If I told you that there are seven simple levels to build your self-awareness, would you be interested? What happens if I give you a 22 Question game that takes you on this self-discovery journey?
You’ve probably played 20 Questions at some point in your life. You know the game: you think of an object, and then everyone has 20 questions to gather information and formulate an educated guess. (“Does it breathe underwater?” “No.” “Is it bigger than a piece of toast?” “Yes.” “Is the object you’re thinking of a tissue box?” “No…What the hell?”)
Some of you might’ve even played 21 Questions, a game that involves getting to know someone better. (I’m not going to lie, I feel like a slight poser for not knowing about this.) I decided to jump on this twenties-question game caravan with my own version: 22 Questions for Self-Discovery.
22 Questions is great because it combines the goal aspect of 20 Questions (you try to figure out “you” at the end) and the getting-to-know-someone aspect of 21 Questions (again, getting to know “you”).
How to Play 22 Questions for Self-Discovery
A quick review for you all. Self-awareness is your ability to understand yourself. There are two types of self-awareness: internal and external. Internal self-awareness is your understanding of how your thoughts, feelings, and values affect your behaviors. External self-awareness is your understanding of how others perceive you.
In her well-received book Insight, Tasha Eurich breaks down these two types of self-awareness into seven categories:
- Values
- Passions
- Ambitions
- Fit
- Patterns
- Reactions
- Impact
Each category allows you to question and understand one aspect of yourself in greater clarity. Think of them as the seven wonders of the world, except for it’s like the seven wonders of understanding yourself. But with fewer tourists and less publicity. Once you tour them all, you can make your way to greater awareness and, ultimately, greater happiness.
22 Questions for Self-Discovery Will Help Build Your Awareness of Each Level
If you ask yourself the following questions, you will be tremendously closer to possessing a greater self-awareness. The benefits of being self-aware are impressive, so why not take a few minutes to play?
Level One: Values (Internal Self-Awareness)
Values are your core and deeply held beliefs about how to live and what is important. They help guide you through your decisions and actions. For this reason, values play a critical role in your life.
3. If everyone described you by your top values, what would you want them to say?
Also, choosing your values isn’t the same as living them. But exploring value questions for self-discovery is essential in building your self-awareness.
Level Two: Passions (Internal Self-Awareness)
Passions are the things in your life that make you excited. Too often, people use passion as a buzzword, or they associate “passion” with “career.” Instead, I want you to think of a passion as something that you enjoy doing.
6. What would you do for nothing?
Do you feel like everyone around you knows “exactly what they want to do in life”? And you’re sitting here in a passion-less puddle of mundanity? Don’t – you’re not alone. Passions aren’t like lightning bolts that strike you into a sudden epiphany. They can come and go, develop over time, and change throughout your life.
Level Three: Ambitions (Internal Self-Awareness)
Ambitions are the things that you want to experience and achieve in life. They typically require some amount of determination and hard work to complete them. While ambitions are often tied to jobs and careers, this perspective can limit you into neglecting all of the other ambitions that we want in our lives.
9. What accomplishment would you most want to share with the person you look up to? Or share with the person who looks up to you?
Ambitions will also change throughout your life. Sometimes you’ll even be surprised by how unfulfilled you’ll feel after realizing your ambitions (humans are pretty flawed, remember?). It’s being aware of your ambition-minded growth, and questions for self-discovery about this growth, however, that will give you a greater sense of purpose.
Level Four: Fit (Internal Self-Awareness)
Fit is the environment around you and how you feel in it. It goes well beyond “fitting in,” but instead refers to an environment’s ability to make you feel happy and engaged. Fit can include the physical space, the people, and the culture, among other things.
12. What spaces or communities in your life do you feel happiest and most fulfilled in?
We can’t always choose our environments. Still, by possessing the self-awareness of your ideal fit, you can make more conscious choices to put yourself in better positions.
Level Five: Patterns (Internal Self-Awareness)
Patterns are our consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. These patterns might have to do with our personality, or our personal history, or a defeating societal mindset.
15. What experiences seem to repeat themselves in your life? (some of which you sought out, and some of which you want to stop)
Once you can identify your patterns, you can promote the positive ones and avoid the negative ones. These questions for self-discovery will get you one step closer to identifying your patterns and making healthy changes.
Level Six: Reactions (External Self-Awareness)
Reactions are how we respond to the world. Because we often don’t control the initial cause (just our response to it), they tend to display our strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities.
18. Based on how you respond to situations, what would people most likely want to come to you about (as opposed to going to other people)?
Our reactions don’t exist in a vacuum; instead, they affect the people around us. Having the self-awareness to understand how we respond to different situations, therefore, will have enormous benefits for our relationships.
Level Seven: Impact (External Self-Awareness)
Impact, quite simply, is the effect we have on others. Our actions and behaviors will contribute to our impact, but they are not the sole determination. Our impact is also determined by how others think, feel, and react. For this reason, being aware of our impact is classified as external self-awareness.
21. What impact do people have on your life, and in what ways are you similar? Different?
We can ponder these questions, but we can’t know the full truth without asking for feedback. We impact people in more ways than we realize with our words and actions.
The 22nd Question for Self-Discovery
Unless you’ve taken some sort of life-boycott against numbers in support of bringing Roman Numerals back (good luck keeping score of your mini-golf game), you probably noticed that I have only listed 21 questions so far. I saved the most important question for last.
22. What impact do you want to have?
All seven levels lead up to this simultaneously complicated and straightforward question. You must have a solid foundation of values guiding you, as well as a plethora of passions and ambitions to fill out your pursuits in your life.
You need to be aware of the fit that you work best in and, subsequently, have the highest potential to influence other people in. Self-awareness of your patterns will help you understand how you move throughout the world. This understanding will allow you to control your reactions better, therefore giving you more control over your behaviors and how they impact others.
Once you can get through all seven levels of self-awareness, you might be able to answer Question #22. And once you answer it, you might be able to go back through all seven levels of self-awareness to try to live that answer.
Conclusion
The journey to self-discovery is not a short one, nor is it easy. Quite the opposite, actually: it takes time, work, and a willingness to delve into unanswered questions.
There are seven levels of self-awareness:
- Values – principles that guide you
- Passions – interests that excite and energize you
- Ambitions – goals and experiences that you want to achieve
- Fit – the environment that you feel most fulfilled in
- Patterns – the consistent ways you think, feel, and act
- Reactions – how you respond to situations
- Impact – the effect you have on other people
By exploring each level in turn with these questions for self-discovery, you can begin to see the full picture of yourself in greater clarity. Once you do, you can work to answer the question that drives them all:
What impact do you want to have?