Know Thyself By Using Self-Inquiry - Asking Yourself Oodles Of Questions

How do we learn more about ourselves? By asking ourselves lots of questions. Self-inquiry, it's called, and it's all the rage in the self-help world right now. Because the more you know about yourself, the more you can grow.

Transcript

Hello everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

In this video I wanted to speak to you a little bit about self inquiry or self knowledge and how do you get to know yourself a little bit better.

I think this is a question that was asked by someone,

I don't actually remember now who,

And they specifically said how do you get to know yourself?

How do you get to know yourself better or how do you just get to know yourself?

Like what are the things you do?

And I thought it was,

You know,

I kind of smiled a little bit and I thought it was an interesting question to ask because I think that's what we do as individuals,

As people,

You know,

We kind of learn something and we do it for a while and then we assume that everyone knows how to do it.

And so I've been kind of doing the self inquiry or self knowledge thing for a decade or more now,

Maybe two decades,

And so I assume,

You know,

Because I've been doing it for so long I assume everyone does it,

Everyone knows how to do it,

It's common knowledge.

But of course that's not how it is.

Same thing with all the other things that I do.

When I speak about meditation I sometimes oversimplify things or even yoga and I always have to tell myself to simplify it better because just because I know something really well doesn't mean everyone else does.

And this with regards to the self inquiry or the self knowledge thing,

It is extremely hard for me to simplify it because as I said I've been doing it for so long and I'm like yeah just do it,

You know,

Just get on it and get it done.

So I really had to sit down for a bit and say okay what exactly do I do?

What is my process?

How do I sit down and learn more about myself?

Why do I do it?

What's the point of all of this?

And I've spoken in many videos how I really truly believe that the first step to moving forward in your life towards any kind of growth,

Any kind of self-development is self knowledge.

Know thyself.

It is the paradigm,

It is the ultimate,

It is the the starting point of everything that you do in order to become that person that you want to become in the future.

You need to understand who you are in the present moment right now.

You can't get to that point in the future if you have no idea who you are right now.

Because if you know who you are right now you can start building ideas and and strategies in order to get to that person that you want to be in the future.

For example for myself when I first realized that I was not leading down the path or going down the path that I really wanted to,

I was actually going on the path of the opposite path to what I wanted to,

That I was living a life of complete desperation and destitute.

It was it was the worst thing I was ever doing you know I was kind of not living according to my values but it was an easy path.

It was the path of indolence and addictions and things like that.

It was just not the right way to do things for myself.

And once I realized that fact you know obviously I took a step back and I took a step back to ask myself the question okay what do I actually want to be?

Who do I want to be?

What do I want people to say about me?

Why do I want people to say that about me?

If I was standing above my funeral bed or above the cremation hall that I'm in and people were standing around talking about me what would I want them to say about me?

What did I want them to say?

Is she she has a lot of shoes or you know she spent a lot of time in the mall or clubbing or what it would you what do you want them to say?

And of course at that point in time people were gonna say not great things about me because I was not actually even living the life that I wanted to and I realized that that was that that was a turning point that I needed because I realized ah I see.

So if I really want them to say these are the things about me you know that you know she had she made an impact on the planet that she left the world a better place than when she came in.

That was one of the major things I wanted people to say about me when I was dead.

Then I realized that that I needed to get to that point that person that I wanted to become there was a few steps that I had a lot of steps that I had to take before I would get to that point.

But because I knew where I was where I was standing then and where I wanted to get I knew what the steps were gonna be right it was very easy it's very simple once you realize okay okay I want to be there and I'm here the next step is gonna be I have to start doing meditation and the step after that is I'm gonna have to start thinking about how to build my own business and the next step after that is gonna be how I need to become a better communicator right and so little by little as I started walking forward the steps revealed revealed themselves and I was able to get to where I am right now and I'm obviously still moving towards that future goal of who I want to be.

But again as I said if I didn't know where I was and where I wanted to get to I wouldn't have been able to do it.

