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My personal philosophy hasn’t really changed in years, decades. But in thinking about it, I don’t think I could trim it down into a Twitter sized message. I am concise at times, and excessively verbose at other times.

My personal philosophy revolves around self awareness and honesty, in particular, self honesty. Know who you are, and who you aren’t. This helped me a lot when I was in school studying. How can someone study effectively if he isn’t aware of what he knows and what he doesn’t know? Applied to life, it allows you to navigate through challenges and life in general. Though, what you choose to do with that knowledge is up to you. You can use your knowledge to avoid weaknesses, or you can use that knowledge to confront weaknesses head-on. And to be honest, I would probably tend to avoid my weaknesses. My better half helped me grow by showing me that I could also confront my weaknesses.

Part of the self honesty aspect is being true to the person you are. Say what you mean, mean what you say. If you’re afraid to say something, ask yourself why you’re afraid to say it. If you’re afraid to do something, ask yourself why you’re afraid to do it. If what you have in mind is offensive or wrong (and you know it), choose to change yourself instead of just shutting up (“Solve the problem, not the symptom.”). If your position is simply unpopular but not wrong, then the only change is to be confident in your position and not be afraid of presenting it.

My philosophy works well for me in part due to my ego and my self confidence. My confidence works in strange ways. I feel that it is harder to be honest with yourself, and share that honesty than it is to fit a stereotype. In other words, I feel that it is “manlier” to show weakness then to pretend. No doubt, there are times where you need to “man up”, but to the people in your day to day life, to the people close to you and the people that matter, there is no need to pretend to be someone else.

Part of my self awareness now is that I am, and we all are, of two minds — an emotional and a rational. I can rationalize all day long. I can understand things from various logical perspectives, or accept other viewpoints (both rational and emotional), but sometimes that will not appease the emotional mind. What the emotional mind wants is not always rational. I am who I am, and I choose what I want (however I arrive at that decision). I accept the duality, just as I accept that I have strengths and weaknesses.

Golf, amusingly, works its way in too. For me, golf is the struggle between your ideal self and your real self. Do you play the big shot that requires a perfect swing? Do you play conservatively, within your game? Or does that imply a lack of confidence? I have not found that self awareness and self honesty on the course yet.

Nobody is perfect, and everybody know that. There is no fault in having weaknesses.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.