Most recently I published an article about choosing “How to choose the right one?”, after which I came across one of my old works about finding myself “How to not lose yourself while searching for yourself?”. Reflections on these topics gradually led me to further thoughts: what does it mean to “find yourself”? Does this mean finding your life purpose? Or find your “soul mate”? Or find a profession that brings satisfaction (click to read “Work for pleasure: myth or reality?!”)? And for some, perhaps, the concept of “finding yourself” includes finding your own style, your own people, your own type of leisure, etc. etc. But does this mean that we find OURSELVES? A person may not have a life mission, a favorite profession, a life partner and a wide circle of friends, but he always has one. Here I am, for example, sitting and writing this post. I can touch my face, body, hair, that is, I exist in any case and I don’t need to look for myself, since I am from myself, I cannot get lost! Perhaps when we say that a person has found himself, we are trying to say that a person knows WHO he is, thanks to which he can figure out HOW and WHY he lives. For many millennia, philosophers and scientists have been looking for an answer to the question of what “man” is, but each of us is obliged to find a definition of ourselves. I suggest you look at this question from the following angle (there are many of these angles, and others, I I’m sure they are correct, but I don’t plan to write a dissertation here): I am a combination of the true and the acquired. By “true”, in this case, I mean the innate characteristics and characteristics that a person acquired in the early years of life, which became the foundation of the personality. By “acquired” I mean attitudes, behavioral strategies, roles that a person builds into his personality, adapting to society and life. Both our true part and the acquired part are vital: the difference is in the degree of changes to which these parts are susceptible, and in how we should treat them. It's like cabbage: it has a stalk and leaves; without one or the other, cabbage will no longer be cabbage, but the stalk and leaves must be used in different ways. The True Self is the deep, almost unchangeable structures of our personality, which we must understand, accept and respect. How is height - if you are 28 years old and your height is 162 cm, it is stupid to expect that it will change by 10 cm in the next five years. As one of the options to understand what unchangeable variables exist, it will be useful to read about temperaments (fortunately, the Internet is now full of articles, for example, click here) and personality typologies (I recommend the book “16 Personality Types That Determine How We Live, Work and we love"). The acquired Self is the many layers of our personality that have grown on the true Self and which add our significance to this world and those around us. They are also like leaves on cabbage: some are tightly fused with the stalk and hidden deep inside, and some of the top ones appeared quite recently and you don’t even mind taking them and throwing them away so that new ones can be grown. Thus, with the acquired self you need to be a little more critical than with the true one: analyze which of its components (beliefs, behavioral strategies and roles) work properly, that is, contribute to development, and which slow it down. And, accordingly, the former should be protected and actively used, and the latter should be removed and new ones grown. Just remember: it happens that even the leaves of your acquired self that have served you well for a long time suddenly begin to rot and rot. The main criterion that it is time to sort out and recycle some of the leaves of your acquired self are lingering problems in one or another area of ​​life. For practical recommendations for working in this direction, read the posts “How to engage in self-analysis?” and “Why mosquitoes-2?”. PS At the end, I want to turn to you with a request: if reading this article, you thought, learned something new, or just even smiled, please click “Thank you” (only registered users can do this ) and share the note on social media.:-)