Tag: Meaningful life

If You Want To Find Yourself, You Must Stop Pleasing People

by Bright Osadiaye, posted in Personal Development, Personal Growth
Happy adult woman talking on phone and using laptop while chilling at home
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Help people, but don’t please them. Why are you wasting your time to please people? Why? You need people to help you succeed in your life. Pleasing people is not the right way to get there. Pleasing people is not the right way to build a positive relationship. Some people will like you for who you are; others will hate you for who you are. Don’t worry. Keep moving forward. Your life is not in their hands. You must focus on making yourself better.

You say yes to everything. You can’t say no to people. You don’t want to let people down. You want people to like you. You want to fit in. You care about what other people think of you. You want to look good in the eyes of other people. You don’t want people to reject you. Wow!

“Please all, and you will hurt yourself.”

Know this: “Until you start saying yes to yourself, you will never find yourself. Until you stop pleasing people, you will never know your true self.

In reality, when you don’t focus on yourself, you are stopping yourself from moving forward. You are stopping yourself from growing. You are stopping yourself from building a meaningful life. To stop that, you must be comfortable with who you are. You must practice your core values. Let your values guide your life. Aesop said, “Please all, and you will please none.” Please yourself to grow yourself. Please all, and you will hurt yourself.

6 More Ways To Know Yourself Better

by Bright Osadiaye, posted in Personal Development, Personal Growth
Three Persons Sitting on the Stairs Talking With Each Other
Photo by Buro Millennial

“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.”- Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher

Self-knowledge is the key to your success. If you don’t have a solid foundation, you cannot build a meaningful life. You can do it. You can build your life the way you want it. But you cannot get there unless you know who you are, where you are, and where you are going.

To know yourself, you must believe in yourself. Your real life starts with finding who you really are. You can’t find it if you don’t believe in it.

You must know your purpose. A life without a single purpose is a meaningless life. Your purpose is the reason you wake up every day. Your purpose is in your mind. To find it, you must listen to your mind. Don’t run after what others are doing. Discover your own purpose by following your core values.

You must follow and practice your core values. If you don’t know what you stand for, you have a lot of work to do. Your values represent you. They are who you are. They are what you stand for. They drive you. They control your thoughts. They control your actions. They control your whole life. When you follow your core values, your true self will come out. When you know your core values, your true self will shine.

You must let go of who you think you are. To let good things flow into your life, you must let go of the things that are holding you back. Don’t force yourself to be who you are not. Just let go of what is not making you happy. Lao Tzu famously said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.”- Lao Tzu

You must value yourself. No one will value you if you don’t value yourself. No matter what, you are who you are. Don’t criticize yourself. Don’t waste your life. Make your life count. Make your time count. If you don’t value yourself, you won’t value your time. Value your time. Because your time is your life. If you waste your time, it is gone. According to M. Scott Peck, “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”

You must take action to change yourself. It is not enough to just know yourself. You must do things to change your life. You must take action to change things in your life. Talk is cheap. Action is hard. Sometimes we know what to do, but we just don’t do it. Because we don’t want to fail. Nobody likes to fail. But if you are scared of failure, you are scared of growth. To get to where you want to be, start failing forward.