“Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand men is he who would conquer just one, himself. Better to conquer yourself than others. When you’ve trained yourself, living in constant self-control, neither a deva nor gandhabba, nor a Mara banded with Brahmas, could turn that triumph back into defeat.― Buddha”
Most of us don’t live our lives fully. We float through it. We are stuck in a rat race, living in metropolis cities, working towards earning more money, getting a promotion, or gaining material wealth, wanting better, wanting more, and more. There is no end to our ambition. We want to not only outdo others but ourselves. It isn’t a bad thing. Challenging yourself to become a better version of yourself is great for you. However, our society encourages us to challenge ourselves at the expense of our mental well-being. We strive to become what society and other people want us to become and not what we want. The culture of toxic positivity does the same. Without understand yourself deeply and thoroughly, you try to think and act positively, even if it means you suppress your true emotions. Those emotions can be negative or positive, or they can be neutral. While trying to sweep our negative emotions under the rug, we focus solely on the positive ones.
The recipe for understanding yourself better is to accept all your emotions, good or bad. It is to recognize negative emotions, embrace them, and then separate them from the positive ones. Once that is done, you can healthily focus on positive emotions. You’d be able to make informed decisions that don’t cloud your judgment. You won’t feel guilty for doing something because of society or others telling you it has to be done.
Other people can also be of great help when it comes to understanding yourself. You observe them and connect with them to understand who you are. Professor Anne Bockler of Wurzburg University, Germany, says
“Expanding our knowledge about internal dynamics, such as our thoughts, beliefs, or emotional patterns, allows for a better understanding of these processes in others.” Understanding yourself and your emotional patterns equips you to control your life and live it how you want to.
It is not to say that it is easy, but it’s an attainable goal. Before going to bed, write down the emotions you felt throughout the day in a journal every day. The next day, go through everything you wrote. By the end of the week, tally all your emotions. This will help you work on certain aspects of your emotions. You will become emotionally strong and gain cognitive strength. After all, the biggest battle in a person’s life is the battle within themselves.
