My worst self

Our self-knowledge and personality develops over time, but not in every aspect.

Most people sooner or later understand what they are good at. They know which skills and abilities moved their career forward and how they got to where they are.

But facing our weaknesses is a much more difficult task. One of the reasons for this is simple. We recall our success stories and occasions more easily, and we triggered positive reactions more often than our failures. Just think about how much time you spend remembering people who turned you down. How easily you answered the questions about your weaknesses at job interviews.

I bet you had a much easier time talking about your achievements, which is okay. Especially if things are going well, there’s no reason to mull over past failures.

But if we feel like our career is moving in the wrong direction, or we’re making the same mistakes again and again and want to understand the reasons, studying our darker side could help. At these times, if instead of avoiding the uncomfortable questions, we try to understand what our worst self is, or what makes our worst self come out, we can learn a lot about ourselves. And improving self-knowledge in the long run will help us to overcome things that are holding us back.

Even though currently I’m not in any kind of crisis, and in many aspects, I’m closer to reaching my goals than I used to be a few years ago, there are still many things in my life that I’m not satisfied with. And reading about the advantages of studying our worst self got me thinking.

I’ve created a list of the things that I believe I should try to change in the near future. I was aware of these problems before writing them down, so I wouldn’t say that I’ve discovered an entirely new perspective, but thinking about them deeply did help.

This is why I decided to share my results with you. This is what I believe constitutes my worst self, and these are the things that can bring it out:

– I’m a goal-oriented person, and I don’t think it is a bad thing. But there are some downsides of this mentality, and I have a few personality traits that could put me at a disadvantage in certain situations.

– I’m impatient and a bit selfish.

– Sometimes I’m also stressed out and inattentive. This happens most often when I know that I’m right but others don’t see it that way.

– I could also get very tense when people can’t understand why I ask them for certain things, and as a result they don’t complete their tasks.

– Things that are out of my control can also bring out the worst of me. When what should be done is obvious, but for some irrational human factor operations don’t work effectively and I feel like I can’t impact things, I try to solve problems with force. Which is probably not the best solution.

Looking through this list I concluded that paying more attention to the details, being more patient with certain projects, and trying new approaches when things don’t work out would help me in many ways, and I will have to pay attention to these things in the future.

So what do you think? Could studying your worst self help you as well?