for me in my entries:
- The music I’m listening to at the moment (DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar, if you were wondering)
- What I’m excited for in the coming week
- How I’m feeling right now
- New experiences I’ve had recently
What I Learned
Journaling has been incredibly valuable in teaching me to zoom out.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget your overarching goals. What am I headed towards? What do each of these experiences mean in the grand scheme of things?
When I journal, it makes it easier to think of these things. I often make connections without realizing it – connections I never would have made if I hadn’t sat down to just think about myself for a few minutes.
Is this why Greek philosophers were so brilliant? Did they just have more time on their hands to think about themselves?
To Get Started: just grab some paper and try journaling for three days. If it works, keep going, but start with just three days. Nice and easy.
Recognizing the Patterns
Back to my panel…I put that water bottle down not because I wasn’t nervous, but because I was nervous.
So my next tip: recognize the patterns that govern your life.
It’s the little victories like that, those “a-ha” moments, where you learn more about yourself. In this instance, I had made the conscious realization that I twist things when I’m nervous, so I stopped twisting.
What do they call those? Pavlov responses? I’ll Google it later. (edit: I Googled it and I was right)
So…think about your Pavlov responses. When you catch yourself bouncing your leg, or opening Instagram even though you don’t have any notifications, think about what caused you to do that.
Here are some patterns I’ve noticed in my life:
- When I spend more time preparing for a meeting, I’m more nervous at the meeting and perform worse.
- When I don’t journal before bed, it takes me longer to fall asleep. (callback!)
- I often watch YouTube in bed at night, so if I work from bed, it’s easier for me to goof off and watch YouTube.
- Putting soda in the back of the fridge is better for me, because then I don’t see it every time I open the fridge and get tempted.
- Scheduling meetings in the middle of the day is best for me, because it gives my days structure, which makes it easier for me to work efficiently.
What I Learned
Thinking in more depth about these patterns has helped me overcome the things that bring me down.
By paying attention to the stimuli that brings a negative response as opposed to the negative response itself, I can better prevent that response from happening.
As a result, I feel I’ve gotten much more reliable, both to myself and to others.
To Get Started: when something bad happens, think about what caused it, and how you can eliminate that cause.
Expanding Your Network
I talk about networking way too much. The horse is beyond dead at this point.
My single best tip for getting to know yourself is to expand your network.
This falls under that original phrase we were talking about. “What’s important is not what you know, it’s who you know.”
Meet more people – and not just more people, but more diverse people. Maybe the kind of people who you see as far above you in their career, your neighbors you’ve never actually talked to, or the baristas at the coffee shop you go to every few days.
My trick is just to ask a lot of questions. People love to talk about themselves more than anything, so asking people about themselves accomplishes a few things:
- It makes the conversation easier because they’re super into it.
- It helps you get to know them on a deeper level than most people.
- It makes you more memorable – you’re the one who asked them about their passions; the things that most people don’t ask about.
What I Learned
By getting to know other people on a deep level, you unlock insights about yourself from two angles: one, your similarities, and two, your differences.
From talking with others, I’ve found a few things about myself:
- I’m unusually energetic and candid, which puts some people off and brings others closer.
- I share a lot of values with people in banking, an industry I never thought I cared about.
- I often need to summarize things for myself at the end of a conversation, or I’ll forget – which is also common with the creatives I’ve spoken with.
By talking with people of varying backgrounds, we can learn more about where we’re headed by comparing ourselves to them. Not in a vertical “who’s better in this category” way, but in a “what makes us similar and what makes us different” way.
Those similarities and differences are the real beauty in talking with new people!
To Get Started: message random people on LinkedIn and ask them to meet up. Not to sell anything, but just to expand your network. You’ll be shocked how many people are more than happy to meet.
Wrapping it Up
I’m not a guru of self-help or anything. But in writing this article, I learned a little more about myself too.
I’m slowly getting to the core of what I love writing about on this blog. Even though I know this blog isn’t making me any sales, what it IS doing is helping me build a better company.
Most of my articles are about self-improvement, sharing insights, and spreading that feeling of hope. Through writing about these things, I’m taking them a little more to heart myself.
And they’re helping me stop twisting my water bottle when I’m nervous.
I’m not kidding myself that these articles have a high ROI, or that they’re changing lives, or that they’re even read by many people. But that’s the beauty of it – I sit down once a month to write something that showcases my values, proves I’m a real person, and allows me to get to know myself a little better.
So now, my question to you is…how will you get to know yourself?
