Self-construction

I am quite burdened to delve deeper into the nitty gritty of personality and how to be yourself. In spite of your religious, traditional or secular orientation, I want you to pay attention to this discourse because you will find it beneficial.

Let\’s start with a question. Who are you? 

Now, you have a role to play in bringing forth the purity, genuineness and uniqueness of who you are. There are a number of factors acting against you.

1. Parental 
2. Environmental
3. Psychological
4. Spiritual

The essence of maturity is to objectively examine the factors acting upon your life to know what is real and what is imagined, and to know what to learn, unlearn and relearn. Take time to think through the influence of your parents and identify what worked well and what didn\’t. What about your environment? The norms and traditions around you are to some extent evidence of mental and psychological laziness. There should be nothing in these traditions you have not taught through to decide what is believable and what is not.

Allow your mind to work. Mental slavery through suspended thinking is what multiplies tyrants and glorifies nonentities. We would classify anything that easily defies our logic as spiritual. Yet, the role of logic is to pay attention to the patterns of occurrences in your life to understand their spiritual nature and to come up with a functional strategy to terminate every cycle of dysfunction. This is what salvation brings into your life if you know how to work it out. 

The hierarchy of self-construction is 

1. Awareness
2. Belief systems
3. Conventions and convictions
4. Decisions and priorities 

Awareness is the first step towards proper self-identity and self-construction. To be aware is to know who you are, know the belief systems you were raised with and put it on the balance of Truth to separate the wheat from the chaff, know the sociocultural and secular paradigm you find yourself and how to navigate your way as well as your psychological maturity to mitigate both internal and external challenges against your authentic personality.

The next step in self-construction is to challenge the belief systems you have been used to all your life. Most of your personality is lost in other people\’s beliefs that you may not even understand let alone be assured of their Truth. Utilize the sieve of deliberate interrogation to get to the root of what you have believed so far. If you don\’t, you will discover that most of the problems you will confront (or have been enmeshed in) are related to these background issues. 

The beliefs and values you are not willing to confront will keep putting you at loggerheads with your destiny. Part of your destiny is to know who you are and construct your personality accurately so that your life can derive its real meaning. 

Conventions are aggregated beliefs that have become unchallenged on a large scale. If you have not even tested your beliefs for their validity, how can you be bold enough to test conventions? You are not doing this to be problematic. You are doing this to be realistic. Your convictions will emerge out of an honest and audacious separation of Truth from traditions (beliefs and behaviours that are no longer relevant). Truth is timeless. It may be antiquated yet it defines beliefs and behaviours that will outlast the ever-changing trends of any given civilization.

Decisions are your conclusions based on your examination of the facts in your human experience. Your decisions are the means by which you construct your ideal self in the face of the contrary winds of human opinions and dead traditions. For these decisions to become permanent, you need to install new priorities that will keep you committed to your ideal self.

Your ideal self is that state where your maturity yields actions, behaviours and contributions that elevate those around you. This is only possible when you make decisions and install priorities to institutionalize that decision. If you stay with your persona (projected, publicly-manipulated self), the same society you are trying to please will eventually vomit you as an outcast because you are not known for contribution but for consumption…you are not known for integrity but for conformity. Fitting in will not pay you in the long run. It is high time you stood out and allowed your ideal self to inspire others to outgrow public opinion to become paragons of excellence.

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