Who am I? This is a question we find ourselves asking quite often whenever we are in doubt of our future. All our life, we seek answers to why we are born in this world, about our purpose in this universe. Because most of the individuals are born and die without even knowing their actual purpose in their life. In fact, let me ask a more general question, is there even a purpose for everyone to be alive? Does everyone who is ever born have to be someone important?
Looking at the statistics about what kind of people are considered as some of the greatest humans ever lived, we find people who showed others a new way of living life, people who conveyed some new ideas, people who made such a huge impact on the future world that it can't be ignored. But since times are changing, our definition of greatest individuals is also changing. Nowadays, money is one of the most influencing factors in determining some of the greatest individuals, but don't get me wrong, many people don't care about money and are still considered great. But as a person coming not from a well-off family, I consider money as one of the most driving factors in determining how successful a person is. Because this is how a person is categorized in society. A rich and wealthy person is considered better than others even though his moral acts are far worse than others.
But how can we be an individual who can find our motive in our lives, how can we influence the world so that at least we are satisfied that we are meant to do something? This is a question I always find myself asking, whenever I feel down.
According to me, the first step in knowing our cause for the world is knowing our own selves. Who are we? How do we think? What is our weakness? Are we more of an emotional or a reasonable person? And most importantly, can we always trust our own selves?
Recently I was studying an amazing book about how our mind works, how the decision-making process is inside our head. And believe me, I was astonished by the number of things we do of which we are not even aware. Our brain takes decisions even before we get conscious that a decision has been made. What I learned was that in most situations, our brain is controlled by what we perceive in front of us, regardless of what the correct interpretation is, we take the decisions by the idea of WYSIATI - What You See Is All There Is.
Our brain consists of two major decision-making systems - System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is impulsive, fast, and has a poor sense of judgment, while system 2 is slow, lazy, and has a good sense of judgment. In most cases, our decisions are made by system 1, because when it senses something, it does whatever it thinks is the correct thing to do at that moment. Our system 2 only comes into effect whenever our system 1 is confused, or when you force your system 2 to act.
Now, this is where we need to work on ourselves, I think that most of the decisions that an individual takes are the result of the impulsive system 1. We do what we think is the best for us, but we are not actually making the decision, it's our emotions who are making the decisions.
According to me, this is a situation where our brain or maybe our emotions are in control of us. And once you start letting your emotions take your life decisions, you can find yourself in a great heap of trouble. We need to take our decisions and not let our emotions drive us, to do that we need to train our brain, we need to train our system 1 to let system 2 take control of most of our decisions. And to do that, we need to be aware of our own thinking, we need to talk to ourselves, we need to criticize ourselves whenever we feel like we were wrong, we need to be honest with at least ourselves. This is the only way we can be aware of how we think, what our weaknesses are, how we can overcome them.
Our life is full of many problems, and we can't do anything but accept the situations we are in and make the best out of them. Because the first step towards moving on is the acceptance that thing didn't go how we would have liked it to. But since it has already happened, we can't really change it, all we can do is learn from it, and make sure we are not in denial about the situation. Denial is the feeling when something bad has happened and we keep focusing on how things would have been different and happy if it happened in some other way. We keep believing that things could have been different even when what was supposed to happen has already happened, now all we can do is either keep hurting ourselves by the way it happened, or by looking forward to how that situation has paved a new door of new opportunity you never would have found otherwise.
Once we start taking responsibility for our actions, of the fact that whatever has happened is because of our own decisions, that we are here today because of our own actions and nothing else can be blamed for where we are now, only then we can accept us as the way we are. We need to accept who we truly are, and love ourselves accepting all our flaws, accepting everything that could have happened but didn't happen, accepting every decision we made, regardless of how it turned out to be.
We need to learn to live happily with us, we need to learn what kind of a person we truly are. We need to make us our best friend because we were born alone, and we will die alone, the only person who is gonna stay with you is you. Stay true to that person, stay true to yourself.
You are your biggest enemy and greatest friend, everything depends on how you perceive it.
So, asking the question again, WHO ARE WE?
We are who we think we are, who we know we are. We are every decision we have ever made, we are every fault we ever did, we are every pain we have ever faced, we are the person who smiled even after all this, we are the person who never gave up on us and our dreams regardless of anything, and for that, we all should be proud of.
Because at the end of the day, YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK!