"You can't be the best unless you be yourself."

As Sun Tzu once wrote: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

It is rather difficult to know oneself. Personal bias comes to play, we think ourselves to be better or worse than we are. We see things that aren't there and overlook those that are. It is why doctors should never diagnose themselves. Our brains lie to themselves when it comes to thinking about us. So how can we know ourselves?

The easiest method is through experience. Try out new things, see how you perform, observe how you act. What you do better at, what you fail at. Figure it out one test at a time. It takes time, but the result is a pretty good. The problem is that with every test you run, you change yourself. The changes are generally minute, hardly noticeable. But more importantly they change the things we aren't looking out for.

When you focus on one thing, that's it. You can try to not think about a polar bear, but in the end that's all you'll be able to do. Until you try to think of something else, until you test something else. But in the process of the first test, you have skewed the results of the second. After all, if we are what we were, even events and thoughts manifested due to our willful actions influence us, change us. Focus on studying and your logical thinking goes to pot. Focus on puzzles and your memory is forgotten. Do them both and you will become a dull boy, Jack. What changes us annoyingly slowly and unnoticeably, are the things we do on a regular basis. We get used to them, we don't think about them, but we don't forget them.

It is very easy to become a creature of habit. It is very easy to create something that would force you to break that habit, an outside influence you have to enroll in in order to have to do something for that influence. Be it a hobby, a club, or some educational institution. It can be a minor detour or a choice at a crossroad. In any case, it changes our lives. And that is exactly its purpose - change. Break out of the barriers of routine and see yourself in a new light. See the changes that have brought upon you by the chains of time and look upon the person you have become.

We don't know how we would act in certain circumstances until we are. We don't know who we are until we act. But we can figure it out, piece by piece. "Reality is a puzzle, with all the pieces laid out in front of you. Putting those pieces together, that's perception."



I've been busy for a few weeks, but I'm back now.