Step 3 – Knowing myself

You have set up your practice, begun practicing thoughtfulness and begun defining happiness for yourself. It is now time for you to learn to know yourself in any situation in your life. This is not easy to do. It is a complex, multi-faceted task which requires keen observation of yourself and much reflection on your observations. You may already have spent some time to observe and understand yourself. The Intrinsic Practice offers tools to build on your ability to know yourself, regardless of how minimal or well-developed your initial knowledge may be.

These tools will help you learn about yourself in any situation in your life, experience by experience, past or present. It is that learning, experience by experience, that will provide you with an increasingly deep and wide knowledge of yourself. It will also enable you to evidence which parts of these experiences are conducive to happiness and which are not. This evidencing will be useful for steps 5 and 6, which will lead to transforming your experiences from non-conducive to conducive to happiness.

We are often limited in observing and knowing ourselves because we only do so from a few angles at a time. For instance, we may view ourselves predominantly through the angle of our emotions, of our thoughts or of our behavior. This often gives us partial information that generates blind spots and does not produce comprehensive knowledge of ourselves. To overcome this limitation, the Intrinsic Practice offers a tool which uses seven angles or “dimensions” for the observation of any specific situation in your life and for the generation of self-knowledge from it. By looking at a situation from a multiplicity of dimensions, you are more likely to know yourself better.

Thus, the mnemonic for Step 3 is MINDSET, which stands for:

These are the seven dimensions with which to observe, analyze and gain knowledge of yourself. Seven may seem to be many dimensions, but this multiplicity will guard against being too simplistic or reductionist in observing, analyzing and knowing yourself.

It will also enable you to be more specific and precise during steps 5 and 6, which will help you to transform your experiences, dimension by dimension, from non-conducive to conducive to happiness.

Use the 3a. MINDSET template to learn about the dimensions and about how to use them to observe and know yourself.

Watch the video instructions on how to use the template 3a. MINDSET.

Transcript (.pdf, 119 Kb)3m 38s

Let’s begin with the first of the basic dimensions: Soma.