By Nadia Koligman

We live in the information age. It has been said that information is power, and the amount of information available to us today is staggering.

Yet this embarrassment of riches is still not sufficient for us to truly empower ourselves. The information we need is in fact available to us, but it won’t be found on the Internet. It can only be accessed via the “Inner-net”. To create lasting happiness and inner peace in our lives we must tap into our inner resources, follow our internal compass and live from the depths of who we are.

We were created to be unique and were assigned the task of bringing our uniqueness into the world. Our uniqueness was God’s gift to us and it should be our gift to the world. This uniqueness is our essence—it is who we are at our core.

Part of being human is the need to express our uniqueness. Unfortunately, we deny it, bury it and expend tremendous energy trying to be something else—anything else—than what we really are. We have a faint, but nagging, gut feeling that we are somehow special, yet we spend our lives living by the external dictates and expectations of others.

We overlook the fact that our uniqueness is a resource as well as a treasure. Its job is to help us make the most of our life journey. Nature has a way of guiding us to live from our core. When we are not being true to ourselves, we move away from inner peace. Lack of inner peace is a signal that we are functioning in a way that is not consistent with who we really are. Straying from our authenticity puts us at odds with ourselves and our lives. Continually living this way, sooner or later, catches up with us.

For many of us, the rude awakening comes in the form of an “identity crisis” at some point in our lives. It can be triggered by the loss of a job, a serious illness, the death of a loved one, a failed marriage, a milestone birthday—any whispered reminder of our mortality.

We suddenly realize that our lives just aren’t what we hoped they would be. Things we thought would make us happy don’t. We feel alienated from ourselves and disconnected from our own lives. There is an “emptiness” deep inside of us and nothing we have or do seems to be able fill that void.

This can be terribly disorienting and extremely painful. I know this from personal experience! Successfully working through such an identity crisis brings a very valuable lesson: our core essence is ageless and timeless, and it is the foundation on which we should build our lives.

To cultivate deep inner peace and long term happiness we have to consistently act in accordance with what we believe our lives are truly about. This involves being true to ourselves and living authentically from deep within our core. But before we can be who we really are, we must first know who we really are.

It’s why it’s crucial for us to develop and maintain an intimate self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is an understanding of one’s own nature, values, yearnings, motivations, abilities and limitations.

We develop our self-knowledge through introspection and reflection. We must look inward and become familiar with our own inner landscape. This process involves asking ourselves some simple but important questions. Who am I really? Who am I in my gut? What is important to me? What are my values? How do I define myself to myself?

But asking ourselves these questions is not enough. We must also be totally honest in answering them. Many times we think we know who we are or what we want only to discover later that we were living up to someone else’s expectations or ideals.

Our core identity is a sort of internal compass with which we navigate our way through life. The way that we choose to define ourselves creates the boundaries within which we live our lives. It directs how we think and how we behave. It shapes our decisions and affects our actions, and this ultimately shapes our destiny. It controls how we respond to everything that happens in our lives: our relationships, what work we choose to do, the way we do our jobs, the decisions we make daily, and the actions that we take.

When we make it a point to live by our inner compass we experience a sense of certainty, authenticity, congruency and inner peace.

The challenge is to make sure that we keep that compass aligned on our True Self. It’s vital to set aside some quiet time for introspection on a regular basis. Getting re-acquainted with yourself and exploring your inner landscape will take more than a few minutes. In fact, it may take weeks or even months before you really reconnect with the essence of your deepest self. Invest the time and effort to find out who you really are. It will be, without a doubt, one of the most valuable investments you will ever make.

© 2008 by Nadia Koligman. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Nadia Koligman is an author, Life Design Strategist, and founder of Dreamnautics Media, a company which produces personal development learning tools. She developed the Dreamnautics® Life Design technology and is living her dream of helping others launch their lives and live their dreams. For additional articles, tools and resources to help you design and build a life you love, visit Nadia’s web site at www.dreamnautics.com.

Reprint Permission
You’re welcome to use this article on your web site or in your eZine or newsletter as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the copyright, the “about the author” info at the end, and the live web site link) and a copy of the reprint is sent to .

 ↑ Back to Top