Maybe you don't know about yourself

The older I get, the more I question what it actually means to “know yourself.”

Growing up, we slowly collect beliefs about who we are. We learn what we like and dislike, what kind of people we think we are, what kind of environments make us comfortable, and what kind of life supposedly isn’t for us. At first, these might just be observations. But after repeating them for years, they start to harden into something that feels much more permanent: identity.

We stop saying, “I don’t think I’d enjoy that,” and start saying, “That’s just not me.” We stop treating our understanding of ourselves as something provisional and start treating it as fact.

Lately, I’ve been wondering how much of that is actually true.

How much of what I think I know about myself comes from genuine understanding, and how much of it simply comes from familiarity? How many things have I rejected not because I truly knew they weren’t for me, but because they didn’t fit the version of myself I already understood?

There is, of course, an obvious problem with this idea. You don’t need to experience everything firsthand to know that you don’t want it.

I don’t believe we need to try every possible career, lifestyle, relationship, or experience before we’re allowed to say no. We can learn from observation. We can understand consequences. We can listen to other people’s experiences. We can know our values and recognize when something fundamentally conflicts with them. Sometimes a no is simply a well-informed no.

But I think there is another kind of no that is much harder to recognize.

It is the no that comes from unfamiliarity. The no that comes from embarrassment, uncertainty, or fear of being bad at something. The no that appears when an opportunity doesn’t fit neatly into the identity we have already built for ourselves.

And when I look back at my own life, I realize that some of the things that eventually mattered most to me began with exactly that kind of discomfort.

A few years ago, for example, I had to decide whether I wanted to extend my stay in Bali for another month. There was no grand reason behind it. I could easily have gone home and continued with what was already familiar. Instead, I stayed.

Looking back, that decision seems significant because that extra time led me to people who influenced how I thought about life, relationships, work, and the future I wanted for myself. But I didn’t know any of that when I made the decision. At the time, it was simply a choice between returning to something familiar and staying somewhere without really knowing what would happen next.

The same thing happened with my career. At some point, I started reaching out to people I didn’t know for work opportunities. It felt uncomfortable. There was always the possibility that they would ignore me, reject me, or think I was being ridiculous. It would have been very easy for me to protect myself by saying, “I’m just not the kind of person who randomly messages strangers.”

But I did it anyway.

Eventually, those uncomfortable attempts became part of the path that led me to the remote career I have today. Something that might once have felt completely outside of my personality slowly became part of my normal life.

Then there was China. At one point, I agreed to travel somewhere unfamiliar with a girl from Poland I barely knew. Even in retrospect, the decision sounds slightly questionable. I had very little certainty about what I was getting myself into.

But I went, and somewhere along that journey I discovered Tibetan China, which became one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

What interests me about these experiences isn’t simply that saying yes led to something good. That would be too easy a lesson.

What interests me is how uncertain I felt before each of them.

I wasn’t confidently walking toward those experiences thinking, “Yes, this is exactly who I am.” There was hesitation. There was anxiety. Sometimes my heart was literally trembling. I didn’t know how things would turn out.

And yet, some of the experiences that shaped me most initially felt nothing like me.

That is why I’m becoming increasingly skeptical of advice like “always say yes,” “do what scares you,” or “get outside your comfort zone.” They sound inspiring, but discomfort by itself tells us very little.

Sometimes discomfort really is a warning. Sometimes our instincts are picking up on danger, incompatibility, or a violation of our boundaries. Some risks simply aren’t worth taking, and some experiences do not become more valuable just because they scare us.

So I don’t think the lesson is that fear means we should move forward.

The more useful lesson, at least for me, is to become curious about where my no is coming from.

When I reject something, is it because it contradicts my values? Is it because experience has already taught me enough? Do I understand the consequences and genuinely decide that this isn’t the life I want?

Or is my no protecting me from something else?

Maybe I’m afraid of embarrassment. Maybe I don’t want to be a beginner again. Maybe I’m uncomfortable because I can’t predict what will happen. Or maybe the possibility simply doesn’t fit the identity I have already created for myself.

I don’t think there is always an easy way to tell the difference. I’m still learning it myself.

For a long time, I thought knowing yourself meant gradually becoming more certain about who you are. As you grow older, you’re supposed to arrive at increasingly definitive answers: this is who I am, this is what I want, these are the things I like, and this is the kind of life that suits me.

Now I wonder whether that idea is backwards.

The person doing all of that defining is changing too.

The things I wanted ten years ago aren’t exactly the things I want today. Things that once terrified me eventually became normal. Things I once imagined would make me happy eventually became less important. People changed me. Places changed me. Success changed me. Failure changed me.

Every experience gives me new information about myself.

So perhaps knowing yourself isn’t about eventually arriving at a perfect definition of who you are. Maybe it is about becoming better at updating that definition when life gives you new evidence.

There are parts of ourselves worth trusting. There are values and boundaries that deserve to be protected. But there are also beliefs about ourselves that deserve to be challenged from time to time.

That’s why I’ve become more careful whenever I hear myself say, “That’s just not me.”

Sometimes that sentence is completely true.

But sometimes it might mean, “That isn’t the person I have known myself to be so far.”

Those are not quite the same thing.

Maybe knowing yourself doesn’t mean you’ve finished figuring yourself out. Maybe it means knowing which parts of yourself to trust and which parts to remain curious about.

So lately, whenever I catch myself saying, “That’s not me,” I try to ask one more question before believing it:

What is this no actually based on?

And maybe that is a question worth asking yourself too.

What is something you have already decided “isn’t you”?

And are you sure you know that — or is it simply a version of yourself you have never had the chance to meet?