What should I do with my life?
"Do what you love and fuck the rest."
Who am I?
Its scary that I don't know myself. Its more scary that 'self'' might actually be a collection of selves, as suggested by the Yale psychology professor's article, link below. No wonder it's so hard to determine what 'I' like. I don't know who I am. The academics just make it even harder.
Diving into psychology as an amateur looking for answers is terrifying. There are competing theories and everything seems really messy. It doesn't seem like there any right answers, and unfortunately the wikipedia page for 'who am I' directs you to some Vonnegut play. It could be that I am composed of an id, ego and super ego and their interactions are making me neurotic. It could be I am the result of some combination of nature and nurture, where my past experiences have imprinted my personality in such a way that I am who I am today. The academic study is fascinating, but not entirely practical. We can't all go out and get a Psy.D. in order to figure out what we should do with our lives.
I'm just going to leave this question alone for now. If the professionals cant figure it out, I don't think this blog post will.
What do I love?
"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature."- Sigmund Freud
So, according to Freud, the goal is to determine the 'deep inner needs of my nature', and see where that leads me. There is no intellectual way to determine these. There is no cost benefit analysis to perform. Its a matter of developing skill in feeling that inner voice. It will never be easy to determine, and you will never be confident you are correct. There is no right answer.
You just need to be honest. You need to know your own issues and decide which parts of your feelings are just neurosis or other psychological glitches, and which are the true feelings. Its interesting, to a certain extent your neurosis are you. You are born an individual, but the experiences and lessons you learn leave you with your habits and imprint on your personality. Do you ignore all those things? How do you differentiate your neurosis you want to change and your inner nature?
This messiness is hard for someone trained in the 'science' of accounting to accept. There should be a way to model this problem in a spreadsheet. I should be able to just model the equation and constraints in excel, and run the solver add-in to maximize the formula.
What if the 'what do I love' and 'who am I' questions are one in the same?
I still don't know me, but that's okay. Knowing thyself is not a weekend 'do-it-yourself' project. I don't think its something that can really ever be accomplished. 'Yourself' is a moving target, and I doubt anyone ever actually landed on it. Your feelings and ambitions are always evolving. What you can accomplish, however, is developing great skill in feeling those 'deep inner needs of your nature'. You can get good at knowing those deep feelings and identifying them as from your inner nature rather than from fleeting emotions. The better you understand your mind and your issues, the easier it is to identify the false feelings. The better you are at knowing which feelings relate to the true self, the nicer you can be to your true you. I think that's a skill worth developing, and goal worth striving for. Know thyself, the unexamined life is not worth living.
Practice
Be nice to you. Set time aside to take care of yourself. Ask yourself what you want to do each day. Seriously ask and try to allow your true self to answer. What would you really enjoy for lunch today? Its such as silly question, but I think everyone finds it difficult to decide sometimes. Just let go of everything, and try to figure out what 'you' really want for lunch. Once you can handle letting yourself feel what you really want for lunch, you can move on to something bigger. 'How do I really want to spend my time today?' 'What career do I think would fulfill me?' 'What is my purpose?' Just take one step at a time.
Try to take five minutes each morning for a month and meditate. Just sit still in your chair at home, and focus on your breath, count your breaths from one to ten. Notice how much your mind wanders and how little control you really have. Notice when you lose count, and simply return to counting from one again. Five minutes in the morning will allow you to start you day conscious of your mind, a little less stressed, and hopefully a little better at focusing on what you choose to.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/first-person-plural/307055/1/
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