I used to envy people who go on quests to find themselves. They get to travel to exotic places, meet with enlightened spiritual gurus, or embark on other journeys to search for and get in touch with their authentic selves. Freedom from their usual responsibilities provides time to gain clarity about who they are and what kind of life they want.
I have a different perspective now. I’m sure those quests have given many people valuable insights and much-needed time for rest, reflection, and renewal. But I now believe the best way to discover who we are is to pay closer attention to the patterns in our daily lives and closest relationships and be fully present as we experience them.
What led me to that new perspective? One major influence was poet Robert Penn Warren’s Democracy and Poetry, which Maria Popova quotes in her wonderful newsletter The Marginalian. Warren denies the existence of a self that we need to find so naturally he criticizes the practice of taking time off to go search for it. In his words:
In the phrase [‘to find myself’] lurks the idea that the self is a pre-existing entity, a self like a Platonic idea existing in a mystic realm beyond time and change.
… Here is the essence of passivity … And the essence of absurdity, too, for the self is never to be found, but must be created, not the happy accident of passivity, but the product of a thousand actions, large and small, conscious or unconscious, performed not "away from it all," but in the face of "it all," for better or for worse, in work and leisure rather than in free time.
Those words intrigued me, and the longer I pondered them the more convinced I became of their truth. While I do believe we each have a self, I no longer see that self as a personality that remains unchanged throughout our lives.
As psychologist Carol Dweck’s research revealed (and Maria Popova’s newsletter cited), whether we have a “fixed” or “growth” mindset shapes the course of our lives. Here’s what Dweck discovered:
For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. …
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. …
There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with … In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. …
Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe … that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.
In the past, my mindset was much closer to the “fixed” one. I believed I was naturally good at some things and bad at others. I had personality traits, some admirable and others annoying, that would never change. I had little or no control over what I was capable of achieving or how I reacted to stressful situations.
But years of therapy, the wisdom that comes with age and experience, and the insights from research and books by medical and mental health experts have convinced me that the “growth” mindset is both healthier and more accurate.
Robert Warren sums it up nicely:
… The self is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process of a healthy society itself.
So today’s authentic self is not the same self I was as a teenager, or even a few years ago. I’ve changed or rejected beliefs previous versions of my authentic self never questioned. I have different goals now than I did in 2020, and a new career my 2020 self didn’t desire or know was possible. Things that used to be very important to me no longer matter.
I suspect the same is true for you. All living beings either grow and adapt or wither and die. So what are the large and small actions you need to take to grow? How is your current authentic self different from previous versions? How would you like a future version of yourself to be different from the current one?
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