It’s odd the things you learn about yourself as you get older. Some good things and some bad. Some surprise you, even if you spend a lot of time in your own head analyzing what went right and wrong after any given encounter or incident. I think back to the time when I had all of life figured out, you know, back when I was eighteen, and just laugh. I was one with the world, which looked an awful lot like my own personal oyster! To realize now what I didn’t even know about myself back then, much less the world, makes a sitcom out of much of my life story. I’m sure many of you feel the same way . . . unless you’re a teenager, in which case, good luck with that!
It took three of four years at West Point for me to realize that I don’t study well, that my focus drifted unless my imagination was otherwise occupied. This meant that toward the end of school, I always studied to music. Over time this morphed into playing movies in the background. I further learned that if a storyline was new, I still couldn’t concentrate, but if it was well-known to me, it faded nicely in the background and kept my subconscious busy—and out of the way. Today this manifests itself in the fact that if I’m going to spend time writing, I do it with “The Scorpion King” playing on my computer desktop. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason that movie sets the perfect environment within which I can write, and write fast. All of my grad school papers were written that way, and believe it or not, the entire, year-long effort that culminated in my first novel “Persian Blood” was drafted with The Rock’s voice in the background!
Contrary to what a lot of people expected from watching me grow up, I’ve learned that I’m an introvert, that I lose energy dealing with people. Especially large groups of people! Now, being an Army officer hasn’t always allowed me to be at my most comfortable, introverted self, so often I’ve had to act the part of an extrovert. This doesn’t change who I really am, and can be confusing for anyone who meets me when I’m “on” vice meeting me when I’m comfortable. As a case in point, while teaching a conversational English class, I mentioned to my Japanese students that I was an introvert, and they found this laughable. Really, they laughed . . . hard! They saw me out there every day, stopping by to chat with them and their bosses, at every party, making jokes, and getting along with everyone and it didn’t fit their image of an introvert, but I knew better.
I’ve found that I’m a born multi-tasker, that I feel most efficient when I’m swimming in alligators, so-to-speak, and knocking down multiple targets. If forced to concentrate on just one project that’s not due for a long period of time, I’ve found I tend to procrastinate long enough to create a false sense of urgency—and then complete the task in record time. The more things I have to do at once, the better I feel I accomplish all of them. Strange, perhaps, but I’ve learned this about myself over the years. My wife, a true focuser, is the exact opposite and nothing in all the world is more painful to me than working a project at her pace. I want to hit the target and move on to the next. She’s in it for the long-haul, and does incredible work, it’s just not how I’m comfortable doing things. In point of fact, she's pretty sure I have some kind of attention deficit disorder!
And so it goes, on-and-on, over time I feel like I determine on which end of a seemingly endless number of binary personality descriptors I lie, and one after another piece of who I really am comes into focus. The Briggs-Meyer personality test is interesting in this regard, designed to help people figure this out for themselves and, if in a leadership position, how best to utilize the people under them. The problem, I think, with a one-time test like this is that it relies upon a battery of questions, the answers to which are not necessarily set in the stone of one’s psyche. If I’m frustrated with the events around me, I answer one way, if I’m satisfied, another. The test then yields, I think, a potentially skewed analysis of one’s personality, one’s character. Far better, I believe, to look back on life over time, across the ups and downs, the feasts and famines, and evaluate oneself across a much larger sample set.
So it is I sit here now, home from work, listening to “The Scorpion King” as I type. I’m writing my blog now because I know I’m more analytical in the afternoon vice more creative in the morning. After I hit “post” I’ll spend some time editing the first chapter of my next novel, again, an analytical process. I’ve just completed working out in the gym, because I know I’m more suited to cardio exercise in the morning and weight training at night. I didn’t necessarily choose any of these traits, they’re just a part of what makes me . . . well . . . me.
Sun Tzu exhorted that to know one’s self and know the enemy is the way to win a thousand battles. So often we focus on the last part, and neglect the time, effort, and sometimes painful self-reflection it takes to accomplish the first half of that axiom. The reality is, truly knowing oneself is, I think, the path to success, whatever that word means to you. Knowing who you are, what you truly want out of life, what you want of your life’s work to live on after you’re gone, these things are critical to personal development and, over time, shape and affect your future.
So don’t be afraid to take that long look in the mirror and strive to understand what it is you see. Your key to personal success is in there, you just have to find it. Don’t shy away from trying new things for fear of failure, as we generally learn more about ourselves in defeat than we do in victory. Get out there, swing the bat, take the shot, make the leap, and when you strike out, miss the target, or fall from the ledge, get up, dust yourself off, and ask yourself why it happened. The answer might just surprise you, and the learning will make you a stronger, more self-confident person.
M. G. Haynes