How did I find myself

For a long time, in fact very long time, in my life I asked this question to myself, I bet at some stage in life, everyone asked this same question to themselves.

Who am I

I will share my life experience, I hoping this article will help you or at least point you in a right direction. Also Im gonna use this article to let people know who I really am.

Struggle is very real

This is very vital for one to understand and be able to answer this question, each time our conscious raise this question to ourself. It bothered me deeply when I’m unable to answer this question. My mind was disturbed every time I touched this topic, I was clueless, nervous, angry and anxious. It gave me constant anxieties when I was alone and when I was with group of people. The concept of me not able to understand or define myself scared the hell out of me. I spent years and years trying to answer this question.

Being unable to to defined myself became a huge burden that Im carrying around every day without knowing how to take that off my shoulders. I was unable to tell or show who/what I am to others, which in result, I was unable to fit with anybody or any group.

Im, from southern part of India, culturally India is very social, compare to west. To give you an example, I remember, all the neighbors gather around in someone’s house every evening and they talk, share, laughs and be social. All the kids would be playing with each others till their father back from work. Everybody knows everybody. Nobody need an invitation or appointment to meet others. We cook food our neighbors, we helped each other with money when they are in need, we celebrated festivals and events with our neighbors. In festival time all the neighbors(regardless of their religions) cook food and share the food will every single once in their neighborhood. We were happy and proud to call our friends parents Ma & Pa.

I grew up in such socialized culture. After 27 years of my life, when I looked back I didn’t have even a single friend who know me very well. Which got me thinking, there gotta be something wrong with me. The thought of “something wrong with me” leads me to couple of more thinks,

• Low esteem(The thought of, Not good enough or Not Interesting enough to lure others)
• Socially Awkwardness
• Sensitivity
• Loneliness
• Depression
• Anxieties
• Fatigue
• Isolation
• The worst part was, if certain smell or certain picture remained me of my past, I gave me unbearable anxieties.

I moved to United States with all this problems within me already and it only gotten worst. There are pros and cons in western culture. One can get their privacy, people respect each other’s privacy in western culture, but cons are it is hard to make friends, it is easy to get lonely and get depressed. The west only added salt in my wounds. I felt more isolated than I ever did before. This inner struggle is unbearable.

I tried many thinks to help me distract from this, I bought thinks that makes me happy, I spend time doing outdoor activities, I went to gym, I joint kickboxing and sometimes I drank alcohol, but none of them help me. There are two reasons none of them worked out,

• All are merely a distraction, not an answer to my question
• I have problem inside my mind, but I try to fix them outside.

As soon as I realize that, I started digging inside me.

Core Values

Lets imagine a simple conversation at work place, if somebody(lets say Nathan) meet me for the first time,

Nathan: Hi, im Nathan
You: Hey, Im Karthik, how are you doing.
Nathan: Good, what you do
You: Im a software engineer, I work in iOS team. What you do.
Nathan: Im a project manager.
You: Great. Well nice to meet you. Looking forward to work with you.

May be, If Nathan works with me in any project he will know how good/bad I am at work. If Nathan is my facebook friend he will know I do hiking, gym and I drive a lot.

To put in Nathan perspective, this is what I am,

• Im Karthik
• Im a software engineer
• Im in iOS Team
• Im good at my work
• My hobbies are Hiking & Gym
• I like my car and I drive a lot

All the above are true, however, none of the above define who I really am. But thats what the impression I gave it to him, wasn’t I?. So, if none of the above are not me, then who really am I. To answer this question, I had to dig deeper into myself and list out my core values. Let me list out the things I value the most,

• Humble
  Humbleness is important to me, I put this first in the list and I want to write a little bit more, because I value this more. Ever since I could remember, I always tell myself this quote, I don’t know from I got this, “When we ask for help we should to humble, and when we help someone we should more humble. And always remember where I came from”. Well, this quote might not sound like a “word of wisdom”, but it important at least to me. Im really proud of what I have achieved in my life so far, especially when I look my life back a decade ago, but I never bragged about it and I never will.
• Kind
• Polite
• Simple
• Friendly
• Respect
• My Privacy
• Peaceful Life
• Integrity
• Loyalty
• Trust
• Being meaningful than superficial

I believe it a pretty good list. Everything above in the list is exact what i am. This gave me a clear perspective and definition of who I really am. Everything became clear after that. Now, think about the conversation I had with Nathan. He might be think that, Im a tech guy, running 100 miles per hour, in this constantly changing computer industry. But looking my values, Im totally opposite of what he thinks for me. No wonder, for a long time, almost a decade, people took me for what I really not am.

I could see why I was able and unable to get along with someone in the past. This might sound impossible or highly unlikely, but it is totally true, within an hour, in fact less than an hour, all my anxiety just vanished away. I felt very light, I never had anxiety after that. Even I couldn’t realize how easy and quick it was. I was able to connect the dots now. All my decisions that I made in the past were influenced by these values. I always somehow knew who I really am, but I took a decade of struggle to realize that. I still cannot believe it just took less than an hour to remove a decade of inner-struggle. However, I waited 2 full months to confirm and be 100% sure about it, before I write this article.

Conclusion

May be there could be more ways to find who really oneself is. In my experience, find my values helped me find who I am. I would recommend the same to others, those who struggling to find who they are. These values must not be negotiable.

This “non negotiable” part is very important. Let me give you a hypothetical example,
Let say if you value Polite and Respect a lot, and some one you know behave rude to you. Obviously you would expectation them to realize that their behavior not right. If you are polite person then you could let that go for time being. If you are friendly person you could come forth and say sorry, just in case to make sure it is not your fault, to patch things up. And even after that the other person didn’t care to say sorry for their behavior, then you will have to think about their friendship, because it challenges your core value of treated being respectfully. You can never get along with someone who insulted you and never care about there behavior.

Once you define these values, you will understand yourself better. Then you know what to expect from others. Eventually you will be surrounded by like-minded people and they will become your good friends. I believe surrounded by like-minded people will help you keep on track, if/when you deviate away from your values.

Thanks for reading. In my next article I will write how I find, “What to do with life“.

Im sorry if I used the word “I”, “me”, “my”,.. too many times, and made it sound like its all about me. Well, I used my personal experience to right this article. As I said in the beginning, one of the reason Im writing this article is to let people know about me. Also pardon me if there are any grammatical errors.