You don’t know who you are

A significant barrier to identifying and correcting sources of dishonesty in your life is a lack of awareness of what you think, feel, and do. Honesty requires the alignment of what you think, feel, and do, but if you have only limited awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and actions, you can be extremely dishonest without even realizing it.¹ Most people are only slightly aware of what they think, feel, and do, why, and what the alternatives are. In short: most people have no idea who they really are.

Many people would struggle with the idea that they have no idea who they really are, even though that is most often the case. It is hard to imagine that you can observe everything about yourself that you do and still not know who you really are. There are two limitations in selfobservation: how much of yourself you see, and how correctly you interpret what you see. Even though each person observes everything they do, the perceptions of the individual depend on how many of those observations are noticed, how honestly they are acknowledged, and how accurately they are understood. Seeing some of yourself is not the same as seeing all of yourself, and seeing yourself does not mean you are seeing yourself correctly.

Knowing yourself takes extreme honesty, applied earnestly and consistently, over a long period of intentional observation and reflection. Until an individual advances in what they notice, acknowledge, and accurately understand about themselves, they can’t obtain the benefits of greater honesty.

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. (Romans 13:13)

Navigating life without accurate awareness of your inner workings is as unintelligent as running full speed in the darkest night. The real situation is even more dangerous than this analogy indicates. While you can tell when it is literally night, you will be less aware of your figurative blindness the more you willingly turn away from whatever you do perceive in yourself, others, and the world. You have three selfs:

• Who you are in your own eyes
• Who you are in the eyes of others
• Who you are in God’s eyes

The accuracy of your self estimation will vary. In moments of perceived strength, you will tend to over-inflate your self-worth. In moments of perceived weakness, you will tend to undershoot your true self-worth.

Your identity in the eyes of others varies wildly. The direction and extent of someone’s opinion of you will depend not just on how you really are, but on the circumstances under which they’ve observed you, as well as how authentically you have acted in front of them. Each person’s perspective of you will be more or less correct than everyone else’s.

God sees you as an individual. He sees all your virtues, all your vices, and how often you are operating in each. He sees your actuality, but he also knows your past. He sees your potential and he knows how much or how little of it you will achieve.

As you undertake the journey to discover who you really are, you will aim to make your self-estimate as accurate as God’s perspective of you, and you will lean on the opinions of others insomuch as they are already in alignment with God’s perspective. Future chapters will show you how.