A Not-So-Quick Quiz: Who Are You? October 22, 2010
Posted by nrhatch in Happiness, Life Balance, Mindfulness.trackback
Reading recent blog articles and comments, and evaluating whether to “apply” for the Good Mood Blogger position, raised a number of questions in my mind.
Here are a few, which you might wish to ponder when you have the time:
1. Does “who you are” depend upon who you are with? Do you act one way around your “work friends” and another around your family?
Living via Compartments (A Nightingale’s Blog)
Happiness, Harmony, and Integrity (SLTW)
Impressionism & Abstract Expressionism (SLTW)
2. Do you control your thoughts . . . or do they control you? Are you a worry wart, or do you tend to roll with the punches and go with the flow?
Confessions of a Worry Wart (Footprints in the Sand)
Hang Ten: Riding the Waves of Dismay (SLTW)
How To Be Happy NOW (SLTW)
3. Do you make time for your priorities, or allow others to dictate how you spend your “free” time? Do you look to others for recommendations on what to read, write, be, say, or do? Or do you look within for guidance?
5 Books you MUST Read Before You Die (Courage to Create)
Navigating Around Unsolicited Advice (SLTW)
What Is In You . . . Let It Out (SLTW)
4. Have you ever acted solely to destroy the happiness of others by spreading viruses or engaging in acts of vandalism? If so, why? What did you get from the experience?
I *Hate* Viruses! (Intergalactic Writers, Inc.)
Don’t Bring Me Down (SLTW)
5. How often do you make sharing your joy and passion in life a priority?
The Harmonica Man (Reflections From A Cloudy Mirror)
Spread Joy (SLTW)
6. When someone criticizes a group to which you belong (e.g., people who play guitars), do you tend to take the comment personally or shrug it off?
Important Conversations That Could Change The World (Arriving at your own door)
Toughen Up! (SLTW)
We Are Not The Labels We Wear (SLTW)
7. How much time do you spend “defending” your reputation with others? How focused are you on the “labels” you choose to wear . . . or that others choose to apply to you?
Limiting Ourselves With Labels (Arriving at your own door)
Suicide For All The Wrong Reasons (SLTW)
8. Do you view yourself as “religious,” “spiritual,” or neither? Do you enjoy talking to others about your beliefs? Do you enjoy listening to differing viewpoints on religion, spirituality, and philosophy when shared by others?
A Golden Ticket To Heaven? (SLTW)
Why I Speak of Spirit, Not God (SLTW)
God Is Not A Christian, Jew, or Moslem (SLTW)
9. When are you at your happiest? Alone? Or around others? Are you introverted? Extroverted? Or a mix?
Introverted vs. Extroverted (Maggie’s Writing Blog)
I’m A (Karma) Chameleon (SLTW)
10. How often are what you do, what you say, and what you think in harmony?
Happiness, Harmony, and Integrity (SLTW)
11. Do you tend to compare yourself with others or with your previous self?
The Problem with Most Self Help Articles (Minimalist Lifestyle)
A Minuet In Time (SLTW)
12. How do you feel about our current obsession with beauty?
But she’s pretty! (Intergalatic Writers, Inc.)
137 Steps to Flawless Perfection (SLTW)
Simplify Your Life (SLTW)
13. If you could be anyone . . . who would you be? And why? How often do you find yourself thinking, Who I am is who I want to be?
5 Steps To A Happier You (SLTW)
The Inner Path to Peace (SLTW)
Who we are now is a product of what we once wanted. Who we are is the result of choices we’ve made.
That is true whether our choices flow from deliberate, conscious evaluation of options and possibilities, or from mindlessly following the preferences of others.
Namaste!
Comments
Sorry comments are closed for this entry
Spirit Lights The Way 
Wow! These are questions that really put you in touch with the “you” beneath your various facades. Good post.
Thanks, NC! I’m a big fan of asking questions and really listening for the answers.
Maybe it’s the attorney in me. 🙂
A rather heavy post, but doesn’t it just reinforce that you’re the perfect person for the Good Mood Blog?
Can’t believe you’re up all ready. Must be the full moon throwing off your schedule!
Being the Good Mood Blogger would be wonderful FUN . . . jumping through hoops (or juggling) to get the position, not really my cup of tea.
Thank you for the links NR. They are greatly appreciated!
Looking forward to checking out the others.
I’ve read some very thought provoking blog posts recently, yours included.
Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
1. Of course except that I don’t work.
13. I would be the Duggar mom but look like Angelina Jolie.
More and more, I tried to BE who I am, no matter who’s watching. But I’m sure I still “act” the part on occasion.
These days, I’m happy to BE ME . . . but I wouldn’t mind being a slightly younger version of myself. 🙂
Wow Nancy … great blog entry! Now I know what I’m going to be doing for the next couple of days. I am just going to have to read all the blogs you linked!
— Judson
Down the blog hole you go! Just remember to come up for air every now and then. 🙂
Your humorous post on being a worry wart got me thinking about doing a post like this.
At first, I planned to link only one blog per question. That plan soon fell by the wayside.
Happy travels!
1, The more confidence I get regarding my ‘inner self’ the fewer compromises I feel I have to make to others. Sometimes, I do feel it necessary, in the interest of good will to be conciliatory. As in a critique by my son at one point: “It is not always necessary, or ‘good’ to have ‘the last word’.
2. I believe there is a little ‘give and take’ here. Especially in my attempts to assimilate the thinking of ‘philosophers’, whose thought I understand to be deeper than mine, I find it sometimes helps to attempt to adopt those thoughts by giving them a personal run-through in my head. As I once heard as a child: In order to understand (another) you have first to believe (their point of view). I subscribe to your pointing out that we also have to question; skepticism and doubt is also a hallmark in the exchange of world views. The imaginative part of this would be part of what they are calling the ‘poetic’ i.e. a kind of hypothetical interaction, through a vague idea into a more solid understanding.
3. All my time is ‘free’. I just hold it as a personal duty to organize my day to the best of my ability.
4. I struggle to overcome a mode of reactive behavior, that is acting in the defensive, when I feel hurt, misunderstood, or ignored.
5. My passions are for philosophy and music. It is sometimes difficult to find someone with which to share these. But fortunately, I have the opportunity to hone my findings through my writing.
6. One of the reasons I would not make a good Blogger, is that I generally listen to viewpoints, to which I would have objections, (in my real, as opposed to virtual web experiences). Whenever I do get into debates on issues that interest me, I can only hope that the exchange is mutually beneficial. I do have some ‘rigid’, that is ‘set’ ideas and values. “Don’t punish, educate”, is one of them.
7. If it’s a general thing, one that doesn’t upset me emotionally, I am capable of walking away. When I do make a correction, it may come later after the argument is forgotten, as a reminder rather than a criticism. It makes me strong to have the resources not to mind too much the effects of my ‘reputation’.
8. Religious, spiritual, philosophical? I will be working out these traditional dilemmas for the rest of my life. I am still learning to be all three.
9. When I am able to keep the initiative, in what I do. For some reason I value freedom more than happiness. I agree with Einstein in this regard.
l0. I don’t expect to have on-going harmony. I believe with Kierkegaard, that the life of faith is the life of living with paradox. I’m like that famous American poet – can’t remember his name – who said: I am multitudes. I am contradiction, or something to that effect.
11. With my previous self. That is one of the reasons I do not live always in the now. I am in a constant state of re-write; both in my novel and in my life, developing and transforming my perspective, embracing through the future, into the past, what I life, even if only unconsciously within the moment.
12. Beauty is primary. Beauty and grace. I have followed closely what philosophers say about this. Kant: that the Aesthetic consciousness, (the inner self) is what links the Practical, moral, interrelationships with others, with the theoretical, or pure reason and scientific. But this is a very complicated subject. Much has been said about it, and what is beautiful (we also need truth to get to goodness) can be misconstrued, even though we somehow believe that everyone will agree with us on such issues.
13. I’m going to plead the silence of superstition. As Nietzsche said. There cannot be a God. If there was one, I would want to be him. ? Maybe that is easier sometimes done, for some people, than said! grin grin.
When we know who we are . . . we know how to live.
Good answers.
#4 ~ You are definitely not alone in this respect.
“Who we are now is a product of what we once wanted.”
But I wanted nothing more than to be Spiderman, yet I still cannot stick to walls nor lift a bus over my head.
Unfulfilled desires cause suffering and unhappiness because we are convinced that we cannot be happy until we have attained the object of our desire ~ in your example, Superhero Status.
But happiness is not about getting what we want “out there,” it is about learning to access the happiness within.
Happiness is never in things . . . it is in us.
[…] The Inner Path to Peace * The Answers Lie Within * It’s Time To Wake Up * Backwards Living * A Not-So-Quick Quiz: Who Are You? * The Awakening by Sonny Carroll * Access Your Inner Wisdom * Meditation […]