And I have said this before and I'm gonna say this over and over again until everyone gets it is that self-knowledge is about self questioning about self inquiry about asking yourself a hundred thousand questions every single minute of every single day well a little bit of an exaggeration but you get the point ask yourself questions about everything that you do you know if you pick up the phone this way and you switch it on that way why do I do it that way why did I do that like if you are working on something extremely important and then someone says something to you and distracts you and you allow yourself to get distracted why did I do that I was working on something extremely important why did I waste 15 minutes talking to someone when I didn't have to right or if you really want to be a motivational speaker but you're spending all of your time in your room watching videos and not doing any of your own videos then you need to ask yourself hmm okay so I said I want to be a motivational speaker but I'm not actually doing any motivational speaking or even practicing it right and so of course you know as soon as you start asking yourself questions and obviously learning about yourself and realizing where you want to get to things become very simple actually then it simplifies things so much that you'll be surprised it's it's like I feel like it's like the key to the universe but a lot of people don't actually do it because it's hard yeah I mean I'm not saying that it's simple it's not easy to do it's simple but it's not easy to do and so you know rather than asking yourself questions it's easier to ask questions of you know celebrities or be like alright so what is that person doing on on that TV show and nowadays I I feel like they've been on that show and they've been doing this and that why did they do that did they get married did they get pregnant it's easier to learn about someone else right it's easier to follow some random celebrities life or some random sports person's life or some football team's life and see okay what's going on with them rather than go inwardly and deep within yourself and see okay what's going on with me what am I doing why am I here what is the point what did I do today why did I do that you know why did I spend my time doing that when I wanted to do some writing I said I told myself I would write today but I didn't why what am I doing what am I spending my time on what are my friends like are they pulling me back or pushing me forward what am I doing with the business that I wanted to build have I even taken of the first step towards it and as you ask these questions you're gonna realize the answers some of them are gonna be extremely hard to hear because you're gonna realize that yeah no actually I'm not doing anything to move forward I'm saying that I want to do all of these things if I'm not doing anything or maybe you'll be a good thing like yeah no actually I'm doing great I'm moving forward little by little even if it's slow at least I'm slowly moving towards the goal that I've set for myself and I feel really proud of myself right and so for myself when I first started asking these questions of course the answers were extremely negative and discouraging because I realized that I was not doing anything that I wanted to do in order to get to the point where I wanted to get to at that point in time which was 20 years ago not 20 years ago 15 years ago or something lab and I first started this inquiry thing I wanted to be a motivational speaker it's kind of funny what I'm doing right now maybe it's kind of like a motivational speaker but not really that then I wanted to be on stage and I wanted to motivate other people to live their best life eventually I realized I don't want to be on stage in front of thousands of people and motivate them but I want to be on videos motivating thousands of people to do the best that they can all right but of course that was what I was thinking back then but did I do any motivational speaking at all no I did I even practice speaking in front of the mirror no did I practice doing videos at all so speaking in videos no I did nothing like that I didn't write any speeches I did nothing but I pretended like sorry there was a fly I pretended like oh yeah I like just by talking about it in my head not even to anyone eventually I'm gonna get there alright so of course at that point when I asked the question what am I doing the answer was I'm not doing anything I need to do something else I need to live a different life and I need to start doing different things and then it took me another I would say 10 years to get to the point where I even started doing videos if I had just started them right then maybe I would be a different person right now but maybe this is how it's supposed to be by the way the answers that I was giving myself at that point in time were not the answers I wanted to hear they were not and the answers that I give myself right now are the answers I want to hear right and so I realized I can see a complete shift in perspective from where I was then and where I am right now but all of it was because of self inquiry and self questioning and then realizing that the answers were not what I wanted to hear right so it could also be as simple as you know I want to lose weight like a lot of people have that desire goal and then to ask the question what am I doing to lose that weight like why do I want to lose that weight and what am I doing so maybe you want to lose that way because you're we want to be healthier or you want to fit into that dress that you've never fit into or things like that that's fine you know whatever your answer is but then also ask yourself you know what am I doing and of course a lot of people have the goal that they want to lose that weight but do they do anything about it not really and that's the reason a lot of people do want to ask that question because if they ask the question they would realize they're not doing anything about it and then that's uncomfortable right that's a that's a dissonance within you and people don't like that so better not to ask the question but if you want to keep on moving forward you have to you know you don't want to but you have to and so once you ask the question what am I doing and you answer nothing then you can be like alright fine so what one step one baby little step can I take in order to move forward could be perhaps you would decide to go for a walk every day or run with the dog or I don't know go hiking or whatever it might be but you will come up with something and then put that into your schedule hopefully and then little by little move forward but again it's a process it takes time and it's not a magical process and it's not like from one day to the next you're gonna be going from zero to a million but of course little by little you'll get to where you want to get to yeah so I hope this makes sense I hope I answer the question if I didn't answer the question let me know whoever asked it and I shall do a follow-up because I love talking about this as you can tell and I can talk about it for days and days on end all right I'll talk to you later bye for now

Reviews

Please do a follow-up to this! Do you journal your answers?