self-awareness exercise

the hardest questions have the fewest words

who are you? what do you want? what do you like? what are you curious about?

read those again. now try to answer them without defaulting to your job title, your relationship status, or what you think you're supposed to say.

harder than it looks, right?

the identity crisis nobody talks about

most people are walking around living someone else's life. they chose a career because it seemed practical. they're in a relationship because it was comfortable. they have hobbies because their friends do. strip all that away and they have no idea who they actually are.

this isn't a failure — it's just what happens when you spend decades absorbing other people's expectations without questioning them. but at some point, you have to stop and audit the whole thing.

the exercise

grab a notebook. set a timer for 20 minutes. answer these four questions with brutal honesty:

who are you? not your resume. not your roles. what are your core values? what do you stand for when nobody's watching?

what do you want? forget what's "realistic." if you could design your life from scratch with zero constraints, what would it look like?

what do you like? not what you're good at — what genuinely lights you up? what would you do on a saturday with no obligations?

what are you curious about? curiosity is your subconscious pointing you toward growth. what topics pull you in even when you have no reason to explore them?

why this matters

self-awareness is the operating system. everything else — relationships, career, health, happiness — runs on top of it. if the operating system is corrupted with other people's programming, nothing works right.

you can't give fewer fucks about the wrong things until you know what the right things are. this exercise is how you find out.

do it today. not tomorrow. today.

if this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.