Who am I as a person?

If you find that you can no longer live the way you’ve been living—such as when you’re suffering from burnout, other trauma, or feel that life is controlling you—you may come to the realization that you’re asking yourself, “Who am I as a person?”

This is an important question for self-realization, because only when you have some sense of who you are can you live according to your own standards and values—living the way your true self wants to.

So you’re going to shift your focus from all the things you don’t want to the things you do want.

Finding your true self

And in that journey to what you do want, you can find out every time that what you want isn't what you achieved after all.

This is actually a journey to finding your true self.

But how do you do that? How do you know what you really want and who you really are?

Reflecting on yourself

One way to get started is by reflecting on yourself. For example, you can keep a diary. You can also get special journals that help you gain self-insight by answering daily questions, such as why you enjoyed something or what you’re grateful for.

This can already give you tremendous insight into your preferences.

Self Analysis

In addition, this kind of reflection can also help you with your self-analysis. That way, you can gain clarity for yourself about your own values and standards—such as how far you’re willing to go to help friends and family.

How honest you are at awkward moments and so on.

This kind of reflection even helps you as a first step toward self-actualization, and research shows that nurses even deliver a better quality of work as a result, because they make more moral choices[1].

Self-analysis can also help you determine what you’re good at. What are your talents that can help you—and even the world—move forward?

Who are you in a social setting?

You may also know the feeling of being more yourself in one place, or with one person, than in other places or with other people.

At one time or another, you assigned yourself a role. This is probably because as a child you were given a social map with islands. An island at school and an island at home and at school and at home you may behave differently.

For example, because your parents are not strict, but at school you have a strict teacher.

This can carry over into your adult life, so at some point you may feel you can't be yourself at work. Or perhaps especially not in social situations outside of work.

A hypnotherapist can help you through “part work” to find the part of you that truly represents who you are as a person and how you can embody that in all situations and circumstances—at least more so than you do now.

Another influence on who you are in your social environment is your cultural background. Being aware of this helps you make choices and develop a strong personality[2]. Companies often talk about a corporate culture, how people act within the company, but in the same way, every family also has a bit of their own culture.

In cases of generational trauma, you may discover that a traumatic experience suffered by one of your ancestors (such as the war for your grandparents or great-grandparents) may have created a certain culture within the family. For example, always keeping food in stock or saving a lot of money in case something bad happens.

However, if this is not who you are, or an awkward family belief has developed that prevents you from being yourself, a hypnotherapist can do much to help you resolve it.

Mindfulness

What this also helps you with is to be a little more mindful during the day about how you feel and what you think.

By practicing mindfulness, you gain greater insight into your thoughts and feelings, which helps you better understand what you do and don’t like right now.

This can be the first step toward changing your thoughts, if they’re still quite negative right now. It helps you focus more on things that make you happy and that align with who you truly are.

Research also shows that people who have done mindfulness training are more aware of themselves and know themselves better than people who do not do mindfulness at all[3].

Reflections from others

In addition, you can also seek reflection from others. For example, ask family, friends and colleagues more about what characterizes you.

How happy will those answers make you? Because this will give you instant insight into the extent to which you have put on a mask.

It could be that people at your work see a very different version of you than people at home.

It can also give you insight into traits you may want to change or improve. You can determine if you are expressing yourself as you are or if your friends, colleagues or family have inadvertently misrepresented you.

Therapy

Another way to gain insight from others is through feedback from a therapist. For example, a hypnotherapist helps people overcome problems and eliminate limiting beliefs.

For example, if you feel it is not helpful to be completely yourself, this may hinder you in answering the question: who am I as a person?

With certain visualizations, for example, you can very well envision an ideal future. Which helps you to be yourself.

Self-hypnosis

As an extension of hypnotherapy, you can also use self-hypnosis. In a study on hetero-hypnotherapy—a form in which the therapist takes on a supportive role, similar to that of a parent, but in which the client primarily uses self-hypnosis—self-hypnosis can help you get to know yourself better.

This form of therapy is especially useful if you have something against "authority" and find it difficult to listen to other people. The therapist can use strong visualizations and intervene with metaphors and positivity if someone conjures up a negative self-image during self-hypnosis[4].

Hypnotherapy

As mentioned above, a hypnotherapist can help identify what beliefs are preventing you from being yourself and to manage self-hypnosis, but that is certainly not the only thing.

In fact, research shows that starting the conversation with yourself does a lot to get to know yourself better.

It improves your self-awareness about your internal values, your self-awareness about how you come across to other people and your self-knowledge[5].

As mentioned, you may suffer from different "roles" that you assume depending on people or situations you find yourself in. These are also called the parts or facets of your personality.

A hypnotherapist can help you with parts-work to get your "professional" part talking to your "private" part, for example, so you can figure out why your work-life balance is off. This helps you figure out who you really are as a person and whether or not you really want to get this right.

Working with parts is a fairly advanced technique that is only covered later in our final training program. It is therefore truly intended for advanced hypnotherapists.

Empowering Ego

If you have done well with the sharing work to make yourself a beautiful entity, so you know who you are as a person, then it is time to make that person strong and steadfast.

With hypnotherapy , there are also techniques that help you make your ego strong. This helps you guard your boundaries so you can live according to who you really are.

In addition, knowing yourself helps you set your goals, and in that case, the progression technique can help you truly embody who you really are today in the future[6].

In the case of strengthening your ego and using progression, even a combination of techniques can be used. For example, consider the magic mirror that helps you see yourself in your full potential, combined with progression so you know what steps you can take to actually be that person.

This may even happen faster than you think.

Helping yourself and others find themselves

Knowledge of hypnosis can do an awful lot to help yourself and others find themselves. With knowledge of hypnosis, the question "who am I as a person" is easier to answer than if you continue to observe yourself with mindfulness and journaling.

Want to learn more about how this works? Then come to the free online master class for an introduction to hypnosis.

Or sign up right away for one of our events and training courses. The training is available in a classroom setting and via live online sessions.

Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:

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