It was years ago now, but Julie Andrews sang a song in the movie The King and I called Getting to Know You. It is a song that she is singing to her students about how they have enriched her life. However, what if we were to sing that song to ourselves. What if we made this song about getting to know ourselves for who we are?
Getting to know you,
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you,
Getting to know what to say
So why is this important? Perhaps it is as Anne Morrow Lindbergh stated, in her book Gifts from the Sea, “When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too.” The extent to which we know ourselves is representative of our ability to get to know and understand others.
So many people have no idea who they are or are in touch with who they aspire to become. Who are you? How unconditionally do you love yourself? Respect yourself? Know yourself? Understand yourself? If we do not take the time to get to know and love ourselves then how can we expect anyone else to know us? That's why it's so important to spend time learning about ourselves. As we do so, we learn how to love ourselves unconditionally and develop an inner freedom to become and live in the fullness of who we are and are becoming. As learn to have honest and real conversations with ourselves, then we expand our ability to interact and understand others.
Haven't you noticed
Suddenly I'm bright and breezy?
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I'm learning about you
Day by day.
The journey inward may not always be easy or comfortable. However, as we move through the secrets, fears and uncomfortable parts of our lives, they lose their power over us. Moving through them allows us to learn all the amazing, beautiful, and new things about ourselves. As we come to love ourselves deeper internally, it has an effect on how others may perceive us externally. Perhaps we seem brighter and breezier.
How do we begin to do this? One way is to take time each day to sit quietly with ourselves, thinking and listening. Express yourself by writing your thoughts in a journal, draw, paint, write poetry, sculpt, sing, play an instrument, or any way you can think of to capture what you are thinking and feeling. When we make the time and effort to know ourselves, it encourages others to want to know us, too. Since everything we do and feel begins inside us, we must feel good about ourselves in order to feel good about anything else. You have the power to learn something new about yourself each day. So what do you want to learn about yourself today?