Getting to Know Yourself Essay Example

Getting to know yourself is a hard task to do in the world we live in today. Although being able to know yourself will strengthen you as a person, the act of looking inwards and evaluating yourself and actions and finding out the reasons behind those actions can be tough. Some people don’t want to do that out of fear that they are wrong in some way. Fear can play a huge role in finding out who you are as a person. Some people don’t want to go and find out whether or not they like something out of some kind of fear. 

Everyone has fear, whether it is stage fright, fear of heights, or even fear itself; everyone is afraid of something. That fear can hold people back from doing things that they will actually enjoy. J.D. Moyer wrote in “Getting to Know Yourself, Finally,” “Some ten-year-olds know, unwaveringly, exactly who they are and what they want to do in life. Other people die old and regretful, always living other people’s agendas and never grabbing what they wanted out of life for themselves.” When I read that, I asked myself why people never grab what they want out of life. My only conclusion was that it must be out of fear. For example, some people want to become doctors, but they are afraid of failing and having nothing else to do if they fail, so they just pick an easier occupation. 

Another fear that is almost universal to everyone that some probably do not know they have is the fear of finding out who they truly are. I think that everyone is afraid that they are not a good person and that by looking inwards and shining that spotlight onto their personality in order to find out, they might find several things that they do not want to see. Some people overcome this fear and seek therapy in order to help shine that light, but others just do not want to bother and go on thinking that they are a good person. 

Getting to know yourself is not an easy task. There are a lot of obstacles that you may have to jump through, one of them being your own fears. Fears play a huge role in being able to find out who you truly are. Some people die never knowing who they truly are and never grabbing what they really want out of life because they are too scared to do so. Some people are just too scared to actually find out who they are out of fear of what that answer is.