Who Are You?

Who are you?

That seems like a simple enough question. As adults, if asked this question, most of us would reply with our names. So, for me, I might answer, “I’m Matt Norman.” That’s a perfectly reasonable response. Our names are the labels that we use to identify ourselves. From the time my children were very small, I tried to teach them the importance of names. When they would tell me stories about kids at school, I would ask what the kid’s name was. They often didn’t know. I would tell them that names are important and encourage them to find out that kid’s name and tell me.

Who is Matt Norman?

The question becomes a lot more complicated when we ask it like this, who is Matt Norman? You see, when someone asks who I am and I give them my name, it requires very little thought. I have been Matt Norman my entire life. However, when people ask who Matt Norman is, it’s much harder to answer.

Many have likely given very little thought to who we are beyond our name. We seldom take the time to do a deeper exploration into who we really are.

Who you are matters

Yes, names are important. Many times I have seen people light up when you call them by their name. Knowing their name expresses that you see enough value in them to have remembered their name. That’s important and matters.

However, knowing who you are beyond your name is even more important. From exploring who you are you can discover what really matters to you. Only then, can you begin to build habits and set priorities in your life that will move you towards the healthy, happy life you deserve.

How do you find yourself?

We’ve heard so many stories of young people, or even some not-so-young people, taking time to “find themselves” that it’s almost become cliche. For the young person, this is often little more than an excuse to delay the transition from adolescence to adulthood. They spend their time traveling the world or drunk on a beach somewhere. While there might be some valuable lessons learned during this season, it’s not something that many of us have the desire or time to do.

This can start as simply as asking yourself, “Who am I?”. 

Knowing You Workshop

While it can be as simple as asking who you are, I want to encourage you to go deeper and I want to help. On October 1st I will be doing a “Knowing You” workshop. In this workshop we will cover the following:

1. Knowing who you are – This is a series of exercises aimed at helping you connect with who you are. This is way beyond your name or even the job you have. I want to help you truly connect with who you are beneath all that.
2. Knowing what matters most to you – I believe that we can’t truly decide what matters most to us until we know who we are. Having done that in the first part of this workshop, we can now decide what really matters to us.
3. Setting priorities – Many of us can quickly identify what our priorities are. However, for most of us if we were to look at our calendar or check our register it would likely tell a different story. Now that we have identified who we are and what matters most to us, we can establish new priorities.
4. Next steps – The lessons learned in these previous steps are great unless we leave not knowing what to do with them. Without clear next steps, this information is meaningless. So, we will close the workshop by setting up the next steps based on what we have learned during the workshop.

Are you ready to get started?