We all search to define ourselves since Aristotle tells us Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Knowing yourself or things that define you will help you increase your awareness and emotional intelligence.

By Emile Fakhoury
First, let us start with the easy task of defining things that don’t represent you:

• Your mistakes are part of your past that helped build your experiences, but this doesn’t define you.
• Your problems are challenges you face due to the environment and circumstances around you, but this doesn’t define you.
• Your illness/disability is part of your physiology and environmental conditions, but this doesn’t define you.
• Your thoughts are part of your virtual words and imagination where your ideas and thoughts are merging, but this doesn’t define you.

Importantly, we should focus on things that define you:

• Your experiences: this count both your failures and successes to form your ‘rich’ experiences.
• Your perspective: looking at the world with your own eyes to analyze people and things.
• Your personality: your combinations of ideas, traits, and habits.
• Your creativity: your imagination to create something new.
• Your goals: the desired result you want to achieve.
• Your passion: your boundless enthusiasm.
• Your attitude: your way of thinking.
• Your habits: your small decision that you make daily that constitute 40% of your day as per the fantastic book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear.

For more inspirational thoughts, you can read my article  "Controlling our emotions is key to success in life and our professional career"

Life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it, so we need to focus on those things that define us and don’t waste our energy on our mistakes, problems, and negatives.