SELF-ARCHEOLOGY

As I ’ ve mentioned in my last post about self-archeology tools , it‘s very useful to identify your personal core virtues and values, and to live in accordance to them. But first, let’s talk about definitions... Value is that, what's important and useful for the person. It can be a knife, if you want to slice a piece of bread; or a map, if you want to go from Germany to England. Virtue is a positive trait or quality of one’s personality. However, when people talk about what’s important for them character- or morality-wise, they often use those concepts interchangeably. So, to avoid confusion, in this article I’ll also use those concepts synonymously. Basically, here I’ll talk about positive personal traits that are useful to have and to follow (call it virtues or values). The first, and in my opinion the most important, virtue is honesty . Honesty is defined as telling the truth (not lying): firstly, to yourself – and to others. It involves accepting the truth about your lif...

The process of self-archeology might be slow, hard, and sometimes exhausting and emotionally unpleasant. However, the results are invaluable! In the same way that going on an archeological expedition requires special tools and equipment, going on a self-archeological expedition requires special tools. Here I'll present several simple, but effective methods that might help you more effectively know yourself better, build a closer relationship with yourself, heal, and grow. [NOTE: I've decided to present these tools briefly here, and describe them in more detail in future posts, or in a book.] So, what are these self-archeology tools, and why are they important? Journaling . Journaling is probably the most effective tool of self-knowledge, self-monitoring, and self-analysis; and it often relates closely to other self-archeology tools. We can write about everything – including our emotions, states, needs, experiences, thoughts, theories, plans, dreams, fears, inner confli...

Everyone wants to change something in their lives. However, if we tried to do that, we probably noticed that often it's very hard do change something. Why people change and what motivates them to do so? The first – and in my opinion the most effective – motivator to change is pull , or positive motivation . It means that we feel very fascinated about something, we get drawn to something very strongly, or we truly and passionately want to achieve something. For example, we get exposed to very fascinating ideas and we get inspired to fundamentally change our life, our values, and our personal relationships. Or we realize that it's possible to live a completely different life, so we decide to change our job or move out to a different country. Or we meet new, amazing people, and we get inspired to change the world with our talents and our generosity. The essential thing here is that when we feel positively pulled towards something; this pull – and our motivation to act – ...

Everyone knows themselves at least to some level, but, sadly, not many people have a really close relationship with themselves. Because of our experiences from childhood and adolescence, our environment, and other reasons – i. e. because of our family dynamics, our relationship with others, our past traumas – many of us are so alienated from ourselves that we don't know our true emotions, needs, goals, and dreams... We don't know what are we doing and for what reason, we act impulsively or (self-)destructively... We fear things that objectively are not scary; we feel shame or guilt in situations where we did nothing wrong... We don't have things we would like to have; we don't live the life we would like to live; our relationships are not that kind of relationships we would like to have... A lot of people don't live , but only exist . Or to be more specific – they only vegetate , i. e. they slowly and passively wait for their deathbed, or act destructively – and i...