Last updated on December 30th, 2025 at 09:23 am
“Who Am I?”
- Diane Bonorchis, the entrepreneurial coach, is back and engaging in some introspection. She is currently exploring her inner self and asking herself the question, “Who am I?” in an effort to determine the true definition of greatness.
The quest to unveil the true meaning of greatness is a complex and non-linear process. As we navigate through life, we ponder many questions and embark on a journey of deep introspection in order to reveal all the answers.
Let us embark on this journey together.
“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
William Shakespeare
As a follow on to my previous article on ‘I dreamed a dream’ I decided to tackle the age old question of “Who am I?’’ I have spent many years and many books and authors later trying to answer this question for myself.
When I was first asked this question, I remember being utterly confused by it and thinking it was a pretty dumb question. I thought the person that posed the question had not heard my name so I repeated it. My name is after all who I am, is it not? What followed was my becoming totally exasperated as I added that I was a daughter, a wife, a mother and finally my professional credentials. None of these were confirmed as being the right answer to the question. I remember walking away feeling confused about seemingly not knowing my own identity. After some mulling, I realized that all of the answers I had given were merely labels. If you stripped me of the label, was I not still me? And so the journey of self-discovery began.
I am not in this article going to delve into the question as such. What I am going to highlight is that in order to find the “greatness” in yourself, this question is a really good starting point. It is the point whereby you get to see your “self” from different angles.
Take time to determine the “self”:
In recent years I have taken many an entrepreneur through the process of trying to determine the “self”. The very first workshop I ran, I was not prepared for the kind of revelations that would emerge in the coming weeks and what that would mean in terms of the journey towards the destiny of the individual. I was not prepared for the answers I would find in my own life and how they were to impact me and my journey.
As I myself embarked on my journey to clarify this question through questioning others, the first and most important revelation was how few people ever get the time to really sit in self-reflection to bring about self-disclosure?
We are like hamsters on a wheel never having the time to self-reflect. When asking the question “Who are you?”, I get as much confusion and perplexed reactions as I myself had when it was first posed to me. I have realized that a great percentage of individuals are living a reactive life as opposed to a life filled with inspiration, meaning and purpose.
I had a client who realized with absolute horror that he was living his wife’s dream – he did not want to be an entrepreneur at all. In my years of coaching and guiding, I have witnessed many individuals realizing that years and years of their lives had been wasted simply because they never knew how to tap into self-realization. It is only then that the full depth of meaning in Shakespeare’s quote: “This above all: to thine own self be true” becomes apparent. I now fail to understand how it is at all possible to find meaning and purpose without knowing who you are!
“I am not not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
Carl Jung
From the time that we are born, our lives are molded by our parents, our environment, teachers, peers, siblings etc. Before we know it, we have been cloned! And that is no joke either. Through my studies of the brain, it became clear that our brain chemistry was wired accordingly, setting ourselves up with archetypal behavioral traits for the remainder of our lives. Embarking into the self-realization and actualization journey we have the ability to effect neuroplasticity and make significant life changes. So wherever you are right now, it is not too late to embark on the journey of self-realization.
Some will go through the rest of their lives comfortable in their state of unconsciousness, always wondering what could have been. The courageous venture of some into the journey of “Who am I?” sees them struggling with a world that is trying to extract their magnificence through change, but are doggedly holding onto the perspectives of a past known environment that adorned them with the labels that became the prison bars of their souls.
The journey of “Who am I?” is the start of self-reflection and self-disclosure. As each disclosure comes about, another prison bar is removed and the sense of self starts to emerge.
Embarking on a Journey Towards Greatness:
A journey begins whereby we can look at our behavioral traits and emotional tags and question them and see how they have both served and dis-served us.
When we are able to see that everything in life both serves and dis-serves us, we draw closer to our soul ‘’self” that enables us to find infinite possibilities within:
- A journey that exposes the lack of self-worth and self-esteem and how they stand in the way of seeing ourselves more clearly.
- A journey whereby we learn to listen to the mind and what it is saying and realize that the mind is not who we are! There is no realization greater than the awareness that you are not the voice of your mind – you are the one that hears it. So much of what the voice says is the very essence of our suffering which prevents us from finding our authentic selves.
- A journey that allows us not to fear the unknown and to be open to new perspectives and paradigm shifts, knowing that in there somewhere ‘the real you’ resides.
- A journey that allows the open honest communication of what you want to be, do and have in this lifetime and embrace it.
- A journey into the discovery that you have the freedom to choose in any given moment. That is your god given right!
At this point in the journey, the discovery is that the entire universe is conspiring to give you what you want. The discovery that every person, place or circumstance are nothing but mirrors for seeing your “self” from different angles. Sometimes this takes shape in difficult times.
Just today I saw this magnificence in the life of one of my entrepreneurs. I will call her ‘Sandy’. Her deepest desire is to become a successful business woman. Two things were standing in her way: driving a vehicle and being able to read her financial statements. These two areas of dis-empowerment kept standing in the way of her successfully running her business.
Sandy’s husband, I will call him ‘Ted’, always drove her places and dealt with the financials of the company. Many times she expressed her frustrations in having to wait for transport and not being able to make financial decisions because she could not interpret the financial statements. No amount of encouragement would shift her although she was fully aware of the constraints.
Find your greatness, even in trying times.
Today Ted was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition that will ultimately lead to partial blindness if not total blindness. Sandy was in tears as she realized the two areas of constraint were no longer areas that she could ignore. Divine intervention we could ask? There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Sandy will find her greatness in these trying times, but it will take further delving into that question of ‘Who am I’. As Sandy takes on the challenges she now faces, she will start to disclose more of the authentic “self” that will lead her to greatness.
Without questioning who we are, we see life from the perspective of hardship, unfairness, blame and resentment which is the ego that keeps us locked in emotion – distancing us from our souls. With questioning, we discover that who we are is akin to the likeness and image of our creator. And that is what we call greatness! It is not only for the select few, it is there for every one of us to explore and become more!
So, Who are you?
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung
© Triumphant Mind Lifestyle Magazine – triumphantmind.com – All rights reserved.
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