Do You Know Yourself?

To know yourself is to take a sincere and positive appreciation of yourself. The purposes are to discover your hidden potential, find a direction in life and set goals so that you can live meaningfully, productively and happily.  How do you find out more about yourself? Check out the following:

• Find out your strengths: What are you good at? What interests you the most? To know your strengths is to develop your capabilities to a greater height. Your strengths will promote your self-confidence and self-esteem.

• Know your weaknesses: Are you always in negative moods? Can you react to others positively? Identify your bad habits and replace them with good ones. Choose one habit at a time and transform yourself before changing the next habit.

• Like and dislikes: What type of people do you enjoy spending time with? When do you feel down and when are you upbeat? Do you like your job? Do you enjoy shopping or savings? Do you enjoy peace of mind?

• What are your dreams and aspirations: Your hope and expectations are closely linked to what you are good at. Develop your strengths to realize your dreams and aspirations.

• Your goals: Can you turn your dreams into goals and work on it every day? Goal setting is to focus your energy on things that matter to you the most. There is no waste of time because you know where you are going and what you are looking for.    

Meditation is one good way to discover more about yourself. Your inner voice will reveal to you what you want out of life and be truly happy. Self-awareness is finding your purpose, charting your direction and getting self-fulfillment in life.

7 Tips for Self Development

As a writer, I have to read widely to know what other people are writing about, their style of writing, and the way they express themselves. This is one way to learn and improve myself. With the explosion of knowledge, how do you update and develop yourself? Here are some suggestions:


1. Start a blog: A blog is for you to write articles and to showcase your area of expertise and attract like-minded people to connect with you. When you write you do research and you get to learn and know more from others

2. Further training: It is important to identify and acquire the skills and knowledge needed at your workplace so that you can move ahead. It is also important to participate in conferences, seminars, and courses to keep you up-to-date.

3. Read widely: Get to know more about your field of work by extensive reading. Read journals, articles, and magazines not relating to your trade. Learn from industries outside your area of expertise. Find out their working mechanism, the problems they face, and how they solve the problems.

4. Be Connected: Join associations relating to your profession. This is the best chance to be associated with people in the same trade and industry and exchange ideas. Join social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with people with similar interests.

5. Do a SWOT analysis: Find out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Fortify your strengths and reduce your weaknesses to boost your chances of success and watch out and prepare for the unfavorable changing situations.

6. A creative mind: Be resourceful and think of better methods of getting things done. Think: There must be a better way of getting things done.

7. A learning attitude: Learn from other departments and see how their work fits in with yours. Be curious about new knowledge and a thirst to know more. Be a well-informed person. Keep abreast of development in your field and learn new ways of doing things to increase efficiency and productivity.


According to Talmud, he who does not increase his knowledge diminishes it.